Gurps is dying a slow death

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

As for PDFs, I see sales on RPG books all the time. It only cost me $10 to get A Time of War several months ago when it was on deep sale at Drive-thru RPG (I think that's where I got it).

Drive-thru RPG does Steam-like ridiculously-deep sales on occasion. Though in this context it may be notable that as far as I know e23 doesn't do sales.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

And this I dislike. No used PDFs stores. Everything's full-priced, forever.

I understand ... but full price on a PDF tends to be pretty reasonable. Maybe even around what the used price would have been for the print product, in some cases.

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Drive-thru RPG does Steam-like ridiculously-deep sales on occasion. Though in this context it may be notable that as far as I know e23 doesn't do sales.

I just checked out DriveThru RPG again, and they've got stuff on sale right now. I don't know how much of it is any use to anyone, but their BattleTech stuff is pretty cheap (if I didn't have all of it, already).

As for e23, I don't know their marketing strategy and I'm not going to guess. I buy my GURPS PDF from there (duh) as well as my few Heavy Gear PDFs. I'll finish my HG PDF collection after GURPS and BattleTech.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

And so the company who made the product continues to profit from its' sales, rather than potentially losing sales to used sales (which they don't see a penny from). I'm not seeing the problem.

The problem is called "first sale doctrine".

When you buy something, it's supposed to become yours. And you're allowed to do whatever you want with your property, including reselling it. Even copyrighted materials like books and CDs are considered to fall under first sale doctrine; you may not own the copyright, but you can resell the original medium, or let people borrow it. Public libraries exist under copyright because of first sale doctrine: it's their book, they can loan it out to whomever they please.

Of course, this is easy when your medium is physical; for years, physical media resisted digital duplication, and even if you copy a CD you don't get all the album art and stuff (and at best your copy will be a relatively short-lived CDR, and your scanned album art probably won't print as well, either). But now that there's no physical medium at all and things like "loaning" and "resale" are effectively indistinguishable from unauthorized distribution, the IP industry is predictably choosing to resolve the conflict by encroaching on the long-standing rights of the public - and since the courts have so far resisted the elimination of first sale, publishers are doing an end run around the courts by moving to licensing agreements, which grant no first sale rights (and in fact usually grant the licensee as few rights as possible, while letting the licensor do anything they want), and justifying it all with a tiny-violin tale about about "lost sales".

[Gizensha]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

Agreed.

To drag us back on-topic: I'd have to agree with Sunrunner. In this industry, at this time, any RPG company that is still open and producing a product is winning.

At this time? Considering how many RPG publishers folded even during the hey-day of the industry, I'd be willing to argue that the two ways of winning have always been 'consistently making profit and producing product' or 'be purchased by Hasbro'

And, well, SJGames isn't WotC so I doubt the latter's going to happen.

(FTR, not that it matters, I'm British and so am neither Democrat or Republican)

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

Steam has stupid-cheap deals. I've picked up so many games on Steam for next to nothing, it's insane.

I think my PC copy of Portal was gifted from a friend during the 'Pre-order Portal 2, Get Portal Free' offer... Possibly not, he's insane enough to go "You haven't played it on PC yet! *purchase, gift*"

[Gudiomen]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

I understand ... but full price on a PDF tends to be pretty reasonable. Maybe even around what the used price would have been for the print product, in some cases.

This is very true, specially if you live outside the US and have to pay import taxes, transportation costs, etc... not to mention the practical hassle of buying something you haven't quality checked (one of my books came with the backing split), having to wait a hellishly long time, having to go to the post-office because they tried delivering when you weren't home...

Trust me, for anyone that lives outside of the US/Canada/Europe... the move to digital was heaven-sent.

[sjard]

This thread seems to have entered the point of repeating itself and on into derailment territory. That coupled with personal attacks and reports of trolling and this thread is now closed.