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uh huh? right.Oh god, I just realized I made a pretty significant mistake in what I originally said.
I meant to say "No, the percentage of ENWorld forum-users who chose to respond to the poll and play 4th Edition decreased between July and January."
Chill...
It's an easy thing to drop out of a sentence, and as soon as you see the participation numbers on the polls, follows pretty naturally.
Vic mentioned to me that there was a company at a recent trade show who was touting a way to display PDFs on your screen and searching through them without the ability to copy text or download the file. This kind of tech could allow the PDFs to be shared via the DDI in a way that would make them almost as useful as the PDF version while again putting up a barrier to piracy. Of course, once your sub expired, so would your access...
The documents in question were not PDFs, but the presentation was PDF-like. (And it was Windows-only.)
That comment by Ryan about 3E selling 300,000 copies in 30 days is very interesting. Especially with the number range claimed for 4E in the WOTC court documents, coupled with WOTC claims that 4E is out selling 3E. IE those claims are not supported by Ryan D.'s claim and the court documents claim. It would imply 4E is underselling 3E, by a lot, since 4E is almost done with its first full year.
Vic mentioned to me that there was a company at a recent trade show who was touting a way to display PDFs on your screen and searching through them without the ability to copy text or download the file. This kind of tech could allow the PDFs to be shared via the DDI in a way that would make them almost as useful as the PDF version while again putting up a barrier to piracy. Of course, once your sub expired, so would your access...The documents in question were not PDFs, but the presentation was PDF-like. (And it was Windows-only.)
That is what I was afraid of. WotC already proved they aren't concerned with cross platform - assuming this is the path WotC was considering.
That comment by Ryan about 3E selling 300,000 copies in 30 days is very interesting. Especially with the number range claimed for 4E in the WOTC court documents, coupled with WOTC claims that 4E is out selling 3E. IE those claims are not supported by Ryan D.'s claim and the court documents claim. It would imply 4E is underselling 3E, by a lot, since 4E is almost done with its first full year.
Careful now...
WotC claims that 4e outsold 3.5. Ryan Dancy's comment was for 3.0.
Tricky and misleading, but not an outright lie.
Vic mentioned to me that there was a company at a recent trade show who was touting a way to display PDFs on your screen and searching through them without the ability to copy text or download the file. This kind of tech could allow the PDFs to be shared via the DDI in a way that would make them almost as useful as the PDF version while again putting up a barrier to piracy. Of course, once your sub expired, so would your access...The documents in question were not PDFs, but the presentation was PDF-like. (And it was Windows-only.)That is what I was afraid of. WotC already proved they aren't concerned with cross platform - assuming this is the path WotC was considering.
That comment by Ryan about 3E selling 300,000 copies in 30 days is very interesting. Especially with the number range claimed for 4E in the WOTC court documents, coupled with WOTC claims that 4E is out selling 3E. IE those claims are not supported by Ryan D.'s claim and the court documents claim. It would imply 4E is underselling 3E, by a lot, since 4E is almost done with its first full year.Careful now...
WotC claims that 4e outsold 3.5. Ryan Dancy's comment was for 3.0.
Tricky and misleading, but not an outright lie.
Actually its even worse, I went back and reread what he said, and it was:
"We sold 300,000 copies of the 3E PHB in 30 DAYS. I have a screen shot of Amazon with the 3E PHB in the #1 slot."
I think WOTC needs to be more careful about what they claim in court documents. Then again, US Corporations aren't known for their honesty in court documents.
Edit: Plus I am pretty sure in those same court documents WOTC said 4E outsold 3E. I'll go back and check though. This time I'll save them, because I bet by now WOTC is asking the court to seal their records.
Edit 2: Well, wherever they said 4E was outselling 3E, it wasn't in the court documents. I didn't spot it after reading through twice, anyways.
Isn't this move to halt PDF sales actually going to hurt their lawsuit? My recollection of U.S. copyright law (IANAL) is that in order to collect damages on copyright infringement, you have to demonstrate that the act in question negatively impacted your sales/income/insert some lawyerly term here. Or are they just going for the "moral" win here?
Isn't this move to halt PDF sales actually going to hurt their lawsuit? My recollection of U.S. copyright law (IANAL) is that in order to collect damages on copyright infringement, you have to demonstrate that the act in question negatively impacted your sales/income/insert some lawyerly term here. Or are they just going for the "moral" win here?
No, because the PDF pirating can also be argued to be hurting print sales too.
Isn't this move to halt PDF sales actually going to hurt their lawsuit? My recollection of U.S. copyright law (IANAL) is that in order to collect damages on copyright infringement, you have to demonstrate that the act in question negatively impacted your sales/income/insert some lawyerly term here. Or are they just going for the "moral" win here?No, because the PDF pirating can also be argued to be hurting print sales too.
