My Downloads Page / Humble Bundle Downloads Issues

[Redelia]

The other factor is that if Paizo even once lets out unwatermarked PDFs, it changes the attitude of the community a lot. Right now, if you have a PDF that lacks a watermark, everyone KNOWS that it's pirated. If they distribute, even for a day, an unwatermarked PDF, there's suddenly a legitimate way to explain having such a PDF, and suddenly the watermarks are worth a lot less as a way to discourage piracy. And discouraging piracy is all any company can do. If someone is determined enough, they will find a way to pirate anything. As many of us have noticed, the harder companies work to make piracy impossible, the more normal users suffer. Before this huge bottleneck, the watermarks were a way to discourage piracy with basically no inconvenience to legitimate users.

Anyway, all this was a longwinded way to say that the watermarks are for a reason, and I at least appreciate that Paizo found such a good way to try to protect their IP rights.

[sevion]

Redelia wrote:

The other factor is that if Paizo even once lets out unwatermarked PDFs, it changes the attitude of the community a lot. Right now, if you have a PDF that lacks a watermark, everyone KNOWS that it's pirated. If they distribute, even for a day, an unwatermarked PDF, there's suddenly a legitimate way to explain having such a PDF, and suddenly the watermarks are worth a lot less as a way to discourage piracy. And discouraging piracy is all any company can do. If someone is determined enough, they will find a way to pirate anything. As many of us have noticed, the harder companies work to make piracy impossible, the more normal users suffer. Before this huge bottleneck, the watermarks were a way to discourage piracy with basically no inconvenience to legitimate users.

Anyway, all this was a longwinded way to say that the watermarks are for a reason, and I at least appreciate that Paizo found such a good way to try to protect their IP rights.

I understand what they are trying to do. But in less time it takes a legit person to download their product they purchased I could take a watermarked version remove the watermark and share it around the world millions of times.

It should never be easier for a pirate to alter and distribute a product then it is for a legit buyer to obtain the product. This is when DRM over steps its bounds and why so many dislike it.

[wakedown]

I guess the more damaging issue is those of us who referred friends who don't have any sense of Paizo's credibility/reputation and their first impression is framed by the experience of a company that can't fulfill a promised product.

I'm not sure how bad the backlog is here. Presumably requests for PDF generation get tossed into something like Rabbit and you could simply deploy ad-hoc servers to pluck off those requests (ideally using something like leased cloud servers from Amazon), so it'd just be a minor expense to flex some increased capacity and turn it off again when demand subsides.

What Paizo could (should?) do is come up with a benchmark on how long it takes to generate an individual PDF with their hardware (physical or virtual.. 5 seconds each?) and then at least on the page they could give some sort of ETA based on multiplying the number of requests queued times the average time to generate the PDF.

(I am curious if its days, or hours... as I too have some PDFs I'd like to use before the weekend)

[haloguy48]

Quite frankly I'm perfectly fine with waiting for a few days; Fundraising for charity is a good enough cause in its own. I'm just curious as to how much data they're sending (/h?) out compared to how much is requested/projected.

[icarus falling]

Thanks for removing the wording "simply click" at the top of the download page :P One does not simply click to download PDFs from paizo.

But all seriousness set aside, I'm a novice gamer, played various D&D editions and Shadowrun, and had heard of Pathfinder but never seriously considered investing time into it. But when I saw the HumbleBundle, I thought: Hey! I could give them some money and some money to charity and maybe give Pathfinder a try!

It's my experience that maybe 80-90% of the games, 50% of the audiobooks, and around 70% of the comics/books I've purchased from Humble Bundle I've never gotten around to downloading. It's nice to know that I own them and maybe someday in the far distant future those percentages will drop, but that's what I see happening with this Humble Bundle. In a few hours/days/perhaps a week I will give up on trying to download the core book (which I am excited about atm) and get distracted by some other game or show or book or project and add Pathfinder to the pile of "things I own through humble bundle but have never read, played, or listened to."

For me it's not about the money, it's that right now is when I am most likely to get into Pathfinder and become a player and member of the community, but due to the frustration with getting the files, this is becoming less and less likely to happen.

Hopefully the good and hardworking folks at Paizo figure something out in the near future!!

