Wizards Of The Coast Stops All PDF Sales
Apologies in advance for the lack of a pic, I'll try to add something appropriate later. This is timely. I logged into RPGNow this afternoon to find the following message:
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.
This has also affected a number of other sites. Paizo also sent out a notice letting its customers know that they have until midnight tonight to purchase Wizard of the Coast pdfs, and that their access to download those pdfs would cease shortly thereafter.
Wizards has done a lot of less than savory things with 4e that made me upset, but their claim that this was done in response to piracy is... well, more than a little suspect. This hurts only paying customers who were purchasing the pdfs legitimately. Color me not impressed by this move from Wizards. If you have a WotC pdf from one of the traditional pdf retailers, make sure to download it as soon as possible, as it will be unavailable soon, if it isn't already.
Faerie Dragon
Posted to Industry News, Roleplaying Games on 6 April 2009
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: paizo, pdf, rpgnow, wizards of the coast, wotc
This seems sketchy to me as well, but thankfully I have been using the Pathfinder RPG from Paizo and liking it better than 3.5e and 4e, so they will still have my business when the hardcover of the book comes out.
Man, I actually like 4e a lot as a system, and I like the books they've put out so far that I've looked at, but Wizards really needs to get their head out of the ground (or somewhere else much less savory...). I usually buy hardcover books, but I have gotten the occasional PDF for splat books and such, and it's really really nice to have searchable PDF's of rules. Would have been a nice way to look up rules quickly now that there is no 4e SRD.
There is a fully searchable rules compendium on D&D Insider.
Marty: Don’t you have to pay for DnD Insider?
I don’t see how this will stop piracy. I thought Wizards stopped publishing their 3.5 books. If I am wrong they are at least very hard to find new copies in books stores. If you can’t get physical copies and you can’t get legitimate soft copies how are you supposed to get 3.5 books except through piracy? (Not that I condone such things.)
It feels like they are trying to force the 3.5ers in to 4e kicking and screaming if need be. I will just move to Pathfinder.
This isn't the first time that WotC has shown disregard for both their customers and other companies that they have symbiotic relationships with.
Keep in mind, people who purchase PDFs are generally entitled to a certain number downloads of the product. Downloads the customer can no longer collect on, and causing these companies not to uphold their promises to those customers.
On the bright side, my gamemakers of choice, White Wolf, have announced their continued support of PDF downloads. They're even giving away free downloads of their core rulebook for Exalted (my game of choice) which I think is super cool.
http://www.white-wolf.com/exalted/index.php?line=news&articleid=1085