WotC halts sale of pdf's through RPGNow/DriveThruRPG

[naturaltwenty]

From rpgnow.com

Wizards of the Coast has instructed us to suspend all sales and downloads of Wizards of the Coast titles. Unfortunately, this includes offering download access to previously purchased Wizards of the Coast titles. We are in discussions with Wizards about their decision to change their approach to digital sales of their titles and will post more information as we have it. If you would like to let Wizards know your opinion on offering D&D titles for download, we suggest the D&D Message Boards found here.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread...5#post18268325

[Rand Brittain]

They can suspend re-downloads of previously purchased titles? Man, I gotta consider that before I ever make another DriveThru purchase.

[Tim Gray]

Ouch. That'll leave a dent in OBS' business. The re-download thing is out of order though.

[Eurhetemec]

This isn't going to be pretty. If WotC want to take my re-downloads away, they'd better be paying me back the cost of the title, because in some cases I only downloaded them once and don't have a copy any more, because I knew that I could re-download it, but only a specific number of times - had the number of downloads been infinite, I'd have made sure to keep a backup, but that didn't seem necessary.

Until this is cleared up, I won't be buying anything from WotC (in .pdf or hardcopy form) or RPGnow, frankly.

[Devenger]

Why do I increasingly feel this deep shame in buying WotC products? Like I'm funding long-spoilt sub-standards? Like I'm helping a company damage the games industry?

Hmmph.

[Wil]

Why do I suspect this has something to do with attempting to curb piracy of WoTC products in PDF format? Torrent sites are full of all manner of D&D PDFs, usually within days of their being released.

[Charles Gray]

This could open up some very interesting legal questions. PPurchasing something from drive thru establishes a contractural obligation, unless there's something in the fine print that says it doesn't, and I don't know about htat. Presumably WOTC has some form of contract with drive-thru, but US courts, and for that matter most courtts, look dimly on "contracts" that let you take money and not provide anything for it.

[Charles Gray]

Originally Posted by Wil

Why do I suspect this has something to do with attempting to curb piracy of WoTC products in PDF format? Torrent sites are full of all manner of D&D PDFs, usually within days of their being released.

If so, it's a pretty crappy way of doing it. If this is carried through, people who have paid money for p[roducts will not be allowed to get the full use out of their products-- in the worst case, say someone who bought and didn't DL immediately, they'll get NO use out of those products.
1. that might be illegal. don't know about that, but I can see civil suits.
2. It'll show up on the top ten list of "why piracy isn't bad" under: Well they screw US.

[Matt-M-McElroy]

I assume this has something to do with the new Internet Sales Policy that went into affect today:

http://ww2.wizards.com/Company/Press/?doc=20090306

It does not specifically mention pdfs anywhere in the press release, but the date mentioned is April 6th.

-Matt

[venusboys3]

hmmm... a bit reminiscent of when Games Workshop put the cork on online sales of their games... though this looks like an attempt to just control, rather than stop altogether.