Pirates Force D&D Books Offline

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Pirates Force D&D Books Offline

Wizards of the Coast, the current owners of the Dungeons and Dragons license, is stopping all of its digital sales after it discovered that piracy doesn't just happen to videogames.

Long before there was digital copies, people were using photocopiers to create pirated e-books, but with PDFs, all you need is a P2P client.

Things came to a head on Monday when Wizards' Beholder-Lawyers (see Monster Manual IX) took on eight individuals, alleging copyright infringement for distributing illegitimate copies of the recently-released Player's Handbook 2.

Given that the Handbook usually retails for $34.95, Wizard pulled all of its PDFs off sale until the company can find a way of making its digital copies secure, which may mean DRM on your PHB.

Legal online retailers were given 24 hours to remove their downloads, as Wizards had to "take care of all the crazy action going out there".

Source: The Register [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/07/wotc_pulls_pdf_products_piracy_lawsuit/]
(Image) [http://www.flickr.com/photos/benimoto/2775812792/]

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[Doug]

Well, if they weren't ripping off people with that price, they might not have such a problem - $35 for a manual? Good grief! I'd be bankrupt if I invested in D&D gear.

 

[Disembodied_Dave]

So now they'll still lose money from pirates and take a step backwards in business?

 

[iain62a]

$34.95?

That's about £25.

Quite expensive for a book.

 

[Eric the Orange]

Well yeah, once somthing is put into a non-tangable(sp) information format it becomes easy to copy and distribute. There are plenty of examples, Video Games, music, ect. I'd think they would have guessed this before hand.

 

[grinklehi]

$34.95?

That's about £25.

Quite expensive for a book.

These books, nay, the entire 4th Edition is a big rip-off anyways. Even though the PH2 is out, there is still no paladin, no monk, no lances, no mixed alignments (Lawful good, Chaotic good, Lawful evil, and Chaotic evil) and the fact that I play a Paladin who charges through his enemies on his Holy mount armed with a greatlance, the game is unplayable for me unless I want to scrap my level 12 paladin to take a level 1 warlord or something.

 

[Matey]

umm..
Paladins are in players handbook 1.

 

[Virgil]

Well, if they weren't ripping off people with that price, they might not have such a problem - $35 for a manual? Good grief! I'd be bankrupt if I invested in D&D gear.

To be fair, the D&D books are very high quality. They're hardcover, with glossy full-color pages. Printing at that quality level is still very expensive.

You can also buy them new for under $25 at Amazon (even though the MSRP is still $35).

 

[iain62a]

$34.95?

That's about £25.

Quite expensive for a book.

These books, nay, the entire 4th Edition is a big rip-off anyways. Even though the PH2 is out, there is still no paladin, no monk, no lances, no mixed alignments (Lawful good, Chaotic good, Lawful evil, and Chaotic evil) and the fact that I play a Paladin who charges through his enemies on his Holy mount armed with a greatlance, the game is unplayable for me unless I want to scrap my level 12 paladin to take a level 1 warlord or something.

Aren't Paladins in the first players handbook?

Are monks still not in?

I'd have thought they'd be in by now.

 

[vicsrealms]

$35 dollars a book was pretty much what killed my interest in the game. Not to mention 5th Age for Dragonlance and now this Spellplague for the Forgotten Realms that is barely explained in most books. I'm not even really happy with the last Salvatore novel in the Transition series. So, I'm pretty much of the mind that WOTC has done a hell of a job destroying TSR's creation.

 

[brighteye]

$35 dollars a book was pretty much what killed my interest in the game. Not to mention 5th Age for Dragonlance and now this Spellplague for the Forgotten Realms that is barely explained in most books. I'm not even really happy with the last Salvatore novel in the Transition series. So, I'm pretty much of the mind that WOTC has done a hell of a job destroying TSR's creation.

Well their nickname "Wizard of the cost" is not entirely without merit.

 

[edgeofblade]

No shit.

Content gets pirated. At those prices, what the hell did you think would happen? Instead of selling a PDF, why not develop an application with a nice indexing and searching function, a dice roller, and a DM planning utility.

On a related note, if they are serious, the next project should be a iPhone adaptation of their books.

 

[Milkman Dan]

Way to ignore that some D&D material, such as the three core books, were pirated before they ever made it to print. I think they have bigger problems than worrying about PDFs being copied.

Are monks still not in?

I'd have thought they'd be in by now.

They just added bards, barbarians, and druids, so they don't seem to be in too much of a hurry. I assume they are going to introduce monks in another expansion, along with other vaguely eastern influenced classes such as wu jen and ninjas.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Wizards of the Coast? Be Helpful with their non collectable, non massive profit generating properties? Please.

 

[Nimbus]

This is retarded! They are going to put DRM into something which has already been uploaded to all the torrent sites.

It's remarkable how little business sense some people have.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I seem to recall paying $18 and $20 for D&D manuals back in the early '80s... given inflation, $35 isn't far from that mark. I also seem to recall saving up money from my part-time job to pay for those manuals, too, earning a heckuva lot less than $6/hr.

Young whipper-snappers these days...

-- Steve

 

[51gunner]

These books, nay, the entire 4th Edition is a big rip-off anyways. Even though the PH2 is out, there is still no paladin, no monk, no lances, no mixed alignments (Lawful good, Chaotic good, Lawful evil, and Chaotic evil) and the fact that I play a Paladin who charges through his enemies on his Holy mount armed with a greatlance, the game is unplayable for me unless I want to scrap my level 12 paladin to take a level 1 warlord or something.

... Paladin is in the player's handbook. So are the Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil alignments. Given that alignment is essentially 100% roleplay of the character, you can just do it yourself: it's not like you need rules on that.

As to the issue of price: $35 isn't bad for a hardcover book that you can get hundreds of hours of use out of. Given that we're on a gaming site here, and we often pay sixty dollars for games that can end after ten to twenty hours, D&D is good value.

All a player needs is a book and about $10 worth of dice. The dungeon master needs another two books. Everything after this is supplements (including PHB2), which are completely bloody optional.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Aren't Paladins in the first players handbook?

Are monks still not in?

I'd have thought they'd be in by now.

Monks are coming in PH3.

 

[funksobeefy]

Well its about the same as any other book of the same quality. I dont remember the Paladin in the 1st handbook but its there.

 

[iain62a]

Aren't Paladins in the first players handbook?

Are monks still not in?

I'd have thought they'd be in by now.

Monks are coming in PH3.

Fair enough.

I just thought that since monks are an already established class, they'd have put them in earlier.

I think I'll go buy 4th edition some time soon.