[ChefKyle]

Originally posted by Steve Wieck
The only valid complaints about the DRM system

They're all complaints of your customers, Mr Wieck, or potential customers. Thus, they are all "valid complaints."

I dunno how it works in publishing, but in restaurant service, if someone's unhappy, they don't become happy about the service or product because I walk out of the kitchen and say to them, "no, you're wrong. Your complaint is invalid."

I just have to accept whatever stupid thing they say and try to make them happy. For example, I've had a woman send back a chicken breast saying "it's not chicken, it's pork." What am I going to do about that? One chef wanted to take a tray of raw chicken out to her to show her she was wrong. Another wanted to throw her out. Another wanted to send the same thing out to her again.

Now, here's the thing. If she's right, we look like dickheads for arguing with her. If she's wrong, and we prove it to her, we humiliate her in front of her friends. She, and her friends remember that humiliation, and they don't come back again. By "winning" the argument I actually lose business.

I told the waitress to tell her, "I'm sorry you were unhappy with your meal, ma'am. May I suggest another menu item which you might enjoy better? How about so-and-so?"

In this way, we don't admit we were "wrong", but we step around the problem and try to make them happy.

I certainly don't go out and tell her that "your complaint is invalid." It's just poor customer service. If I put my ego before my customer service, I'll have a big ego and a small bank account. Not sure what your priorities are, Mr Wieck, perhaps you'd rather be "right" than rich.

3. Potentially cannot print at Kinko's although someone suggested a service there that might still work, so that is untested.

I went and tested it today. Went to the three largest walk-in printing offices in my city of Melbourne, they couldn't print it out, the thing wouldn't let them. And printing all those pages on my home printer isn't practicable.

As for "that is untested" - I'd think this would be something you'd test before you released your product in that format. When Chrysler produces a car, do they say, "well, some people say that it doesn't go. But we haven't tested it"? No, they don't.

With secure files:
You can back-up them as easily as any other file
You can use them on multiple machines
I think you can loan them to a friend
You can print them
You can copy&paste from them.

You can back them up, but you can't view or print that back-up on a different machine, or different disk.

You can't use them on multiple machines unless the other machine is connected by bus cable to the machine which originally downloaded it - I tested this on my pc and laptop today.

The only way to lend them to a friend is if the friend comes and sits at your computer and looks at them.

Yes, you can print them, but only from the computer you downloaded them to, or to another computer connected by bus cable to it. So, someone at an office could send it out to his networked buddies' computers and print out multiple copies.

You can copy and paste from them, but it's a slow and clumsy process. Worse than regular old pdf, even.

Of course, you may come back with something vague about my system having the wrong configurations or something. But a wise publisher will ensure that his product can be viewed and printed out from a large variety of systems.

Of course, it's easier just to blame the customer, isn't it? But then, he probably won't go on to be a customer again, will he? After my free trial with Exalted, there's no way I'll be paying for anything from that site.

[qupte]
Have you received or do you share pay PDFs with others?
Yes, but only with my game group
26%
So, 30%+ of people publically responded that they commit piracy with RPG pdf files.
[/quote]
No offence, but your little poll is hardly rigorously scientific. In that poll, there was no definition of "piracy." Note that copyright law allows "fair use." So, even without the usual little disclaimer, no court in the land is going to uphold a copyright violation case on a bunch of players who photocopied the character sheet page in the back of VtM. That'd come under "fair use."

It could also be argued that passing around a pdf of the rules from the GM to the players constitutes "fair use." Now, you might consider that "piracy." However, again considering customer service, I'd not consider that worth pursuing in court. My experience with such things suggests that players, when they get a small taste of a game system which their GM has a copy of, one of two things happens:

a) they don't like the game and its book, and delete it from their hard drive, or,

b) they love it, and go and buy the book. The "pirated" copy on their hard drive thus serves the same purpose as uncovered copies at the game store - potential buyers get to have a close look at it, to decide if they think it's worth buying.

Now, this can all be argued to constitute, "fair dealing" under the various copyright acts of nations. If you put an obstacle to that fair dealing, you're actually likely to hurt yourself.

Haven't you ever been to a game session where everyone gets pissed off because there's only one copy of the rulebook? If players could get a look at it in pdf form, a copy of their GM's paid download, well, that alleviates that problem. Players pissed off and confused at their game session are less likely to go and purchase the game's rulebook.

I'll join the poster who pined for more people with a basic understanding of Economics, because it would be nice if more people understood the end economic results piracy has.

Most of us well understand the results it has on smallscale publishers like rpg companies. However, we also understand the results that poor customer service has - when a publisher tells us, "you're upset, but your complaints are invalid, and your system is set up wrong, it's all your fault" - well, we'll just go on to another, more friendly publisher.

If you publish rpgs for a living and the vast predominance of your sales comes from the printed format then you have to find poll results like that quite sobering.

Of course. But you also have to consider, as I noted above, what is and isn't piracy, which wasn't defined in the survey, and what may be piracy but will actually help sales in the end.

There's only one kind of raw numbers you should really care about: sales figures. Apart from that, ignore numbers, and look at the words. If a large number of people are complaining, then you ought to listen. It's what I do in a restaurant.

Joe Clueless just attaching an unsecure pdf to an e-mail and sending it to his gaming group so they can have it for tonight's game (clearly about one-third of RPGNow's shoppers do just that, and those are just the ones who admitted their piracy publically), rather than asking them to go and buy the electronic version at DriveThruRPG.com or RPGNow or their FLGS.

Such piracy, as you'd call it, will hurt electronic sales, but it won't harm print sales. Players like a hard copy. Nerds like books. I know that guy from Eden was predicting that the e-book will eliminate printed books, but I put that in the same box as the 1985 prediction that by 1992 we'd have the "paperless office." Guess what? Paper consumption in offices is higher than it was in 1985; likewise, printed book sales in all genres of writing are higher than twenty years ago.

Players will take a look at the copy Joe Clueless, as you so disparagingly call the guy who's bought your product - he bought your product, and you're calling him "Clueless", way to go insulting your customers! yay! - they'll take a look, and if they don't like the game, delete it (piracy over), or go and buy the printed version. So, it acts as a promotional thing, like a musician's single played on the radio.

So, your customers are clueless, pirates, and as for the rest of them, their complaints are "invalid."

The customer usually isn't right. But you don't tell him he's wrong. I mean, come on.