Sigh Piracy has been long proven to have almost zero impact on sales in a negative manner. Its pretty much been proven to have a postive impact on sales. There are a chunk of people who use it to try before they buy, there are a chunk of people who do it due to an inability to get the product and there are a chunk of people who wouldn't buy it to begin with.

Well then, Piracy can only help the non-pdf Star Wars game line. Who needs pdfs?

Also worth mentioning there may actually be internal pushback. By not releasing official PDFs the pirates are required to actually scan and process the books themselves. Work is still work, so by keeping the books in hardcopy the bootlegs PDFs at least take time to start showing up, time that can be spent selling the hardcopies....

It's sort of like DRM, it doesn't stop the pirates, but it at least allows a window shortly following release where the easiest, safest way to get the product is to just buy it at full retail... Since initial sales figures are kinda big deal in determining total profits, you want as many people buying up front as possible....

I believe this is the precise reason that WotC has stated for pulling digital PDFs for the D&D system. I'm not sure if they've changed this policy but I do remember several years ago when they just suddenly stopped all digital rulebooks.

No, they are releasing their entire back catalog as PDFs.

I'm not sure what the policy is on putting a link to the proof, but if you go to http://www.drivethrurpg.com/index.php and scroll down the left side you will see both FFG and WotC there. WotC has nearly 800 PDFs on there.

Also worth mentioning there may actually be internal pushback. By not releasing official PDFs the pirates are required to actually scan and process the books themselves. Work is still work, so by keeping the books in hardcopy the bootlegs PDFs at least take time to start showing up, time that can be spent selling the hardcopies....

It's sort of like DRM, it doesn't stop the pirates, but it at least allows a window shortly following release where the easiest, safest way to get the product is to just buy it at full retail... Since initial sales figures are kinda big deal in determining total profits, you want as many people buying up front as possible....

I believe this is the precise reason that WotC has stated for pulling digital PDFs for the D&D system. I'm not sure if they've changed this policy but I do remember several years ago when they just suddenly stopped all digital rulebooks.

No, they are releasing their entire back catalog as PDFs.

I'm not sure what the policy is on putting a link to the proof, but if you go to http://www.drivethrurpg.com/index.php and scroll down the left side you will see both FFG and WotC there. WotC has nearly 800 PDFs on there.

That's the thing though, that's just WotC's back-catalog. Everything they're putting up is stuff they're not really publishing re-prints of and has long since been scanned and uploaded for piracy. So it makes sense for them now to sell them digitally to try and get money from people who would rather pirate than hunt down books which may or may not be over-priced due to their age/rarity.

There's nothing from 5e except outdated playtest materials and a free supplement. So WotC, at least, does indeed seem to think it's best to hold back on digital PDF copies for the current edition, while still allowing digital copies of their books to be made in other ways, such as in Fantasy Grounds which has a number of built-in methods to prevent people from easily sharing the materials.

WotC stopped publishing books in pdf format during the 4E run because they thought it would help with piracy (it didn't) and force more people to pay subscription fees for their character generator.

In my line of work I have discovered that 'Common Sense' is a super power... it's not actually that common. I reckon it should be a Signiature Ability for Force Users. I'll start with this:

Common Sense Base Ability. Cost: 45 (yes NOT 30!). Once per game session the force user may over-ride any decision made by the GM. The use must be justified by finishing the sentence with,,, '... because, you know, it's Common Sense..'. Uses can include, but is not limited to pdfs, RAW Core Rulebooks, supplements, published FFG adventures, Intellectual Property, LucasFilm, Star Wars, and other .... stuff

Shared Common Sense . Cost 10. Once per session Common Sense can be used by other party members, additionally, the GM can now over-ride a player by stating that something is 'Common Sense'.. examples include 'Jawas shouting UTINNI'

*now back to the serious threads*

... and back in the day, before pdfs (showing my age now), we'd have to keep sneaking into the photocopier room at school and run off a few pages.. two on point - one at each corridor corner, one on point at the bottom of the stairs, one on point at the door keeping an eye on the staffroom door. We'd be risking detention, letters home to parents etc etc

It was an abuse of trust being a 6th former,,,, our teachers would have been '...very disappointed..' if we'd been caught. They had their suspicions by Christmas half term, but 'The 6th Form Photocopy Gang' were never caught.

