The end of PDF by WotC

[ShadoWWW]

RPGNow.com announced today: Wizards of the Coast has instructed us to suspend all sales and downloads of Wizards of the Coast titles. Unfortunately, this includes offering download access to previously purchased Wizards of the Coast titles. We are in discussions with Wizards about their decision to change their approach to digital sales of their titles and will post more information as we have it. If you would like to let Wizards know your opinion on offering D&D titles for download, we suggest the D&D Message Boards found here.

The directive is for all online shops. It means I will perhaps stop to play DND 4E via FG and I will play another game (perhaps True20). I will not buy anything from WotC until WotC allows to buy the PDF modules online again.

[grider]

I like the way unerwünscht put it in this thread (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9995&page=3):


Yes, because those of us who hate 4th edition and refuse to upgrade had absolutely nothing to do with the decrease in sales for WotC. It must be piracy, there is no conceivable way that it could be a poor product released.

I dropped WotC...I went BASIC (https://www.basicfantasy.org).

[PneumaPilot]

Just give Exalted or World of Darkness a try and you'll never miss that other stuff.

[unerwünscht]

I have say I do not like the New World of Darkness one bit. However, I have been VERY interested in giving Exalted a try since about 6 months before it release, and just have not found a group willing to give it a shot yet.

[Oberoten]

Or visit Atlas-Games and pick up your free PDF of Ars Magica 4th edition.

- Obe

[PneumaPilot]

Aww, uner, no love for the nWoD? That's a shame. I hated the old WoD, and it was a long time before I gave the new one a try, but when I did, I felt like I found gamer-mecca.

What did you dislike, just for my own curiosity's sake?

I read all the rules for the first edition of Exalted and loved it, although I couldn't get my D&D group to switch at that time. The second edition, though, seems to have reached even greater heights. I can't wait to try and play it.

[EugeneZ]

I think the title of this thread is a bit dramatic. WotC is most likely asking other shops to stop selling PDFs so that they can sell them themselves. I find it hard to believe a company in the middle of a digital initiative is going to stop making PDFs... more like they want to make more money on said PDFs (though the price for the consumer will probably remain the same).

I can't be sure about this obviously and no doubt WotC botched the whole operation, but if you are enjoying 4e, the company's unfortunate timing and inability to communicate shouldn't affect your gaming much. It's not like they release PDFs every week. You might miss Arcane Power before they go live with their own system, is my guess.

[Dachannien]

Sounds to me like WotC is opening themselves up to a lawsuit. Fortunately for them, it's unlikely that the potential plaintiffs would have the motivation or the money to actually file one.

[unerwünscht]

PneumaPilot, To avoid hijacking this thread I started a new one HERE (https://fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?p=72043#post72043)

And unfortunately given WotC business structure of late I would guess that EugeneZ might be right on this one. But I would also guess that they will be using an almost fascist form of DRM.

[EugeneZ]

I agree, they will most likely use DRM. It is quite unfortunate that companies can't see that years of litigation and DRM in the music world have done nothing but turn music fans against the recording industry.

I am kind of hoping they'll just make PDFs a part of their DnD Insider subscription, though I somehow doubt it.

[Sigurd]

I'm very disappointed that WOTC is running from all the gaming I like.

They've gone from being a core game company to a peripheral one for me. They have some good writers and production values but ....

I resent them terminating duplicate copies of pdfs I've already purchased. That makes me think I'll never buy a pdf from them again. I think it unfair for them not to honour deals made in their name.

That, and driving so much D20 goodness out of the market and off the shelves is just unfair and unjust in my books.


Sigurd

I'll look again, and yet again, at other companies.

[Griogre]

*shrug* For what it's worth I suspect you will see WotC PDF's again though maybe only sold on WotC's site. I'm not justifying anything - but if you buy a digital copy of anything you should download it immediately and make a back up of it. I was pretty shocked to hear so many people apparently didn't. I mean how do you know the guy you downloaded from is going to be around next week? The outlook for PDF sellers has been dismal for a long time: RPGNow and DriveThru merging to cut costs. ENWorld dropping its own PDF store to use One Bookshelf (the merged RPGNow/DriveThru) for the same reason.

It also looks like RPGNow botched their take down to me. I mean, Paizo sent me an e-mail telling me to download any WotC PDFs I hadn't already downloaded giving an extra day. RPGNow sent me no notice and just stopped all downloads of both new and already paid for PDFs. They just posted a little notice on their front page. I would never have known if I hadn't seen the story on ENWorld.

