Wizards cierra la venta de PDFs a otras editoriales

[Tel Arin]

Me ha llegado esta tarde un newsletter de Paizo comentando lo siguiente:

Wizards of the Coast has notified us that we may no longer sell or distribute their PDF products. Accordingly, after April 6 at 11:59 PM Pacific time, Wizards of the Coast PDFs will no longer be available for purchase on paizo.com; after noon on April 7, you will no longer be able to download Wizards of the Coast PDFs that you have already purchased, so please make sure you have downloaded all purchased PDFs by that time.

We thank you for your patronage of paizo.com. Please check out our other downloads at paizo.com/store/downloads.

Sincerely yours,
The Paizo Customer Service Team

Segun parece, PDFs de manuales, antes incluso de salir el libro fisico, han estado circulando por la web. No estoy muy seguro de si es el motivo directo, pero parece que se ha liado bien gorda, porque como vereis en el mensaje, ni siquiera van a poder vender PDFs de material antiguo de D&D.

Quiza es un movimiento antes de que wizards empiece a vender ellos estos PDFs; lo que esta claro que lo que se  comento hace tiempo, de los rumores del D&DInsider, sobre que si comprabas un libro fisico, te regalarian el PDF (o te lo venderian muy barato) o que habria algun tipo de incentivo extra para con los contenidos online, por ahora en Wizards no se han dado. Quiza sea la previa, no lo se.

Esperemos a ver en que desemboca todo esto.

 

[furufu]

Creo que es pronto para evaluar el alcance que puede tener esto. Me uno a la teoría de que quieren ser distribuidores únicos de los PDFs, ya que es un producto de coste 0 (una vez realizado el pdf, claro...)

Personalmente me parece que han tirado 1d20 y han sacado 1 (castañazo en el dedo gordo del pie) y me apuesto unas jarras en la taberna a que antes de una semana de salir el próximo libro (poderes arcanos, creo), va a estar internet lleno de pdfs, de mayor o menor calidad, incluso alguno filtrado desde dentro de WotC.

De todas formas, esperemos a ver.... aunque la blogosfera está ya invadida de muchedumbre con ganas de linchar "encorbatados".

 

[humuusa]

Pues ya ha empezado a denuciar a gente por subir manuales PDFs a la red, y no solo de EEUU, asi que cuidadito...
http://frankenrol.blogspot.com/

 

[Tel Arin]

Mi madre  :blink: :blink: :blink:

Pues si que les ha dado fuerte, vamos que parece que esta aficion minoritaria del rol, tiene mas seguimiento que Obama.

No se, esta claro que actuan legalmente, asi que poco mas hay que decir , pero vamos me parece poco practico, poco realista y excesivo la que se esta liando.

Por cierto que me ha llegado otro correo de Dreamscarred Press, mas o menos dicidnedo que corra a comprar en RPGnow y DriveThruRPG sus PDFs a un 25% de descuento antes del cierre del tema.

 

[humuusa]

Ya empiezan a ser conocidos como el Imperio del Mal que se lanza contra las pobres masas de los pueblos libres.... :dm:

 

[Tel Arin]

Wizards responde por medio del presi sobre este espinosos tema

An exclusive interview with WotC President Greg Leeds

As a special update, we have an exclusive interview with Wizards of the Coast's President, Greg Leeds. This interview focuses on the events of the past week, specifically the decision to withdraw PDF versions of products from sale. Special thanks goes to EN World members for suggesting questions.

1. Please tell us the reasons for the new policy on PDF sales. Is this a strategic business decision, a response to piracy, or a combination of the two?
The decision was made for both reasons. The piracy of our products was increasing at an alarming rate, and we felt that it could have a negative impact not only to Wizards of the Coast, but to the hobby industry as a whole.

2. Is online piracy a continuing annoyance for Wizards, a substantial concern, or something between the two? Are there estimates of lost sales figures that you can share?
The piracy became a substantial concern when we saw thousands of copies of our recently released Player’s Handbook 2 being downloaded illegally within hours of its release. We cannot share sales figures, but I can tell you that we conservatively estimate the ratio of illicit downloads to legally purchased copies was 10:1.

3. The decision to revoke PDFs means that Wizards no longer provides any method to acquire out-of-print books such as material from older editions. Is there any plan to resume allowing customers access to copies of these works through Wizards, or will legitimate customers have to go through out-of-print channels to acquire these products? If the latter is true, why would Wizards choose to avoid providing this access?
We do not have any plans to resume the sale of PDFs, but are actively exploring other options for the digital distribution of our content – including older editions. We understand that digital content is important to our customers.

