Thursday, August 22, 2019

Jaded Gamer - encouraging piracy


Nearly everyone in the online tabletop gaming knows that piracy of pdf products is a problem. It's all to easy to get a copy of nearly any game book on the market for absolutely nothing but the time it takes to do a few mouse clicks.  So why would you want to taunt the part of your customer base that is willing to pay?

R. Talsorian just did exactly that. the pdf for the jumpstart kit for Cyberpunk Red popped up on DrivethruRPG the same day as the physical version went on sale at GenCon. The pdf price of fifteen bucks is already enough to make a few folks think twice about spending that much on something that isn't even a full ruleset but a light version of a ruleset. Then at GenCon you give out coupon for fifty percent off that pdf to those who buy the print version BUT you will not be giving that discount to any one who buys it when it becomes available through distribution channels.

That's just telling people to pirate your product. "Can't go to GenCon then we don't care about you." is the message and the result will undoubtedly be "Give them a discount but not anyone else then we don't care about giving you anything at all.".  I can hardly blame anyone who goes this route.

Personally at this point I'm pretty much done with supporting Cyberpunk Red in any shape or form. So I won't be buying, or pirating, I will just do without.

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