I know who I'm going to be buying my PDF's from in the future and it isn't going to be RPGNow/DriveThru if I can avoid it. There’s obviously some legal stuff going on so I may re-visit that decision in the future.

[Sigurd]

I'm not losing any of the PDFs I've purchased in this but the principle is crummy. WOTC stood quietly by while their pdfs were sold. I'm sure they were paid for each one and the conditions of sale were not hidden from them. Then they broke those conditions with no appreicable notice or consideration.

Of course the PDFs will be on sale again somehow - whats their value if they aren't sold? I just don't think I'll buy them. I've lost patience with Wizards of the Coast.

https://www.atlas-games.com/
https://www.chaosium.com/
https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/
- Have contributed generously to the OGL WIKI
https://greenronin.com/
https://www.dragonwing.net/ - lots of OGL material


https://www.enworld.org

+ about a hundred other boards and sites with legal OGL material free to download.


Just don't need Wizards of the Suits.

[Griogre]

I'm not losing any of the PDFs I've purchased in this but the principle is crummy. WOTC stood quietly by while their pdfs were sold. I'm sure they were paid for each one and the conditions of sale were not hidden from them. Then they broke those conditions with no appreicable notice or consideration.

We don't know WotC broke any conditions. Actually I suspect they didn't. Hasbro has deep pockets and would be lawyer fodder. What appears to have happen is WotC legally terminated PDF sales at all retailers in a surprise move.

It's some retailer's who made promises of X downloads. It would appear that those were promises they should not have made because they couldn't fulfill them. In other words some or all of the retailer(s) lied - not WotC. In the background there also is some legal action occurring maybe evolving the retailers, maybe not.

So is WotC at fault? Probably not legally. Are they idiots pissing off the same customers who buy their products? And over PDFs that have close to zero impact on their bottom line? Oh, yeah. But we already know from the 4E launch they have poor management, poor PR and incompetent marketing. On the RPG side all they really have is a very strong brand and decent to good designers. They probably also have some lawyers telling them to keep their mouth shut and it never occurred to the guys in charge they could have saved a ton of ill will by putting out a simple press release at the same time the sales stopped giving some sort of explanation - even if all it said was we have ongoing litigation/ negotiation /etc, more details to follow.

It looks like to me some of the retailers are most at fault for screwing their customers. WotC? They appear to just be stupid – which is not illegal – just ask their lawyers.

[Tenian]

It feels like:
Yesterday someone drove away from the gas station without paying.
Today the gas station no longer sells gas, but they are happy to sell you barrels of crude oil.

Printed materials are worthless to me. They require way too much processing to meet my standards for usability in FGII. My standards are admittedly very high. I also liked the portability of PDFs versus physical books. It was nice to have a USB stick full of legal DnD materials.

Not that it matters one bit to WOTC's bottom line, but I won't be purchasing another product until they start selling them in some sort of electronic format. It's a shame too, because I feel I was a very good customer for them. I purchased every rulebook they published for 4E, on the day it was released. I subscribe to Insider. I even pre-ordered a case of the player's handbook heroes minis just to get the power cards. Now I guess I'll just wait a week for the data to be available in the compendium and scrape it from there.

It's nice to see other game companies trying to make a bad situation better (and improve their bottom line) by offering their products at a reduced price/free. I'm sure that will work out for some people.

For me, however, the limiting factor on trying RPGs wasn't the cost, it was the desire. I have no interest in anything based off the 3.5 system. The messy mechanics annoy me to the point of dissatisfaction. And the themes of other systems (vampires, werewolves, horror, sci fi, etc) I am not particularly interested in right now.

[Griogre]

Well I see there's a letter up now at RPGNow saying they over reacted / misunderstood there was suppose to be an immediate halt of downloads:
https://www.rpgnow.com/wizards_letter.php

[longarms]

"Wizards is a big part of the hobby that I love and for that reason alone, I hope that they reconsider. Especially given the ongoing fan feedback on this, I am optimistic that they will."

Okay, I clicked the link out of curiousity. I read parts of the letter, and I thought it was interesting.

I think the terms "fan feedback" used in the above sentence is a eupheism for %$*% storm. He must have a good diplomacy skill, lol.

[CampbellR66]

As a D&D group we have been buying TSR and then WOTC titles since 1982... We have only just switched to FGII to remove the problems of distance and other life commitments.

