Hi,
I original paid for the .pdf version of AD&D OP1: Tales of the Outer Planes (order number 753020) and I can no longer can see it in my downloads. Now I understand that there may be a legal issue involving the older editions (since they're under WoTC's care - I'm not particularly educated about the matter) but I am hoping there is a way I can download the .pdf file again because last month my computer crashed (big time) and I just finally got it restored. Unfortunately, my copy of that .pdf was among the many unrecoverable files.
Is there anything that Paizo can do? I hate to think I lost money on this investment, :(
Thank you for any information on this matter, :)
Cheers!
CB out.
I am sure one of the fine Paizo staff will be along shortly to give you the official answer.
I am afraid you are out of luck. WotC did pull the license for all their old material. There was quite a bit of fuss over it when they did for exactly this reason.
|
Not an official answer as well, but:
In April 2009 WotC sent a letter to all the vendors that were selling their PDF products (With the sole exception of Dungeon/Dragon because of the special deal that Paizo has with those magazines) and asked that the sales of the files immediately be stopped and in fact they asked that all future downloads be stopped immediately. After some tugging the sites were able to give their customers a short window of time to make sure that they have all their downloads finished and then they were forced to purge all of the WotC files from their servers. In other words, you're out of luck.
I would suggest complaining to Wizards about their PDF policy and hopefully their stance on this will change in the future (as I think legal PDFs are a very valuable asset).
|
Even if you assume a large degree of piracy, this stance doesn't really make sense. If 9 out of 10 people pirate an AD&D book, and the 10th person buys it legitimately, then WotC at least gets the money from that one sale. Under their current PDF ban, that 10th person doesn't have the option to buy the book legally. He either pirates it himself, or doesn't get the book at all.
But hey, whatever works for Hasbro.
|
|
Even if you assume a large degree of piracy, this stance doesn't really make sense. If 9 out of 10 people pirate an AD&D book, and the 10th person buys it legitimately, then WotC at least gets the money from that one sale. Under their current PDF ban, that 10th person doesn't have the option to buy the book legally. He either pirates it himself, or doesn't get the book at all.
But hey, whatever works for Hasbro.
While not 100% true, there is an unknown number of people that would buy the physical book if the pirate version wasn't available. That being said I'm pretty much in agreement with you as I believe that the unknown number is probably pretty small, especially when you compare it to the unknown number of people that BUY the physical book because the pirated version was there (It does exist).
This is most evident when you look at the legal $9.99 PFRPG PDFs. While not "free" it is most definitely cheap, and I have quite a few friends who are poor college students/slackers who generally don't buy books and pirate everything. Almost every single one of those people actually bought the PDF, and at least one bought the physical book as well.
|
|
While not 100% true, there is an unknown number of people that would buy the physical book if the pirate version wasn't available.
And I might consider that WotC's strategy IF they still sold physical copies of the books. But they don't sell anything pre-4th edition anymore. People who buy physical copies of an AD&D book are giving their money to another gamer, not to WotC.
|
|
While not 100% true, there is an unknown number of people that would buy the physical book if the pirate version wasn't available.And I might consider that WotC's strategy IF they still sold physical copies of the books. But they don't sell anything pre-4th edition anymore. People who buy physical copies of an AD&D book are giving their money to another gamer, not to WotC.
That's true. I guess I just saw it as an overarching policy applying to both current and past as they do sell 4ed books in hardcover at the moment and there are no PDFs. At least that's what I bet was going through the executives minds at the time.
Note that I don't agree with their policy at all and I think they made a bad decision.
Chief Technical Officer
|
On April 6, 2009, we sent the following email to everyone who had ever purchased a Wizards of the Coast PDF from us:
Dear paizo.com customer,Wizards of the Coast has notified us that we may no longer sell or distribute their PDF products. Accordingly, after April 6 at 11:59 PM Pacific time, Wizards of the Coast PDFs will no longer be available for purchase on paizo.com; after noon on April 7, you will no longer be able to download Wizards of the Coast PDFs that you have already purchased, so please make sure you have downloaded all purchased PDFs by that time.
We thank you for your patronage of paizo.com. Please check out our other downloads at paizo.com/store/downloads.
Sincerely yours,
The Paizo Customer Service Team
We were required to delete the PDFs from our servers on April 7, 2009, so there's nothing we can do to help you at this point. I wish I had a different answer for you.
As for the comments on Wizards' policy, you can find pages and pages on that topic elsewhere on our messageboards (especially here). Paizo's customer service forum is not the best place to continue that conversation. Thanks!
We were required to delete the PDFs from our servers on April 7, 2009, so there's nothing we can do to help you at this point. I wish I had a different answer for you.
As for the comments on Wizards' policy, you can find pages and pages on that topic elsewhere on our messageboards (especially here). Paizo's customer service forum is not the best place to continue that conversation. Thanks!
Thank you, Mr. Wertz, for your reply. I appreciate the feedback and rest assured, I am not displeased as I understand Paizo's situation in this particular issue. It is merely a case of bad luck for me that I lost the .pdf file due to a computer crash. It happens! ;)
Fortunately, a friend was able to loan me a physical copy that I can browse for the time being.
To everyone else who posted in regards to my original post, I appreciate your responses as well. Thank you for your feedback and good gaming to you all.
CB out.
