Varnias Tybalt said:

Dave Allen said:

Having been involved with that industry on just such issues, I think it is safe to say piracy has had a real impact.  But I try not to focus on that because to me the fundamental issue regarding piracy/theft remains the same whether there was any damage or not.

Varnias Tybalt said:

RIAA claims about piracy are complete lunacy and should be laughed out of court, but it does result in lost sales.  Not the one for one bullshit that the RIAA claims, but it does cut into the money that they make and RPGs aren't overly profitable to begin with. 

Cynical Cat said:

Which claims, specifically?

There are lots of complicated issues all rolled into one. As the wheel turns, books and televison become less popular, radio and the internet become stronger, companies founded on an old model of dominated distribution are eaten into both by criminal and non-criminal endevours. Tastes change, broaden and widen and the economy of scale return less and less. Print of Demand and PDF awaken like tiger cubs knowing their fleeting days of kings of the media jungle will come. Freely distributed news and opinion by unpaid amatures compeate with profesionals in who is the most effective at bringing goverments down.

In a world where they think you will son be able to capture any image just by forming your thumbs and index fingers into a square, data will increasingly become an avalanch no-one can dam.

As a one time independant video games developer, I can attest to the impact of piracy on your sales - as much as people want to justify downloading and fully enjoying games, movies, tv shows, music, books etc. just because they occasionally actually pay for one doesn't mean that people aren't losing a lot of money to pirates. A friend of mine just released a game that he worked on for some time on Steam (game is called 'Raycatcher' - check it out!) and while he made some money, (he sold about 1000 copies in his first day on Steam, not too bad) it had been illegally downloaded 35000 times over just 1 day. Obviously people were interested in the game, and yeah, maybe a small percentage of them wanted to download it to 'evaluate' it (although that is what the demo is for....) with the intent of eventually buying it, but most just enjoyed the months of hard work without paying a dime. I can tell you, it really sucks having to lay off great employees because your game is being pirated so many times.

Anyways, rant off.

As for the actual topic of the post, I think D&D 4e is eclipsing everything because they have done a major overhaul of the system, really polished a lot of rules and mechanics, made it much more accessible, and combined it with a huge marketing spend. Like the new mechanics or not, I have yet to see another system put forth the same effort.

I think people don't necessarily realize that if you just keep putting out slight variations of the same game, people won't buy it because they already own that game - they bought the (nearly identical) version that came out years ago. Sure you could continue to publish supplemetary materials, but at some point people get to a saturation level where they have more content than they can get through, so they don't need to buy any more of those books either - then you have an ideal consumer, a RPG enthusiast, who has money to spend, but is simply not interested in buying more stuff, even though he loves the system. That is pretty bad business. The only way to really make money is to shake it up once in a while - take some risks, maybe piss of some hardcore purist fans, but win over new customers and sell a whole new set of core books, supplements etc. to those that would like something a bit different from what they were used to.

I think WFRP 3rd edition is looking to do just that - take the same kind of leap that D&D4 did - sure, maybe some people won't like it, but it is a risk that could pay off hugely. I'd rather companies take risks and sometimes get a gem out of it than play it conservative and ultimately fade away.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Surely you're not that naive.  Piracy is  a HUGE blow to game companies.  If WotC found it needful to be addressed, then imagine what it does to smaller companies.  Piracy CANNOT be justified as anything other than sheer theft.

ww2.wizards.com/Company/Press/

WIZARDS OF THE COAST SUES EIGHT FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: Tolena Thorburn
Wizards of the Coast LLC
425-204-8011
tolena.thorburn@Wizards.com.

April 6, 2009 — Wizards of the Coast LLC today filed three lawsuits in US District Court for the Western District of Washington against eight individuals, including named defendants located in the United States, Poland and the Philippines, for copyright infringement of its recently-released Dungeons & Dragons® Player’s Handbook® 2. The lawsuits allege that the defendants illegally distributed the Player’s Handbook 2 via free file-sharing websites and that these illicit uploads resulted in a substantial number of lost sales and lost revenue to Wizards of the Coast.

“Violations of our copyrights and piracy of our products hurt not only Wizards of the Coast’s financial health but also the health of whole gaming community including retailers and players,” said Greg Leeds, President of Wizards of the Coast. “We have brought these suits to stop the illegal activities of these defendants, and to deter future unauthorized and unlawful file-sharing.”

The complaint alleges, among other things, that one or more of the defendants purchased digital copies of Player’s Handbook 2 and then illegally posted the copies onto popular file-sharing sites for free access and download by the general public.

About Wizards

Wizards of the Coast is the leader in entertaining the lifestyle gamer. The company holds an exclusive patent on trading card games (TCGs) and their method of play and produces the premier trading card game, MAGIC: THE GATHERING®, among many other trading card games and family card and board games. Wizards is also a leading publisher of roleplaying games, such as DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®, and publisher of fantasy series fiction with numerous New York Times best-sellers. For more information, visit the Wizards of the Coast website at www.wizards.com.

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, Player’s Handbook, and Magic: The Gathering are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. © 2009 Wizards
 

Perhaps I'm simply ill-informed, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Dark Heresy as number 2 on the list (beating out white wolf, at that!). Even if the sales for DH are low, its still proven to be a great success with old hands and new players. The Black Library is probably kicking themselves for letting that little bit of profit go. As far as piracy goes, if you've pirated an FFG game without the intention of buying it you should be as ashamed as if you stole a candy bar from your local convenience store. What, precisely, is the difference? This seems self-evident to me, but maybe I'm old fashioned.