4. Some D&D customers are frustrated because they see this sales policy as a step backwards, punishing the customers who choose to legally acquire electronic Wizards products while not significantly affecting online book piracy. What’s your opinion on this issue, and what effect do you anticipate that the new PDF sales policy will have on piracy?
While we understand that our actions will not eliminate piracy all together, we don’t want to make it easy to acquire illegally, either. We need to have a strong retail base in order to support (and grow) the hobby industry. We hope to deter future offenders – or at least slow down their path to obtaining illegal products.

5. Online retailers received notice of the new policy less than 24 hours before PDF sales were required to cease. Why wasn't the cessation of PDF sales announced with more than a few hours before the materials were no longer available?
It wasn’t our intention to have customers feel as though they weren’t receiving what they paid for. Our understanding is that both Paizo Publishing and OneBookShelf are working with their customers to make sure they receive what they paid for.

6. If you had the last few years to live over again and could completely revamp Wizards’ PDF and electronic media strategy from the ground up, what would you do differently?
I don’t know that I would try to re-do anything. The truth is that the world is changing quickly, and as a business we need to be flexible enough to adapt to that changing environment. We have and always will continue to find the best ways to be responsive to our community of fans and gamers.

7. What strategies can you share with us that you’re pursuing to further increase sales and market penetration?
We are very happy with how 4th Edition is performing. We have reprinted the 4th Edition Player’s Handbook three times, and PH2 is headed back for it’s second printing already. Ultimately our goal is to keep the hobby industry strong, and our strategy for that is to continue to create great 4th Edition products that will entice our fans to keep playing D&D. In turn, that will grow the hobby industry.

8. What’s your vision for the role of electronic media in D&D? How do you plan to get there, and how long do you suspect it might take to implement? What priority is this being given?
Electronic media will continue to play an even greater role in our D&D business as the months and years go on. Continuing to improve the D&D Insider experience for our customers and fans is one of our top priorities.

Along with the rest of the publishing industry, Wizards is also looking into new means of digital distribution. For our novels, we have recently introduced titles to Kindle and to Sony’s E-Reader and will continue to add titles to those offerings over the coming months.

9. We don’t know much about Wizards’ internal operations. Did the new PDF policy decision originate from you, from your legal team, from the brand manager and his team, or from Hasbro corporate headquarters? Generally speaking, how hands-on is your management of the D&D team and its strategic plan?
The D&D brand is critical to Wizards of the Coast’s success, and decisions such as this are not entered into lightly. We are all very hands-on, and decisions are vetted through all levels of the organization.


A quick clarification from WotC regarding the answer to Question 2, above:

The 10:1 ratio that Greg references is for PDFs only – it has nothing to do with the physical books. For every one PDF purchased legally, there were at least 10 downloaded illegally. And yes, we can track it.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/254134-exclusive-interview-wizards-coast-president-greg-leeds.html

 

[Tel Arin]

Mas info de la que da miedo.

Wizards chapa drivethru (pagina de venta de PDFs de juegos, de las mas importantes)

Dear DriveThruRPG.com customers,

We wanted to respond to some of the fears and concerns expressed to us and on various online forums regarding the recent announcement that Wizards of the Coast is suspending all sales and downloads of the digital versions of their products. So I am writing this to address those concerns.

First, there are no "contract negotiations" with Wizards that led to the current situation. We have been doing business with Wizards on downloads for over six years now and always enjoyed a positive and co-operative license relationship. Some have hypothesized that the situation might be a result of a negotiation issue is a reasonable hypothesis, but that is incorrect.

On Monday I spoke with Wizards' legal department in a call that I thought would discuss the lawsuits Wizards has filed. We had been co-operating with Wizards to supply information on pirated files for those lawsuits (as allowed under our site privacy policy). Instead I was informed of Wizards' decision to cease all PDF sales at this time. It was a complete surprise to me.

Wizards gave us legal notice to remove their titles. Due to what I'll characterize as a miscommunication on intent, we complied immediately and removed all public access to Wizards' products from DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. In turns out this was not a situation that either we or Wizards desired. I am in discussions with Wizards legal and it looks highly probable that we will be able to offer customers time to come back and re-download prior purchases for their personal archives. We will email and post information on sites once we have final confirmation on this.

I regret that some customers have inferred that our download counts are any guarantee of availability to re-download titles. We really do not like iTunes' approach of "one download, you lose it, pay again" so we do our best to offer perpetual downloads of purchased titles. Our agreements with publishers though do not let us guarantee this - as this situation makes clear. We have learned a lesson here by reading that some customers inferred otherwise, and we will make some changes soon to clarify this on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.