[jtgibson]

My general impression is that if they're going to be charitable about the affair, they understand that it's going to impact revenue both positively in the short term and negatively in the long term... for a good cause. Humble Indie-cum-Commercial Bundle's entire business strategy used to be based on giving exposure to independent products by sending them to the masses DRM free, with the understanding that it would create a massive stream of revenue, HIB would take their 15% cut and walk away grinning, and the developers and charity both would get a massive influx of revenue, at times well exceeding their original sales anticipation, as well as receiving the brand exposure and recognition that they deserve. HB's cut is basically because it's an advertising service: sell in bulk to grow brand awareness and drive sales of their *new* products.

Make no mistake, Paizo is earning a small fortune -- after the middleman cuts, $300K-$400K and change is nothing to sneeze at. Probably vaguely equivalent to what they'd get with a new product launch, and all they lose is a few digital copies of already existing commercial-off-the-shelf products (bearing in mind "digital scarcity" is an oxymoron), all for products that people probably weren't going to buy in the first place (myself among them: I'd heard of Pathfinder but wasn't interested in jumping aboard, since I generally avoid D20 systems like the plague).

Whether they'd earn more over the long term *on those specific products* by deterring piracy? Rather outside of my expertise. Probably yes, dead reckoning, but why bother with the semantics when it makes people so happy and offers them so many other benefits?

That, I believe, is the crux of why the DRM scheme and failure to deliver is sticking so deep into most of our craws.

[Taolin]

icarus falling wrote:

Thanks for removing the wording "simply click" at the top of the download page ....

Yep - The inability to download anything, even those things I bought many moons agon that have been updated, is a pain,

but,
I am going to go play the cojones off a Runelords tourney this weekend and not worry about it a whole lot. (If anyone knows who he is, Kris Paronto is a brother to me, so I don't get too awfully excited when I'm not hearing "snaps".)

[spectrevk]

Day 2 of being unable to download my Player's Guide for Hell's Vengeance. Which, just as a reminder, is a *free* PDF. So there really shouldn't be any need to personalize it.

[Zaero]

GM Captain Trips wrote:

Kevin B wrote:

Paizo,

Not sure if this has been mentioned but tell your technical staff to check out a company called Akamai, they are a CDN (content delivery network) and they do this very well.

No idea the price, terms, etc. Just throwing it out there.

They are also really good about throwing in tracers and tracking to almost everything they do. They are pretty notorious in the IT community. We block them outright on our content filters.

Akamai's also a real pain if you need them for support. I DESPISE working with them.

[wakedown]

Yeah, my frustration isn't getting to the Humble Bundle PDFs, but PDFs I actually paid full price for. :)

Maybe a priority queue would be good too. If a customer pays full price, they get their own queues for requesting PDF generation?

[Warvair]

I'm a little surprised, but it seems Paizo never learned the lesson: If you don't prepare for the "hug o' death", you'll pay with PR.

For all you folks waiting to get your likely very, very cheap PDFs: try to be patient. Eventually either Paizo will put up a better solution, or the HB campaign will end, the crush will ease and their current personalization solution will be sufficient again (until the next crush). Of course, that means you may need to wait for 12+ days at this point. But hey, anticipation can be nice, no?

---

If anyone at Paizo is reading this, I would suggest the following "fix" which seems like it should help and seems fairly easy to implement.

Create a separate, very light server process/script that implements a queue system (backed by a database, JSON file, etc). When a customer clicks a product download link, record whatever is needed to personalize a PDF (account ID, name, product ID, whatever) as a record and add it to the queue UNLESS a matching record already exists OR the personalized PDF is being processed or is ready for download, in which case ignore the request. Then DISABLE the download link for that product until the personalization is finished.

Modify your current personalization system to read from the new queue and process records one at a time first in, first out, restoring the download link which now points to the completed PDF. If you have multiple personalization systems running, just have them all pull from the same queue.

A possible issue with a system like this: storage space for all these personalized PDFs. However, storage is pretty cheap these days so that may not be a big deal. If it is, you could send out emails once a day to everyone with at least 1 finished but not-yet-downloaded PDF telling them to: "Please download your PDFs within 48 hours or they will have to be regenerated."

[Taolin]

wakedown wrote:

Yeah, my frustration isn't getting to the Humble Bundle PDFs, but PDFs I actually paid full price for. :)

Maybe a priority queue would be good too. If a customer pays full price, they get their own queues for requesting PDF generation?