We were even re-purchasing PDF's of things we already own several copies of between us to support FGII play. I regret we did not get copies of everything needed before the opportunity ended.

A poor decision by WOTC I think

[unerwünscht]

We were even re-purchasing PDF's of things we already own several copies of between us to support FGII play. I regret we did not get copies of everything needed before the opportunity ended.


Now, don't hold me to this, but if my understanding of copyright and consumer rights law holds (a lot has changed in the last 8 years) If you own a legal hard copy of the book, there is nothing in law that prevents you from making (or obtaining) a digital copy for personal use only.

I know that it was covered in the MP3 war back in the days of napster, you can make MP3's of cd's you own, you just can't share them with anyone, or download songs you do not own.

[Ged]

A newsletter just came from DriveThruRPG: those who have bought WotC pdfs from DriveThruRPG or RPGNow will have the opportunity to recover their purchases one last time on April 15th. It's a 24h time window.

[Spyke]

A newsletter just came from DriveThruRPG: those who have bought WotC pdfs from DriveThruRPG or RPGNow will have the opportunity to recover their purchases one last time on April 15th. It's a 24h time window.Let's hope their servers can handle it...

Spyke

[CampbellR66]

Now, don't hold me to this, but if my understanding of copyright and consumer rights law holds (a lot has changed in the last 8 years) If you own a legal hard copy of the book, there is nothing in law that prevents you from making (or obtaining) a digital copy for personal use only.

I know that it was covered in the MP3 war back in the days of napster, you can make MP3's of cd's you own, you just can't share them with anyone, or download songs you do not own.

I would and probably will count on this logic, i dont intend to give up on D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms after all these years.

I guess a lot of the original 80's gamming generation that still play are constrained by time rather than money. Faced with re-keying and scanning the Mysteries of the Moonsea for use in FGII I opted to pay the £22 for the PDF and do a bit of paste& Copy (actually quite a lot of paste and copy) into FGII and have a small sub at the start of the campaign.

[ShadoWWW]

It's really sad. WotC is not going to resume selling PDFs. :mad:
See here (https://www.icv2.com/articles/news/14726.html)

[Sigurd]

Seems like the retail channel for their books is squeamish about the sales figures for 4E. Wizards is responding by sacrificing the smaller pdf market to reassure the box stores and to hopefully grow other channels.

They've done fabulously well in the box stores. (Up here in Canada Chapters sells virtually no other rpg publishers.) My guess is they want to protect that and generally promote their book and paper sales.

I imagine their subscription stuff will still be pdfs. They'll lure people to their brick and mortar stores with the subscriptions. Maybe they think the online stuff was competing with their web subscription?


It seems like a strategy - don't appreciate it - but its a strategy. I think the gaming market will definitely shrink.



Sigurd

[Tenian]

The thing killing the brick and mortar stores that carry their products isn't pdfs or piracy....it's Amazon.com.

The traditional RPG retail channel has gone:
WOTC -> Distributor -> Brick and Mortar store -> Consumer

Each link in that chain marks up the price (significantly).

With amazon the chain now looks like:

WOTC -> Amazon.com -> Consumer

Amazon combines the Distributor/Brick and Mortar link into a single unit. As such they can sell books at a lower price and still make more of a profit than normal distributors or brick and mortar stores.
Not to mention Amazon's buying power generally gets them a price break from the content creator (WOTC in this case).

I know at 4E's launch several Brick and Mortar stores complained it was actually cheaper to buy the books from amazon and resell them, than it was to use the traditional retail channel.

[Spyke]

... It seems like a strategy - don't appreciate it - but its a strategy. I think the gaming market will definitely shrink.And unfortunately, it could shrink leaving WOTC's share largely untouched. D&D tends to bring in the new blood and send it out into the rest of the market. This strategy seems to be part of a drive to keep D&D players within a closed loop, similar to Games Workshop locking in Warhammer/LOTR players.

Spyke

[ShadoWWW]

The thing killing the brick and mortar stores that carry their products isn't pdfs or piracy....it's Amazon.com.
Now I understand why WotC stopped the PDF files and they are heading to the Kindle (by Amazon) format.

[unerwünscht]

I think you have all got it wrong. I don't think WotC has a game strategy at all. I think they see their market falling apart, and they are now looking for other things/people to blame for it instead of blaming themselves. What we are seeing right now is seen all over the world every day. We are looking at a 4 year old little kid that is throwing a temper tantrum because they didn't get their way. The problem is for WotC that the gaming world will not take their BS forever.

