Wizards of the Coast have made the decision to no longer offer PDFs of their game books. So, if you enjoyed having electronic copies of the latest rulebooks, or were getting some of the great old classics like the Temple of Elemental Evil, you no longer have that option.
It really is a sad day.
Why have they done this? Piracy.
Piracy just gets worse and worse. I saw enough stealing of Wizards products before they were even released when I was running my D&D Miniatures News site, but I was absolutely astonished when a few of my friends were able to find PDFs of the 4e rulebooks… before they were released.
Anyone who expected Wizards to just keep allowing this was foolish. Wizards lives and dies by being able to sell what it creates. With more and more of their material being stolen, they had to do something.
I just wish the solution didn’t suck so badly.
Apparently they are holding court cases against some of the pirates; unbelievably, these people bought PDFs that had watermarks of their names and then distributed them on the internet! However, they’re likely only some of the pirates that have been doing this. And so, this terrible situation.
There are a lot of reactions just between RPG.net and ENWorld. Some I agree with, others… eh. Taking down the PDFs isn’t going to solve the piracy problem, but when you have watermarked PDFs showing up for downloads (and how stupid do you have to be to post something with your name tagged right on it?), I can understand wanting to try to do something about it.
Besides what I put in my LJ, I think a lot of people were just waiting for something new to bitch about WotC. “Screw WotC! They’re never going to see my money again, but I hate 4E so they weren’t going to see it anyway, except for this $5 I was going to spend on PDFs today.”
I wonder if those named PDFs were stolen from unsecured computers…
But yes, much of the anger is from people already grinding axes against Wizards. There are people who are very disappointed in the decision (like me), but that’s a far cry from some of the really “I hate Wizards” posts out there.
Hmm. I’d rather given up on ENworld so hadn’t been reading it…. I may now need to pop in for something as big as this.
Piracy is certainly a problem with RPG products, exacerbated by the small margins the industry works to in general. But this “solution” is, frankly, of no benefit to them whatsoever. People pirated RPG books before they were available for download – I remember scanned copies of 3.0 books when I was in university, and game systems which never had true PDF releases can stil be found today online. They might not have lovely OCRed versions but if there are nerds willing to take the time then we’ll end up with them as well. If there’s anything the other pirate scenes involving music, computer games etc have shown us it’s that any attempt to “stop” piracy is ultimately futile. As with those other industries, Wizards are trying to look like they are doing something to appease managers and shareholders when, ultimately, there isn’t much they can do.
The only real loss I can see is, in fact, Wizards of the Coast (who no longer get money back for X% of PDFs) and honest consumers (who have no option but to pirate if they want to get their hands on PDF copies of the product). Arguably, other e-book sellers now have a harder time if there aren’t products from the biggest RPG company available beside them as well. For people who swap via torrents or warez sites, all that’s changed is a possible delay in getting the product: threatening people with lawsuits might put the shitters up some people, but that’s likely a slow process which might alienate more D&D players than it scares into line.
On a related note, I was thinking just yesterday about WotC PDFs and the proposed plan to have cheap PDFs of 4E books available for hardcopy owners. The logistics killed that idea, I imagine because of the risk of piracy – but since I think piracy is basically inevitable, I view it as a real bummer that it killed off a funky idea. I was never going to buy a WotC PDF when it was the same price as book – for the nominal cost, though, I’d probably have picked up a copy of every tome I bought from them. iTunes might not have killed music piracy, but it actually dealt with the cost issues that drove some people to the act – I think that might have been a good way to make the most of the RPG PDF scene as well.
George Q
It seems a little contradictory to be retreating to a print-only model for your primary product after you’ve put so much effort into embracing digital distribution for your magazines and web-based player support.
I certainly sympathize with their piracy concerns, but I can’t help imagining they’ll have to find some other solution in order to maintain and grow their audience.
Carl
It’s a no-win situation for Wizards. If they do nothing, they continue to lose sales. If they do ANYTHING..ANYTHING AT ALL, it will upset a bunch of people.