Bwahahaha! YES!

Viva Mainframers, viva batch processing, vive geezers (self included) who have dealt with a generation that is not obsessed with instant gratification.

Nah, seriously (well, I *am* serious: I *love* being serviced at beck & call) - Paizo got surprised - I'm not pleased, but I have other things I can do. (... and, YES, I appreciate the GMs who have major plans for the weekend) but chill, guys, it's not like it was incoming 4.2".

[Gorbacz]

I guess the problem is that :

a) there was never a p'n'p RPG Humble Bundle before,
b) E-book bundles insofar were very modestly popular compared to video game bundles.

So, somebody made a guesstimate of how popular the deal would be ... and missed by a mile. Happens, projecting demand is a beach if something's never been done before.

[Cort Odekirk]

silverfoxdmt73 wrote:

I know the slow download issue is well documented here so I'm not going to labour the point.

However, I do have an issue when trying to log on to the download section of the Paizo site from my Android device, it simply gives an error message saying 'cannot establish a secure connection' when I try to access it, either using mobile data or a wi-fi connection...

Any clues as to why and how to rectify it?

Thanks.

We require TLS-2 security (mandated because we process card transactions). The browser you are using may not be requesting using the latest encryption. You can browse https://www.howsmyssl.com/ to see what version your browser is attempting to use.

[haloguy48]

Gorbacz wrote:

So, somebody made a guesstimate of how popular the deal would be ... and missed by a mile. Happens, projecting demand is a beach if something's never been done before.

/Jokes/

Would this be considered a Critical Failure on their Barter, Knowledge (Interwebs), or Profession?
/End Jokes/

[jtgibson]

Warvair wrote:

I'm a little surprised, but it seems Paizo never learned the lesson: If you don't prepare for the "hug o' death", you'll pay with PR.

For all you folks waiting to get your likely very, very cheap PDFs: try to be patient. Eventually either Paizo will put up a better solution, or the HB campaign will end, the crush will ease and their current personalization solution will be sufficient again (until the next crush). Of course, that means you may need to wait for 12+ days at this point. But hey, anticipation can be nice, no?

I paid over the average for mine, which as far as average prices go is being steadily driven upward to boot -- an average approaching $17.50 for $350 of product is right along the 5% mark, which is awful when you look at it from a pure profit perspective, but astounding from a raw income flux perspective. As far as averages go, I think everyone thought it was offered for a little *too* cheap, if the price is any indication, so I wouldn't be so hasty to say "very, very cheap". ;-)

All told, I think they're handling the issues well enough. Call it equal combinations of Murphy and hubris, with people now working harder than they ever have on damage control. I'm frustrated, others are frustrated, subscribers and full-price customers are *especially* frustrated, and I'm sure the employees are most frustrated of all. Call it a mutual loss, especially since the only people who are winning are Humble Bundle -- note, in particular, that they mention absolutely nothing about issues on the Paizo end and are merrily still advertising and selling the products without even the slightest hint that delivery might be impacted.

[edit]G&%%!!n live threads. By the time my post appears as a reply to someone else's it's already five or six posts down. ;-P

[Taolin]

Cort Odekirk wrote:

...owser you are using may not be requesting using the latest encryption. You can browse https://www.howsmyssl.com/ to see what version your browser is attempting to use.

Thanks - good note. (for "normal" work my browser rates 'good' here ... for professional work, I don't even go on a non-DARPA circuit! :) )

[Jabmist]

How about Emailing me the PDF once it has been personalized?
Then I can make a request and get off your system, knowing that eventually (hours?) I will have a shiny new Personalized PDF.

Saves on storage, traffic (as users click and reclick the links.)
and keeps people happy with company knowing they will get their files as soon as they are ready.

[sirhawkins]

I am still having issue with downloading. It still tells me to wait the 10 seconds and try again. This is frustrating as I jumped on the Humble Bundle as soon as I saw it.
I have seen this played so many times at PAX East and I was really excited to learn and play it.

We still do not have an ETA?

[People's Cowboy]

I am having the same issue. Chrome/Mac/ OSX Yosemite. Going on two days now. It says I've downloaded the files I've attempted, but I have not gotten anything.

Sinistrad wrote:

I've been unable to download my PDFs for at least three days now.