If we want to keep people like Ross Watson in house and home and working full-time on creating games, then we are going to have to buy products. This goes for all I.P's. The Open Source concepts as applied to I.P's are charming because they ensure us that we are not only correct in stealing, but actually part of a crusade against wealthy fat-cats (read: greedy capitalists, elites, the decadent nobility, the  corrupt church, etc...etc...etc...it's always the same story) . All people love to hear that their disgusting behavior is actually commendable. This is the foundation of entire religions and revolutions! Furthermore, this shares a particular flavour of moral terpitude with generations of similar ideologies going back at least as far as the 17th century. The devaluation of human endevour always begins with the devaluation of property.  (or is that terribly  American of me to say)

Keep up the good work FFG. I wish you great luck with this new WHFR boxed set. May it draw in a new crowd of gamers and thwart piracy with its innovative new design.  Futhermore, people with communist ideas about property should be encouraged to examine communist countries. Truly, they are bastions of the free exchange of ideas and examples for the rest of the world on how to regulate the flow of information.

Emirikol said:

Is that supposed to be proof? All I see is another corporate gaming giant (you are very much naive if you consider Wizards of the Coast to be a "small" company) instigating a witch hunt on a few normal people. And you can't expect anyone to listen to the president of WotC's highly biased opinions about it.

"Huge blow"? I beg to difer. First all companies are responsible to provide evidence that their sales have dropped. So far they have only been able to mention "potential sales lost due to people downloading rather than buying". (which with certain products are utterly ridiculous to claim, like RPG sourcebooks. You'd have to be extremely poor to settle with an inferior pdf file rather than buying the book, and printing the entire thing from home would probably cost you more money in inkcartridges alone than just buying it)

"Potential sales" are nothing other than a hypothesis, and it does not count as proof. Sorry.

As for the music industry, I really couldn't care less that profit hungry record companies that leech off of musical artists suffer setbacks due to piracy. It is the record companies that hold musical evolution back due to the fact that they alone choose which artists that are being exposed the most. Meaning that year after year their consumers will have to be happy with the same kind of crap that "sold best" last year. Music should be available in a variety of flavours, not just what corporate analysts decides make the most money.

After all, musicians earn most profits from live preformances, not record sales. So regardless of what bribed "artists" say to the contrary, their livelyhood is barely even scratched by pirated MP3's. In fact, many artists who wouldn't have risen to prominence, have, due to the fact that someone decided to upload their music for free on the internet. It's basically free commercial for them, so as an artist you'd have to be an idiot if you're against pirated music.

The sooner the record companies die, the better. With todays technology their existence is completely redundant.

But to summarize, Piracy IS NOT "sheer theft", since nothing has been stolen, and no one has been able to prove otherwise. If you're gonna call it "theft" then you have to prove that something has been stolen...

Steerpike said:

Like I said before, prove that something has actually been stolen.

If I go and jack your car, then that's theft. If I went and copied your car, you'll still have your car, but I'll have an identical one. Nothing has been stolen so it is inappriopriate to call it "theft", and it is ridiculous that some courts in some countris choose to treat it as theft. Travesty on justice is what it is, when individual pirates have been made to pay worse punishments than people guilty of violent assaults. (yes, this has actually happened in some countries).

Seriously? Should I pay a worse punishment for downloading an MP3-file, than someone who beat the shit out of someone else? Is that justice?

Varnias Tybalt said:

Piracy is theft. Another person spent time and money creating what you downloaded for free. Not only was his investment in time and money wasted, but he may be out of a job as a result. Most RPG companies are small enough that even a small loss in sales can make a big difference. Keep sticking your head in the sand all you want, but piracy is selfish and immoral.

The amount of people who think piracy isnt theft because they copy something... *sigh* I'll just go through the usual conversation on the topic to save time:

It's nice to get stuff for free isnt it? Only it wasnt free to make it, was it? Let's consider music, since that's the punishment you were concerned of. You realise how much for example studio hours cost? I can already hear the typing of the "Oh, but I wasn't going to buy it anyway!" argument.

Why did you download it then? Clearly there was something you wanted..

"Oh I just collect them in my harddrive!" What a waste of energy and recourses then. Good for you!

"Oh I just wanted to evaluate it!" The whole record? and when you've listened to it for several hours did you buy it. Maybe added one song to your playlist, did you pay for the song through web perhaps? If the answer is yes, you are mildly excused.

Besides piracy for music is sooooo outdated. Use spotify. I know, I know.. not every record is there, but at least it's legal and paid for you.

http://www.spotify.com/en/

Here ends rant. (Piracy. Gets me every time.)

macd21 said:

Selfish and immoral? You do know that you're speaking with a nihilist here right? All moral is completely relative, so that doesn't present much in the way of an argument. Sorry.

If you desperatly want to own a monopoly on an experience (a picture, a song, a game, a movie etc. they're all experiences to the viewer/listener) then don't show it to the rest of the world. Because once it's out there, it is absurd to claim "ownership" of it. You can own a record, but you can't own the music on it if other people have heard it. You can own the marble that a statue is made of or the canvas that a picture is painted on, but you can't own the feelings seeing it will evoke.

You could say that copyright laws are immoral in a way. That they are absurd there is no question of...

ymrar said:

Personally I listen to music that can at time be a bit obscure and unheard of, so spotify is not an option, simply because the songs I want to listen to isn't there.

Second, I pay a handsome amount of cash for tickets to live shows of the artists that I like. That way I know that the ARTIST get the most payment, rather than some greedy, leeching record company that take's the major amount of money for any records I buy...

So you want to experience? and how are all these experiences delivered for you? That's right. Somebody coughed up money. You liked a movie? It had superior filming and effects? Somebody had to make them for you to experience it. So yes, you can put a price on experience. Some experiences come a lot cheaper. You want an experience free? Take a walk in the forest. Enjoy the sunset. Write a book (but for crying aloud, do not share it or try to make a living out of it).