So around 4:00 AM this morning, this hits my inbox:
Wizards of the Coast has notified us that we may no longer sell or distribute theirPDF products. Accordingly, after April 6 at 11:59 PM Pacific time, Wizards of theCoast 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 youhave 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 http://paizo.com/store/downloads.
Sincerely yours,The Paizo Customer Service Team
The stunning grasp of customer relations held by Wizards of the Coast continues to astound me.
EDIT: Zachary over at RPGBlog2 wins the “Most Useful Response to WotC’s Action” award. He is compiling a list of special offers that other companies are offering in the wake of Wizards’ ill-considered action. But hey, what do they know?
And the “Most Visceral Response to WotC’s Action” goes to Jeff Rients over at Jeff’s Gameblog. ‘Nuff said.
“The stunning grasp of customer relations held by Wizards of the Coast continues to astound me.“
Amen. Remember when making games used to be about wanting people to have fun, not just trying to get as much as possible from their wallets?
I don’t care what WotC says about this move being necessitated by piracy issues – that’s BS of the highest order. I mean, why pull OOP product along with the new stuff, since there’s no way they could lose money to piracy on product that they didn’t spend a penny to produce.
(And, as far as customer relations go, if they had even an inkling of concern for current and past customers, WotC wouldn’t be pulling the older TSR stuff from the market – they’d be reducing the price, or offering it for free in some form.)
It’s simple. If you’re buying old OOP material, you’re not spending money on new 4e books, which is bad.
This has been WOTC’s operating assumption for the last 10 years. It surprises me that anybody’s actually surprised by it.
So, Hamlet, why did they start the ESD program? (circa 2001, was it?) Why did they allow those PDFs to continue to be sold for the past seven years?
So, Hamlet, why did they start the ESD program? (circa 2001, was it?) Why did they allow those PDFs to continue to be sold for the past seven years?
Obfuscational stupidity.
Seriously though, look at the changes in management over at WOTC.
Glad you liked it!
I hope tomorrow’s post is helpful, too–a look at some of the gaming companies that “got it right”.