I've tried in both Chrome and Firefox and I have tried from two different computers and networks, one running Windows 10 and the other running Windows 7. I've never had problems on either machine or network before.

I am unable to find any outage notifications, and I do not get any error messages. What the heck is going on?

(Yes, I have cleared my cache and restarted my browser in both Firefox and Chrome.)

[jtgibson]

Jabmist wrote:

How about Emailing me the PDF once it has been personalized?

Then I can make a request and get off your system, knowing that eventually (hours?) I will have a shiny new Personalized PDF.

Saves on storage, traffic (as users click and reclick the links.)
and keeps people happy with company knowing they will get their files as soon as they are ready.

I pondered this solution myself, but it's imperfect, since many email servers have bandwidth caps, storage quotas, and monthly transmission limits. The full-sized (non-"lite") core rulebook is 120 209 268 bytes! (Or at least, the one with my personal watermark is. The various pages will probably raster slightly differently on different users, but figure on 120 MB as a rule of thumb.) Other files are slightly smaller, but the smallest I've got out of the core rules is the Strategy Guide, which is "only" 30 MB.

[PowerOverwhelming]

It's a server problem, horizontal scaling isn't working out so hot at the moment.

[Jabmist]

jtgibson wrote:

Jabmist wrote:

How about Emailing me the PDF once it has been personalized?

Then I can make a request and get off your system, knowing that eventually (hours?) I will have a shiny new Personalized PDF.

Saves on storage, traffic (as users click and reclick the links.)
and keeps people happy with company knowing they will get their files as soon as they are ready.

I pondered this solution myself, but it's imperfect, since many email servers have bandwidth caps, storage quotas, and monthly transmission limits. The full-sized (non-"lite") core rulebook is 120 209 268 bytes!

OK, how about emailing me the download link of the personalized pdf?

[Solear]

Hey I'm adding to the line. Not working for me either.. I've tried DLing the files since 2 days, various times, morning, evening, etc.. I've not expected this level of potato servers..
I hope they spend the humble money on servers since heaven knows, they need them.. I've never seen such a bad networking in my life..

Is it possible to add a reminder to come back in half a year or so? Hopefully I can get what I payed for then..

[jtgibson]

People's Cowboy wrote:

I am having the same issue. Chrome/Mac/ OSX Yosemite. Going on two days now. It says I've downloaded the files I've attempted, but I have not gotten anything.

It marks a file as downloaded as soon as it has been clicked, but don't worry too much on that -- there are no download limits or quotas, since once the file is fully generated it is watermarked as yours. (I've already railed enough on the watermarking for a charitable/advertising drive already, so I'll leave it at that, as it seems they'd rather scale up the watermarking rather than abandon it as fruitless with a generic mark for this release only. ;-))

Jabmist wrote:

OK, how about emailing me the download link of the personalized pdf?

Interesting! That one would probably work better. (I'm not with them, just helping with some questions since I'm starting to realise that however peeved *I* might be, *they're* pulling their hair out in spite of what I'm sure they originally intended as a good cause. I figure I owe some karma. ;-))

Now that I think about it some more, though, part of me balks at the concept of their updating and testing a new sendmail script in the middle of a server overage. Even if it makes more sense in the long run, it might not actually be feasible when we need it right now, and when we no longer need it downloads will be near instantaneous again.

[nicholas storm]

I got bestiary, bestiary 2, inner sea world guide, strategy guide, game mastery guide, gm screen, and player character folio last night.

So it's definitely possible to get stuff downloaded. I personalized most of them at the same time and kept clicking on inner sea world guide to keep me from logging out of the download page. Half of it personalized in about 30 minutes, the rest 15 minutes later.

[Chris Lambertz]

Also cross-posted to the mega-thread.

I've got some more insight about the personalizer and process for folks from the team and an update on the hardware update. This should help give some insight:

Once you click to download, the page sends a request to the service to start personalizing your files. If you continue to click the link, it continues to send requests. The more requests, the more taxing it is on this application. The application takes requests dynamically and queues them up, and if it's overloaded, it's possible for requests to drop off. Our team suggests to not F5 and click the link quickly and repeatedly, because that exacerbates the issue.