... and back in the day, before pdfs (showing my age now), we'd have to keep sneaking into the photocopier room at school and run off a few pages.. two on point - one at each corridor corner, one on point at the bottom of the stairs, one on point at the door keeping an eye on the staffroom door. We'd be risking detention, letters home to parents etc etc

It was an abuse of trust being a 6th former,,,, our teachers would have been '...very disappointed..' if we'd been caught. They had their suspicions by Christmas half term, but 'The 6th Form Photocopy Gang' were never caught.

Ha! Love that!

I just got my dad to photocopy character sheets and stuff at work. My husband, when he was my college boyfriend, did once photocopy an entire Shadowrun book and mail it to me over the summer, but he was a young man in love

... and back in the day, before pdfs (showing my age now), we'd have to keep sneaking into the photocopier room at school and run off a few pages.. two on point - one at each corridor corner, one on point at the bottom of the stairs, one on point at the door keeping an eye on the staffroom door. We'd be risking detention, letters home to parents etc etc

It was an abuse of trust being a 6th former,,,, our teachers would have been '...very disappointed..' if we'd been caught. They had their suspicions by Christmas half term, but 'The 6th Form Photocopy Gang' were never caught.

Ha! Love that!

I just got my dad to photocopy character sheets and stuff at work. My husband, when he was my college boyfriend, did once photocopy an entire Shadowrun book and mail it to me over the summer, but he was a young man in love

He's a Keeper

Also worth mentioning there may actually be internal pushback. By not releasing official PDFs the pirates are required to actually scan and process the books themselves. Work is still work, so by keeping the books in hardcopy the bootlegs PDFs at least take time to start showing up, time that can be spent selling the hardcopies....

It's sort of like DRM, it doesn't stop the pirates, but it at least allows a window shortly following release where the easiest, safest way to get the product is to just buy it at full retail... Since initial sales figures are kinda big deal in determining total profits, you want as many people buying up front as possible....

I believe this is the precise reason that WotC has stated for pulling digital PDFs for the D&D system. I'm not sure if they've changed this policy but I do remember several years ago when they just suddenly stopped all digital rulebooks.

No, they are releasing their entire back catalog as PDFs.

I'm not sure what the policy is on putting a link to the proof, but if you go to http://www.drivethrurpg.com/index.php and scroll down the left side you will see both FFG and WotC there. WotC has nearly 800 PDFs on there.

That's the thing though, that's just WotC's back-catalog. Everything they're putting up is stuff they're not really publishing re-prints of and has long since been scanned and uploaded for piracy. So it makes sense for them now to sell them digitally to try and get money from people who would rather pirate than hunt down books which may or may not be over-priced due to their age/rarity.

There's nothing from 5e except outdated playtest materials and a free supplement. So WotC, at least, does indeed seem to think it's best to hold back on digital PDF copies for the current edition, while still allowing digital copies of their books to be made in other ways, such as in Fantasy Grounds which has a number of built-in methods to prevent people from easily sharing the materials.

They have all the premium core rulebook reprints up on DriveThruRPG now. I have bought them all. As far as 5E, we don't know what they have up their sleeve. The translations are not being done yet, and that does not deal with PDFs.

I am going to wait until they have some good amount of options for 5E before I will be interested in purchasing.

Ok so (stupidly in my opinion) pdf files of books have been declared something else than books, what about epub and mobi files? I think that those are classified as books, so maybe there is something that can be done with those kind of files.

Ok so (stupidly in my opinion) pdf files of books have been declared something else than books, what about epub and mobi files? I think that those are classified as books, so maybe there is something that can be done with those kind of files.

Those rights likely belong to someone else too. If I had to guess it would be Lucas Books since they produce all Star Wars books. It's really important to remember just how big the Star Wars market is and just how divided up it is in it's various products. Things that seem simple to us are only that way because we don't have to worry about the nuts and bolts of who owns what rights to which segments of the Star Wars franchise.