Even so, killing off a segment of revenue can't be helpful to their argument.
[EDIT: inadvertently switched identities...]
Isn't this move to halt PDF sales actually going to hurt their lawsuit? My recollection of U.S. copyright law (IANAL) is that in order to collect damages on copyright infringement, you have to demonstrate that the act in question negatively impacted your sales/income/insert some lawyerly term here. Or are they just going for the "moral" win here?No, because the PDF pirating can also be argued to be hurting print sales too.Even so, killing off a segment of revenue can't be helpful to their argument.
[EDIT: inadvertently switched identities...]
No, I don't think it is either, but they can definitely point to print sales, and they can also say all sales lost from discontinuing them (PDF sales) is also the fault of the pirates, and add the loss of sales to the law suite.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, the number of people who bought the books and don't play is probably dwarfed by the number of people who didn't by the books but who play anyway - whether by using communally available books (the DM's, their friend's, a library's) or by using illegal digital copies of the books.
I won't argue with that - it seems a reasonable assumption to me. On the other hand, how many of those people who are playing without their own legal copies of the core books or at least Player's Handbook are going to rush out and buy the next one that comes out? For purposes of revenue, they don't have much if any immediate effect on WotC's profit. They may buy their own if they come into the money for it eventually, but if they can't do that, they're not buying the later books either.
Can anyone provide an e-mail address of a hasbro or wotc exec where we can write to?
Has anyone written? A good friend, and game store owner asked me if I had spoken with hasbro. But is it even possible that customer feedback is not getting through?
I can give it a shot...It's called an Executive e-mail Carpet Bomb (EECB for short). Putting together an EECB's pretty easy. First you need to find a list of the e-mail addresses for the:
Board of Directors and/or other VPs.
Then you need to find the layout of their:
"typical" e-mail address which can be confirmed to be the correct format by looking up the user on LinkedIn.
Hey look at that, the person I found happened to be the Manager of Community Relations at Hasbro, Brandon Keough.
Then you combine the two:
Board of Directors
averrecchia@hasbro.com
banderson@hasbro.com
abatkin@hasbro.com
fbiondi@hasbro.com
kbrofin@hasbro.com
jconnors@hasbro.com
mgarrett@hasbro.com
ggee@hasbro.com
bgoldner@hasbro.com
jgreenberg@hasbro.com
ahassenfeld@hasbro.com
tleinbach@hasbro.com
ephilip@hasbro.com
pstern@hasbro.comNow, write everybody in this list (including Brandon) a politely worded, well thought out e-mail explaining your feelings to the situation. Explain (without threats) what their actions have done to your perceptions of Hasbro and WotC and let them know exactly what you think of their business practices...
And get everybody you know to do the same.
This technique is very powerful and it works. This is speaking from experience. I had cell phone provider issues and was given the run-around for two weeks from T-Mobile. One EECB got me a response directly from the VP of Consumer Affairs and an immediate resolution to my issues (the e-mail came within 2 hours). And stories...
Thank you for this informaiton.
[bizarre fantasy tinfoil hat theory] Umm, as a thought, maybe 4e does have as many players as some of the claims of millions which have been going around (which seem a bit strange given print-runs only in the hundreds of thousands), but most of those people were playing using pirate versions of the PDFs....
In which case depending on whether or not they could have afforded to/would have bought the books otherwise, Wizards of the Coast may have just drastically slashed the number of 4E players around, if any such hypothetical pirate players feel put out at no longer having PDFs of new material to grab to improve their (illegal) experience. [/bizarre fantasy tinfoil hat theory]
Oh, and smurf.
Reckless
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
Reckless
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
Reckless
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
Aw man. I come to the thread late and it's already been smurfed. But what about *my* angry rant!?!?! I'm certain that I have something new and insightful to say that hasn't been touched upon in the...
past 29 pages?
Aw f!@~ it. Even I know when a horse corpse should be left undisturbed.
Where you been man?! You're late for the party..
Snorter
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber; GameMastery Superscriber)
How long before I can buy my copy of Planescape: Faction War now? It seems like only last week I was able to purchase TSR .pdfs from this website, making money for Paizo and WotC. It seemed like a pretty easy system. Apparently I should have been stealing them, like every single one of you!
Especially you.
The documents in question were not PDFs, but the presentation was PDF-like. (And it was Windows-only.)
-1 for being locked a specific OS.
How did it compare to the NYT reader? The NYT Reader is flash based, which is nice for those of us who avoid windows.