TLDR: Click the link once, give it about 10-15 minutes (this is an estimate), and try again. If you get signed out, don't worry! Your request in the queue does not expire if you get logged out while attempting to download.

My understanding is that hardware updates are still getting some finishing touches this afternoon.

[Chemlak]

Thanks, Chris!

That's excellent news.

Any way to find out how long the personalised pdf stays available without having to start over again?

Edit: basically, if I personalise one now and come back tomorrow, will it need personalising again, or will the download launch? If not that long, then how long?

[Rendalf the Forgotten]

Chris Lambertz wrote:

Also cross-posted to the mega-thread.

I've got some more insight about the personalizer and process for folks from the team and an update on the hardware update. This should help give some insight:

Once you click to download, the page sends a request to the service to start personalizing your files. If you continue to click the link, it continues to send requests. The more requests, the more taxing it is on this application. The application takes requests dynamically and queues them up, and if it's overloaded, it's possible for requests to drop off. Our team suggests to not F5 and click the link quickly and repeatedly, because that exacerbates the issue.

TLDR: Click the link once, give it about 10-15 minutes (this is an estimate), and try again. If you get signed out, don't worry! Your request in the queue does not expire if you get logged out while attempting to download.

That stuff is good to know - thanks! I'll take it easy on the clicking. :)

[Chris Lambertz]

Chemlak wrote:

Thanks, Chris!

That's excellent news.

Any way to find out how long the personalised off stays available without having to start over again?

I'm relaying summarized info from the team, but: it really depends on the available disk space/traffic. We estimate a couple hours, but right now that service is in flux/taxed. We can't make a definite, 100% promise on this information right now with our current situation.

[mythradar]

Chris Lambertz wrote:

Also cross-posted to the mega-thread.

TLDR: Click the link once, give it about 10-15 minutes (this is an estimate), and try again. If you get signed out, don't worry! Your request in the queue does not expire if you get logged out while attempting to download.

Hi Pathfinder newbie here, you may want to change what the download page says after you click on a file link..."Click link again in 10 seconds to download". I know I've been clicking on this repeatedly trying to get it to download. I'm guessing others are doing that as well and adding a lot of traffic to the queue.

I had no idea that there was a watermarking process like a lot of other humble bundle imports. maybe also add a note at the top about this.

[Chris Lambertz]

mythradar wrote:

Chris Lambertz wrote:

Also cross-posted to the mega-thread.

TLDR: Click the link once, give it about 10-15 minutes (this is an estimate), and try again. If you get signed out, don't worry! Your request in the queue does not expire if you get logged out while attempting to download.

Hi Pathfinder newbie here, you may want to change what the download page says after you click on a file link..."Click link again in 10 seconds to download". I know I've been clicking on this repeatedly trying to get it to download. I'm guessing others are doing that as well and adding a lot of traffic to the queue.

I had no idea that there was a watermarking process like a lot of other humble bundle imports. maybe also add a note at the top about this.

Unfortunately the "10 seconds" estimate isn't something I have control to change. I'll revise our messaging specific to the downloads page, however. Thank you for this feedback!

[Chemlak]

Any ballpark is better than no ballpark at all.

So, best practice will be something along the lines of:

Click download.
Ignore the "Click again in 10 seconds" instruction.
Wait at least 15 minutes, but no more than two hours.
Click download again. It doesn't matter if you have to log in again.

Download should commence.

[WRoy]

Chris Lambertz wrote:

I'm relaying summarized info from the team, but: it really depends on the available disk space/traffic. We estimate a couple hours, but right now that service is in flux/taxed. We can't make a definite, 100% promise on this information right now with our current situation.

I can tell you firsthand that estimate is off. I've been trying to nab Inner Sea Primer all day, and it's resetting the entire personalization/DL process within 30 minutes. Not sure if that is helpful at all, but people having to requeue instead of eventually getting a delayed DL is probably exacerbating the load on your hardware.

[Swiftbrook]

Good news, at least for me. Just got home a few minutes ago and tried to download Ultimate Equipment - Lite. Low expectations for success. It worked! Quickly too! Still waiting on the second file I attempted this afternoon after that success.

Maybe just a fluke.

Maybe I requested right after they reset a server.

Maybe things are just improving.

[MrDemnoc]

Chris Lambertz wrote:

Also cross-posted to the mega-thread.

