Okay, this is not fic or icons.

[estirise]

I'm going to make a rare public, English-language rant on this. Wizards of the Coast basically ordered companies selling WotC PDFs to stop selling them/making them available to people who bought them legitimately. Well, Paizo warned its customers in time but RPGNow/DrivethruRPG didn't, and guess who had PDFs through both sources?

(Oh, and I realize it's not WotC's fault that RPGN/DTRPG didn't send an email, but they should have given the companies more time so that they could have, so that customers could get their legit PDF copies.)

Wizards of the Coast has now practically given people a green light to pirate PDFs. Especially PDFs people bought *legitimately*. I can go to Pirate Bay and download my PDFs if I wanted to; heck, I could download 4E if I wanted to. I'll go for buying legitimately over pirating every time; were I not boycotting MPAA and RIAA, I'd be buying a lot of movies on DVD and buying songs on iTunes. (And maybe someday I can get my KRs on legit DVD too! That would be so good!)




Dear WotC,

I have been a Dungeons and Dragons player for years, from Basic D&D to 3.5. (I could not get into 4, sorry.) I am very much reliant on old-edition PDFs for my gaming.

I am not very happy about the sudden demand to remove all WotC PDFs from the online gaming stores. For one, it was very sudden; if Paizo had not warned its customers of the impending removal, I would
not have been able to pull the PDFs from them. However, I did not find out until this evening that this affected all online PDF distributors, and now I cannot retrieve PDFs for old WotC from retailers like RPGNow/DrivethruRPG.

I realize that WotC is concerned about piracy. However, I believe that this policy will backfire on WotC. There are already many, many unhappy gamers out there because these PDFs were pulled with little to no notice to the companies involved, and therefore to us. And quite a few of us are tech-savvy and know how to use Bittorrent, if we had to.

I would really rather buy legitimate PDFs and compensate the companies involved. I want to give companies their due for their efforts. I realize that my $5.00 a pop old PDF downloads were not exactly high revenue stream for WotC, but I bought quite a few of them. I would like to get the ability to buy them back, with no more restrictions than the watermarkings that these companies already offered.

Please reconsider your decision to pull PDFs from online retailers, or at the very least, give your customers (because I *am* one, whether I'm buying 4E or not, and whether I go through other distributors or not) a chance to download those PDFs we didn't have a chance to download before you abruptly ended your agreement with them.

I really, really do not want to be a pirate, thank you very much. I just want my legitimately-purchased downloads! And I want to keep buying them.

Thank you,
(me)



From Johnathan Drain on the Wizards boards (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=18276220&postcount=539):

Wizards,

I woke this morning to find you had reposessed several of my Dungeons & Dragons books. The good folks at Paizo are letting me rescue as many as I can carry, but the internet is slow today and I don't think The Great Modron March or Iuz the Evil are going to make it.

Could you find it in your heart to return my missing books? I expect you'll sell them back to me later, but I haven't had as much money to spend on D&D books ever since the magazine I wrote for closed down.

Comments

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

When you buy one of these PDFs, is it something you can store on your computer or is it something you can only access by redownloading?

For what it's worth... I work in software, and we sell download products, and one of the risks customers take by buying the cheaper download as opposed to the permanent DVD product is that the product may not be redownloadable again in future.

We let our customers download their products as often as they need, if they've paid for it. But if they had an older version, the people in charge of our server space might just decide not to take up room on the server with it anymore.

I encourage customers to save their installer files and back them up to a CD, so that if they do ever need to reinstall in future, they don't have to worry about whether the files are still downloadable. They've paid for a product, but they've saved money by not buying it in a permanent medium. It's their responsibility to do that part.

Apologies for the rant/hijacking if that doesn't apply to this situation at all. ^^;;

[estirose.livejournal.com]

You have good questions, and I suppose it may not have been clear. This is why I do not rant very often. I get pissed off and not always think things through. (Open mouth, insert foot much?)

I do backup, if in an absentminded and inconsistent manner, so I probably have about 2-4 copies of each pdf.

Here's what pisses me off about the WotC decision:
1. The 3rd parties selling the items also allowed redownloads. So, if for some reason I was a dumb idiot and forgot to backup, I had the security of knowing that said item was redownloadable. This gave me peace of mind. This damages my trust in the 3rd party because my downloads may go at any time without warning and it's not my or their fault. (Okay, this is partially the 3rd parties' fault, but they don't have as much perceptual egg on their face because it was not their choice to pull the PDFs and disallow redownloading.)

2. WotC has effectively shut down *all* legitimate PDF sales of their D&D products (past and current) *without warning*. This is what probably ticks me off the most, because I enjoy purchasing older D&D products (the nostalgia factor) and I'd rather be a legitimate purchaser than a pirate. This creates the perception that WotC has thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

3. In my case, I do not have the choice between a download and a CD. I am purchasing scanned copies of books that tend to be between 10-25+ years old. The paper copies are a tad bit harder to find than Starry Night.

I think the main point of my gripe is that WotC has made a huge PR/Customer Relations blunder. Should people have backed up the files? Yes. Does WotC have a right to pull the files? Yes. Does that mean that WotC customers (of which I am one, even if I'm pretty much a buyer of PDFs of OOP products) can't complain about the lack of warning (which is what most of the complaints I'm seeing come down to)? No.

I want to be legitimate. I want to pay for what I can. I like supporting people who make the products I like. WotC is currently not letting me do that. This is my frustration.

[nikkisilver.livejournal.com]

Ah, my fellow roleplayer, I feel your pain.

WoTC pissed me off lasst year. No, please let me rephrase -- I blame Hasbro. Ever since Hasbro has bought WoTC they have been doing things, making decisions that Hasbro has forced them to do. I have no doubt in my mind that this little fiasco is from the "mothership", too.

I agree with you 100%. I LOVE Paizo. ::nods:: This is just another reason that for that love.

I also do not like to pirate. I'm sure it is because of my radio background but I *won't* do it as long as their is ANY real way for me to buy the material. This takes away a great many options.