We are offering full refunds to anyone who purchased a Wizards title from us but never downloaded it. These are extremely rare cases, as most everyone downloaded the goodies as soon as they were originally purchased.

I am otherwise as confused as anyone else here on the rationale behind Wizards' decision. I know there are some smart people at Wizards who get it, so I can only speculate that there are others who are not as informed and who are making the call on this.

As many folks on forums have stated, I also believe that piracy for the foreseeable future is unavoidable for books. So long as printed copies and scanners and torrents exist, RPG books have been and will be pirated. It's sad and fatalistic, but it's true.

Given that RPG books will always be on file-sharing sites, it means that anyone who purchases a legal PDF is doing so because they prefer to make that choice over pirating the file. Thankfully, the number of RPG fans who make that decision are legion and it lets us send payments every month to hundreds of RPG publishers and creators. By making this choice to legally support their hobby, fans are keeping RPGs alive. I say that without one bit of exaggeration or melodrama. Around seven new RPG titles go live every day at DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. The hobby could not be nearly that prolific if not due to fans choosing to support their hobby.

This makes DRM an extremely poor choice for any publisher. DRM inevitably restricts ease of purchase and ease of use, and anything that tips customer choice from legal purchase toward pirating is a bad business decision. DRM does nothing to prevent pirated files from being available, since the files will already be available anyway from scanned copy.

We already learned lessons on DRM the hard way in the past, so I know the issue intimately. For many years now, we have embraced watermarking as the preferable solution.

The posts by D&D fans across all gaming forums, while angry at times, are ultimately posted out of concern for Wizards and the desire to see Wizards make the best choices. Whether I ever do business with Wizards again or not, Wizards is a big part of the hobby that I love and for that reason alone, I hope that they reconsider. Especially given the ongoing fan feedback on this, I am optimistic that they will.

Steve Wieck,
President

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/wizards_letter.php

 

[furufu]

Cada vez me da más la impresión que en Wizards andan como pollos sin cabeza... En plena expansión de las publicaciones electrónicas, cortan todos los canales de distribución "por culpa de la piratería".

Sigo pensando que de aquí a un año (cuando terminen el modelo de negocio que deberían haber hecho hace tiempo), Wizards abrirá EN EXCLUSIVA su tienda de PDFs, o similar (formatos propietarios, acuerdos con Amazon para Kindle, etc...).

De momento, el coste es un cabreo monumental de una gran parte de su base de consumidores, que veremos por dónde sale.

 

[Azalin_Rex]

Realmente un engorro mallor, va a perder una form,a de darse a conocer en el mercado y unos ingresos extra por la venta de un manual digital que dicho sea de paso no les acarrea ningun coste (no papel, no tinta...).Lo de la pirateria, pues bueno, es algo grave, pero todo el buen fan de DyD se comprara el libro antes o despues...

Mi pregunta: Cierran tambien el material viejo de Paizo!? estaba haber si me compraba los antiguos manuales de "Ravenloft" de "AD&D" en pdf, pero con esta noticia peligra mi idea...

 

[Tel Arin]

Azalin, en Paizo chapan toda la linea de venta de PDFs de Wizards antigua o no. Les quedara la venta de las revistas antiguas dragon y dungeons (creo), material de compañias que no sean wizards, y sus propios productos.

Yo mismamente estoy haciendo recapitulacion de cosas que a lo mejor me interesa pillar, cosas antiguas, antes de que chapen estas tiendas. Paizo, RPGnow o Drivethru .

"Por lo que pueda pasar"

Un saludete

 

[humuusa]

Pues ya ni en Drivethrug ni RPGnow esta disponible la empresa Wizards of the Coast, asi que tarde llegas ya...
-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

Y en paizo lo mismo:
-Wizards of the Coast has notified us that we may no longer sell or distribute their PDF products. Accordingly, Wizards of the Coast PDFs are no longer available for purchase or download on paizo.com.

 

[Pointdexter]

Antes de poner la noticia decir que no se si Tel habra ya escrito sobre ello, si es asi, siento duplicarlo, pero no me ha parecido ver nada sobr ello :read:


En respuesta a los últimos movimientos de Wizards of the Coast, Ryan Dancey, uno de los padres del movimiento OGL (Antiguo encargado de las lineas de rol de Wizards, ahora en White Wolf y en una empresa de MORPGS (CCP, los del Eve online y el futuro Vampire Online) ha dicho:

"Es el caso clásico de caída en espiral. Cuando las cosas van mal, las fuerzas regresivas dentro de la organización (Abogados, vendedores a comisión, creativos que se sienten maltratados por la hisotira, ejecutivos frustrados) se ven cada vez con mayor capacidad para llevar a cabo su agenda. Y siempre hace que una situación mala empeore, pero como no hay ninguna bala magica que haga que la situación mejore, se crea un desequilibrio en la fuerza corporativa que la lleva al lado oscuro.