I've got some more insight about the personalizer and process for folks from the team and an update on the hardware update. This should help give some insight:

Once you click to download, the page sends a request to the service to start personalizing your files. If you continue to click the link, it continues to send requests. The more requests, the more taxing it is on this application. The application takes requests dynamically and queues them up, and if it's overloaded, it's possible for requests to drop off. Our team suggests to not F5 and click the link quickly and repeatedly, because that exacerbates the issue.

TLDR: Click the link once, give it about 10-15 minutes (this is an estimate), and try again. If you get signed out, don't worry! Your request in the queue does not expire if you get logged out while attempting to download.

My understanding is that hardware updates are still getting some finishing touches this afternoon.

If this were the case my download should have worked after waiting for an hour or two. In total I have waited 6 hours and had to re queue at least twice so far. My requests keep getting dropped and in general it is dead impossible to download anything.

[Terminalmancer]

A lot of the multiple clicks would seem to be due to people (like myself!) trying to maintain our authenticated sessions. Would it make sense to increase the length of time that Paizo users can remain authenticated?

[Rendalf the Forgotten]

Hey, cool! I just now managed to grab the GM screen before the Bottleneck Gods noticed. Maybe things are beginning to shake loose.

[masterslate]

Steve Geddes wrote:

Cthulhusquatch wrote:

It's a write-off for the people donating if they choose.

Steve Geddes wrote:

dtreth wrote:

I wish people would stop flogging the "charity" angle. It's a tax write-off, nothing more and nothing less.

In what sense?

I'm not in the US (and often miss the obvious, so perhaps I'm just dense) but I can't see how Paizo could get any tax benefit out of this. Can you claim for selling stock at a discount or something? In Australia if you tried that, they'd only allow it if you also added the discount back in as taxable income.

Ah, gotcha. I thought they meant it was a tax write-off for Paizo. (Turns out I was dense!)

Cheers.

Just to clarify, it is NOT a write-off for people donating, as they are NOT donating. This is a purchase in exchange for goods. Anything you "donate" to and receive goods from is not something that can be written off.

On the contrary, Paizo can likely write off their sales to lower their tax burden.

[acuarion]

im having the same issue, been trying for days and i havent been able to download anything, also i've been trying to place my order for my delivery of the beginner's box and the order is not going thru, but my money is being putting on hold from my account

[Chris Lambertz]

acuarion wrote:

im having the same issue, been trying for days and i havent been able to download anything, also i've been trying to place my order for my delivery of the beginner's box and the order is not going thru, but my money is being putting on hold from my account

If you're having issues adding a shipping address, please ping Customer Service at [e-mail] and they should be able to help you out! :)

[KefkaZ]

Mine started going relatively fast within the last 10 minutes. 30 seconds tops for most small files.

[Joana]

I clicked on Personalize for the Player's Guide earlier today, then had to leave the keyboard for a few hours. When I logged back into My Downloads just now, it was personalized and ready to go.

So one click was good for about three hours without forcing me to start the whole process over.

[captain yesterday]

I actually left mine overnight (quit internet and put it to sleep), and it was personalized this morning.

[Apexo]

Could anyone just quickly confirm for me that 1 click on the link to personalise is ALL it needs. Currently I'm getting randomly logged out and every time when I go back on My Downloads it doesn't say 'personalising....' it's just as if I never clicked it.

Does this mean I have to click again or is it okay to leave and try again tomorrow (or any other time) and then it will be done and download?

Just got the HB and this is my first RP'ing game :(

[Joana]

There is a point after which a PDF needs to be repersonalized. I don't know exactly how long that window is, however. (According to Captain Yesterday, it's at least "overnight.")

I clicked on Personalize a few hours ago and then walked away from the computer. When I logged back into My Downloads, it looked just like it did before I clicked "Personalize" -- only this time, when I clicked on the title of the PDF, it started the downloading process. The personalization had apparently gone through in the meantime.

[Terminus1066]

They must have done something to fix things, I've been able to download several of my books! Well done, Paizo!

[Armoredneko]

Terminus1066 wrote:

They must have done something to fix things, I've been able to download several of my books! Well done, Paizo!

ITS TRUE! PRAISE PAIZO!

PRAIZO

[Liz Courts]

Pray-zos go to our IT staff.

I hear accepted offerings like small batch bourbon go over well.