The lack of epub files or mobi files indicates to me that FFG specifically have a contract to produce a game. This game is sold in the format of books, but it is likely thought of as a game in contracts and the use of e files likely falls into other contracts for other purposes.

Since FFG has produced e files for their other games it stands to reason that the contracts they hold for Star Wars simply do not allow for the production of e files of any stripe. It likely would have been a more costly deal for them and I find it likely that they don't make enough off their e file sales from other games to justify the extra cost that likely would have been incurred when gaining permission to make an e file of some sort for this game.

To be honest there are a fair number of reasons that FFG didn't gain those rights. The two most obvious ones to me are the added cost of having them and the likely hood that someone else already owns those rights. And at the end of the day odds are strong that the negotiating parties didn't see it as a good business move. It may irritate us but at the end of the day FFG, Disney, and Lucasfilm are businesses and they are ultimately going to look at the cost vs the profits of doing e files. I suspect the profits were never projected to outweigh the cost.

Ok so (stupidly in my opinion) pdf files of books have been declared something else than books, what about epub and mobi files? I think that those are classified as books, so maybe there is something that can be done with those kind of files.

Likely not. It's how the license is worded. Since it was written in the 80's before PDFs, or epub, or mobi, it probably just defines the concept of an "electronic format" without discussing file formats or digital distribution types.

Ok so (stupidly in my opinion) pdf files of books have been declared something else than books, what about epub and mobi files? I think that those are classified as books, so maybe there is something that can be done with those kind of files.

I've never seen the agreement, but it's very likely that the problem is not format specific (such as PDF) but simply any digital format. Such as, they consider a rulebook provided in a digital format to be a digital game. Again, I'm neither a lawyer nor have I seen any of these agreements but I personally find it unlikely that they explicitly call out PDFs.. they may not even explicitly call out digital copies of rulebooks and FFG lawyers seeing the terms of the license have counseled against taking the chance.

Wow, how many times are people going to re-create this thread?

I think it is unfortunate that the digital publication/PDF issue didn't get renegotiated when the FFG-Star Wars licensing agreement got renewed a few months ago.

Wow, how many times are people going to re-create this thread?

I think it is unfortunate that the digital publication/PDF issue didn't get renegotiated when the FFG-Star Wars licensing agreement got renewed a few months ago.

No kidding. But I don't think FFG has the money to push for the change and I suspect because EA and FFG's licenses are not synched it is just not possible to renegotiate and straighten it out with out all 3 parties at the table.

Wow, how many times are people going to re-create this thread?

I think it is unfortunate that the digital publication/PDF issue didn't get renegotiated when the FFG-Star Wars licensing agreement got renewed a few months ago.

No kidding. But I don't think FFG has the money to push for the change and I suspect because EA and FFG's licenses are not synched it is just not possible to renegotiate and straighten it out with out all 3 parties at the table.

This is a big factor. It's not JUST FFG re-negotiating because, until the EA license is changed they hold those rights and they can't be transferred to someone else. So the EA license would have to be renegotiated first.

and because their license does not come up at the same time and they have no reason to change it and Disney likely does not care license likely will not change. Though is enough fans complained to the head of Lucas they might have some impetus to change it.

The sad fact is that, though it is business they are losing a market. Someone will, at some point, format a PDF from the books and release it via Torrent. The only means to get the information in PDF format will be via that method and everyone loses that could make a profit from it. Many people that prefer PDFs are computer savvy and can get access to the free torrent version. Having access means they have little inclination to do the right thing and pay for the PDF via DrivethruRPG.com. Simply put, that fact alone would cause me to have incentive to resolve the matter. A free version of anything is a loss in profits...

Daeglan

As I understand the situation, Lucas Arts was disbanded by Disney. It no longer exists. Contacting the head of Lucas seems a waste since they do not exist, unless I am missing information I am unaware of...? If I am please enlighten me.

The sad fact is that, though it is business they are losing a market. Someone will, at some point, format a PDF from the books and release it via Torrent. The only means to get the information in PDF format will be via that method and everyone loses that could make a profit from it. Many people that prefer PDFs are computer savvy and can get access to the free torrent version. Having access means they have little inclination to do the right thing and pay for the PDF via DrivethruRPG.com. Simply put, that fact alone would cause me to have incentive to resolve the matter. A free version of anything is a loss in profits...