Sure they "bring new players" to the gaming world, but at least 90% of the "new blood" they bring are players that I personally want nothing to do with anyways. Other companies like White Wolf just to name one also bring "new blood" into the circle, but they tend to have a much larger percentage of players that are good quality players.

What I see at this point is that WotC has made itself a rope, now I think we should just all sit back and watch them hang themselves with it.

[PneumaPilot]

I definitely agree that Amazon is killing local stores and even big chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble, but I sure do love it ;)

As for Wizards' decision to stop the PDFs, I have to say that I agree with their CEO about how MUCH piracy comes from the PDF SALES. Before companies like WotC and White Wolf started selling the PDFs from the digital copies of the books, a couple of my players had downloaded a couple of scanned and pirated books. They were ugly as crap, non-searchable (some were OCRed, but that usually did bad things to the text), and just generally hard to use. They downloaded them primarily to see what a new book was like before buying the paper copy - but they ALWAYS ended up finally buying the paper copy. Nowadays, a lot of the guys I know have a hard drive FULL of pirated digital copies of the books that are much smaller, look great, and are searchable. They never have a reason to buy the actual book and so they don't, no matter how much I rant about how such a thing is illegal and frankly a sin.

I mean, Wizards is right in that if they don't make the good looking stuff available to the pirates, the pirates will only be able to go back to the ugly stuff, and probably more people will buy the paper.

[unerwünscht]

If digital copies and piracy are effecting the market so negatively then why is every other gaming company reinforcing their embrace of PDF? None of the other companies seem to be effected by this, why WotC?

[mr_h]

I know at 4E's launch several Brick and Mortar stores complained it was actually cheaper to buy the books from amazon and resell them, than it was to use the traditional retail channel.

Aint that the truth. I wanted to buy the Gurps Basic Characters and Basic Campaign books. B&N had them for 30 something apiece (with membership). amazon.com had them for 20 something without membership. I was willing to wait 5 days to save myself 15 or 20 bucks.

I'm really glad SJGames does the PDFs still, I'm able to get some out of print books in pdf format still.

[joeru]

If digital copies and piracy are effecting the market so negatively then why is every other gaming company reinforcing their embrace of PDF? None of the other companies seem to be effected by this, why WotC?

Just guesses, but probably because not all brick & mortar stores carry their stock. The publishers also aren't as mainstream (besides White Wolf... and White Wolf owns DrivethruRPG, so of course they'd support it), therefore the people who buy them tend to be more brand-loyal, and therefore aren't as liable to pirate their products. They most probably are affected by pirated PDFs, but PDF sales also probably constitute a larger share of their total sales, so not selling PDFs would do more harm than good.

EDIT: I would like to note that I was wrong in saying that White Wolf owned DrivethruRPG... one of the founders and former president of White Wolf owns DrivethruRPG.

[Tenian]

I fully expect at some time in the future, Amazon will begin to use Kindle in it's dealings with publishers (i.e. I'll buy 1000 of your books for $5.00 each or I'll buy 1250 of your books at $5.00 each if you supply a kindle version).

They might as well...I'm not sure mass market publications can survive without amazon sales any more.

[Griogre]

The thing killing the brick and mortar stores that carry their products isn't pdfs or piracy....it's Amazon.com.
Having owned a couple of game stores - I can tell you this is absolutely true. While it is a shame WotC is dropping PDF's it is such a minuscule part of their sales they might be right it actually has a greater effect on increasing hard copy 4E sales (ie they add a minuscule +1 to them). Before anyone jumps on me for saying that - let me say again, at best WotC makes a tiny bit of total revenue on 4E PDF sales and they are a hassle and now an annoyance for them.

Now their out of print back catalog titles is a different story because it's out of print so whatever they make *is* pure gravy if you can keep the overhead down - *any* net income goes right to the bottom line.

As Sigurd said, you can't overlook this may be part of their digital strategy. DDI has not turned out like they hoped but they show no sign of entirely abandoning it. Food for thought - do you think some of the bigger groups users of WotC's PDF's - might be people playing online? Using what they view as competitor products. Sure, there are "laptop DM's" but my experience of them is many have the printed books too. Somehow I think Amazon and WotC would really rather you have their digital copy of a book on a Kindle rather than your laptop.