- ¿La OGL? Arriesgada (Alguien nos puede dejar mal, robar nuestras ideas antes de imprimirlas o crear una marca competitiba que nos quite ventas) y la falta de fe en el mercado interconectado hace que se tema por los beneficios. Hay que matarla.


- ¿PDF? Un problema constante debido a que los distribuidores fisicos crean mas presión de la necesaria en el equipo de ventas, y los beneficios son demasiado pequeños para ser estrategicos. Se corta.


- ¿Online? Cada vez que se habla acerca de ello se habla de diez millones de dolares de coste para "hacerlo bien". Después de gastar entre tres y cinco veces esa cantidad en iniciativas fallidas (Hecha por gente sin cualificación), los ejecutivos asumen que internet es plutonio. No lo tocará ningun equipo cualificado.


- ¿Estabilidad? Las ventas de cada unidad van en detrimento y pocos productos tienen la virtud de tener una permanencia. La única (La que parece viable) solución es poner mas libros en producción. Hacer que nuestro margen aumente saturando a los clientes con mas producto.


Las próximas cosas que recibirán el golpe son la RPGA (Cuesta mucho de operar asi que se cortará su presupuesto), la calidad (Menos palabras, menos ilustraciones en menos paginas y subir el precio) y luego la consistencia (Variantes de reglas hechas por diseñadores novatos o trabajadores saturados de trabajo empezarán a surgir y a romper la cohesión provocando que las interpretaciones arbitrarias estén a la orden del dia.


Asimismo las ventas irán descendiendo, la grieta en el presupuesto se ira ensanchando y no importa cuantas cabezas rueden, no hay luz al final del tunel.


Wizards puede ser forzada a dar fin al Dungeons & Dragons lo cual es algo que muchas editoriales hacen. Pero ninguna lo ha hecho con una marca del impacto de D&D. (TSR estuvo a punto de caer por el precipicio ante de ser rescatada por Wizards). Hay 3 posibles resultados.


1- Un colapso total, el juego deja de ser publicado y distribuido al menos por una generación y quizás para siempre.


2- Una reducción hasta que vuelvan los beneficios. Puede representar una cesión de licencia o un cambio en el negocio - Por ejemplo, pensad en Battletech en la actualidad.


3- Un renacimiento traumatico. Lo cual significa que alguien, en alguna parte, encuentra alguna manera de remediar el cancer que se esta comiendo el rol de sobremesa y vuelve a comenzar a haber un mercado masivo para Dungeons & Dragons.


Es posible que 2 y 3 solo sean fases para acabar en 1."


Hay que decir que Dancey lleva años sin gustarle nada de lo que haga Wizards (Mas o menos desde que echaron en los habituales despidos post-edición de wizards del 2002). Asi que os podeis tomar esta critica como querais.

Fuente : Frikiverso

 

[humuusa]

Hombre duplicado esta, porque hay un tema sobre los PDF y WOTC, y eso ahi donde estamos tratandolo...
http://archiroleros.com/foro/general/wizards-cierra-la-venta-de-pdfs-a-otras-editoriales/msg6159/?topicseen#msg6159

 

[Azalin_Rex]

Buffff, menuda faena!!! Cerrando mercado supongo...

 

[Tel Arin]

Gracias Pointdexter con la traduccion del articulo del señor Ryan Dancey; personalmente me parece que es extremadamente negativista y su salida de WOTC no le hace precisamente el culmen de la objetividad, al menos por lo que a mi confianza respecta.

Aunque supongo que algunos matices que comenta pueden tener un fondo de verdad.

Lo que mas raro me parece de todo esto. es que WOTC haya dicho pòr boca de su presi, que no van a vender los PDFs. Eso si que me ha dejado atonito.

Yo pensaba que todo esto venia de que tenian mas o menos lista la venta de pdfs de sus productos y con la excusa de haber encontrado material de en descarga y bla bla bla, pues les quitaban a otras compañias las licencias.

Como excusa pobre de cara al publico, porque WOTC siempre ha tenido la potestad de quitar o dar licencias de sus productos.

Pero visto lo visto, mas me parece una pataleta de ejecutivo, que una estrategia comercial a corto o medio plazo. No se, parecen pollos sin cabeza, haciendo cosas de la "linea dura" de una empresa de cara a su publicidad entre los fans. Es legal lo que hacen, esta claro que si, pero no da muy buena imagen.


PS: He unido los dos temas ya que van sobre lo mismo , como bien apuntaba humuusa.

Un saludete!