Jeebus, is your business development unit run by morons, WotC?

[vianegativa]

Sent to Wizards of the Coast's "Contact us" e-mail this A.M:

To Whom it May (or may not) Concern--

I just wanted to share my opinion with you regarding your new policy of pulling all saleable Wizards of the Coast .pdfs from such sites as DriveThruRPG, RPGNow and others.

What you've chosen to do on a business level is inconceivably foolish.

In a stated attempt to prevent .pdf piracy, you are in fact setting your company up to have ALL your products pirated via sites you have neither control over nor effective legal recourse to deal with. Speaking as someone who faithfully buys both your printed books AND .pdf format materials for convenience, I can tell you that your choice to emphasize media of delivery over content will only serve to harm your bottom line in the end. Someone in your august company effectively decided "hey, let's go from participating in profits of .pdf sales to not getting a dime at all on it AND see if we can have the legal department's costs go through the roof chasing at shadows."

I've worked in the financial and financial publishing sector for the better part of a decade and I couldn't begin to tell you how foolish your new policy is.

Despite your policy I still enjoy your 4th Edition products and I'll continue to buy them as long as the quality of product is maintained. I'll simply go on eBay now to get physical copies of any older materials I want and do without the rest, but I'm sure there will be other companies chomping at the bit to fill those product gaps you're leaving open.

Sincerely,

Matthew Jones

Comments

[seeker2.livejournal.com]

I can't fathom it either, makes absolutely no business sense.

Well said.

[caestus.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're actually articulating to them what needs to be said.

That the company has a monopoly, and through its holdings above pretty much a fucking complete monopoly on all toys and games barring Mattel... You, well, might think they'd be better at it. Let us remember that were it not for the brilliance of their acquiring a collectible card game and THEN acquiring TSR which was failing for similar backasswards business models... Anyway. Glad you like 4th; have yet to have the pleasure of a test run or more. Loved 3rd though. Until proved otherwise it will remain my favourite.

Re: Well said.

[vianegativa.livejournal.com]

4e is still a growing system. That being said, combat & powers are far more elegant than 3 or 3.5, but I will admit that Prestige Clases lack that certain "pop."

[strongaxe.livejournal.com]

Does this also affect 4th edition PDFs, or just 3rd edition ones? One thing I have noticed from Wizards is that when they switch from one version to another, they try to push their new version aggressively, and one of the steps to this end is to systematically exterminate the previous one. I remember when 3.5 came out, four core books (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, and Psionics Handbook) were revised, and virtually all traces of the previous editions (except for a few broken links) vanished from their web site. At least the site still shows 3.5 information, but the situation with their Star Wars products is even worse - just try to find any information about any of their books from the original d20 edition that preceded the Saga Edition. Some of it is still there, but it's getting harded and harder to find.

It's similar to the mentality of Microsoft ramming Windows Vista and later Internet Explorer 7 down everybody's throats, whether they were happy with XP or IE6 or not. Why have customers buy a few books from the previous edition, when you can convince them to buy ALL the books from the new edition (including re-buying the revised versions of the ones they already own)?

[vianegativa.livejournal.com]

Yes, they pulled all .pdfs offered by Wizards of the Coast, regardless of edition. Personally, I bought both the books and .pdf, but hey I think 4e is worth it...

[strongaxe.livejournal.com]

Well, that's just silly then. Are they selling the PDFs exclusively themselves, or are they going to discontinue that too?

I've been playing 3.5 for 4 years (and 3.0 for several years before that), so it's a system I'm thoroughly familiar with. I've dabbled a bit in 4.0, and it looks like it has potential, although I'm not familiar with it enough to be able to say that I'm comfortable with it yet. Unfortunately, most of the group I play with are also familiar mostly with 3.5 so it is a major learning curve to switch over (not to mention a costly one).

4th edition seems like it's a lot more balanced, and much less vulnerable to some of the obscene munchkining that is possible with 3rd edition (which is a good thing if you want game balance, not so good if you want to create über-powerful characters to stroke your ego :))

[cubziz.livejournal.com]

I saw that and really, it does make no sense.

Then again, the RIAA's reaction to sue everyone into oblivion, or to start randomly raising the prices of songs at various online stores, makes no sense either.

I think it is all about "what can we do to raise profits RIGHT NOW" and not for future sustainability.