Until it's scanned and torrented, the only way to get is to buy dead trees. So each book has at least a couple months where it's going to be selling. They might be "losing" the PDF market, but they are making more of the dead tree market... and by not providing a PDF at all it only slows down the piracy aspect more, as it requires the pirates to actually scan it, and the piratees to find it.

As I understand the situation, Lucas Arts was disbanded by Disney. It no longer exists. Contacting the head of Lucas seems a waste since they do not exist, unless I am missing information I am unaware of...? If I am please enlighten me.

In conversation people commonly mix up Lucasfilm (the company of all things George) and LucasArts (the gaming arm of Lucasfilm, which got defunct after the whole "Make it about boba fett even though you're 70% done", and "Darth Maul and Darth Talon are friends" incidents).

The sad fact is that, though it is business they are losing a market. Someone will, at some point, format a PDF from the books and release it via Torrent. The only means to get the information in PDF format will be via that method and everyone loses that could make a profit from it. Many people that prefer PDFs are computer savvy and can get access to the free torrent version. Having access means they have little inclination to do the right thing and pay for the PDF via DrivethruRPG.com. Simply put, that fact alone would cause me to have incentive to resolve the matter. A free version of anything is a loss in profits...

Ok .... again ....

A. pirating has been shown to overall not effect profit and legal sales.

B. The COST of renegotiating the contract likely outweighs any profits they could get from selling pdfs. Lets not treat this as if FFG is just sitting there all dumbfounded as people pirate pdf copies of their books. In the grand scheme of things EA doesn't care, they aren't making money off the RPG anyway so they lose nothing in not letting FFG use pdf rights. FFG isn't losing much money, based on what we know of pirating, but it will cost them a lot of money to not only negotiate new terms with EA but also to pay them for the right to use pdfs.

I don't know why people continue to treat the matter as if FFG is stupid for not going after that hawt pdf lootz but the honest truth is if it were profitable for FFG to produce pdf's of this line they would already be doing it. They'd of paid EA for it, paid their lawyers to draw up the new terms and rolled them out with great fanfare.

Out of curiosity...

Taking as granted the explanations that FFG lacks the rights to "standalone digital games"...

Assume for a moment FFG went for the classic D&D approach, with 1 book for players, and 2 books for GMs, to make a standalone game.

Do you think that apprach wold bypass the "standalone digital game" wording and make PDF sales possible?

Not suggesting this, jst wondering if the contract law would allow it.

Out of curiosity...

Taking as granted the explanations that FFG lacks the rights to "standalone digital games"...

Assume for a moment FFG went for the classic D&D approach, with 1 book for players, and 2 books for GMs, to make a standalone game.

Do you think that apprach wold bypass the "standalone digital game" wording and make PDF sales possible?

Not suggesting this, jst wondering if the contract law would allow it.

Without seeing the contract in question there is no way to be sure. However FFG is a smart company. They've shown to be both creatively savvy and business savvy. I mean hell they've ushered in an golden era of Star Wars gaming (in various formats). I think if there was a way to make this game and sell a pdf I think they would have done it. FFG isn't the kind of company that strikes me as not having explored all possibilities.

I say this a lot on the subject honestly, if there was a way to do it and that way wasn't expensive for both FFG and us (remember that if the cost of producing the game goes up, as it likely would, those cost will be passed onto us) I think it would be done. They have a team of very good legal experts (they'd have to be good considering the kind of games FFG seems to be able to get access to). Those lawyers probably explored all possibilities.

Out of curiosity...

Taking as granted the explanations that FFG lacks the rights to "standalone digital games"...

Assume for a moment FFG went for the classic D&D approach, with 1 book for players, and 2 books for GMs, to make a standalone game.

Do you think that approach wold bypass the "standalone digital game" wording and make PDF sales possible?

Not suggesting this, jst wondering if the contract law would allow it.

If it did WotC likely would have done it back when they had the license.

WotC was stuck with dead trees too, only allowed PDFs of "promotional materials" which should sound familiar...