Version 2 Poll

[peteratjet]

... however ...

The alternative naughty poll that has now been locked did ask a useful question. "Would you buy a PDF download?" , which isn't quite the same as the question here.

[ravenflight]

... however ...

The alternative naughty poll that has now been locked did ask a useful question. "Would you buy a PDF download?" , which isn't quite the same as the question here.

Yes peter, but part of the poll questioned whether people would *bleep* their copy from someone, or if they would *bleep* it and pay later. Personally, I thought it was valuable information for Slitherine.

[halbaraddebrest]

Dears

1/An Eversion (not printable) of FOG F2 will not be bought by the majority of players (price, reject of geek, difficulty to use, risk off breaking in tournament...)

2/ A Eversion printable will be only a good thing for people using office printers (for other hight price of printing and bad quality, furthermore this is an invitation to pirate printing 1 or several ...)

3/ An official printable sheet of modifications : not a good way for paying authors for their work

4/ The only way to manage all needs a official printed book. If you want to be sure of the marging you will get : launch a pre-order so you will be sure of the price and quantity.

Please choose the good way, futur of a good rule depends of your choice.

Best regards

Xavier

[Strategos69]

So the best we have to look forward to is the inevitable theft of our property, strikes me as a first class reason to leave this as digital only!! And having  read this mail and looking at the poll where 6% of players brazenly post that they will steal our work it makes me wonder if we really should bother at all.

Fortunately I know that the vast majority of gamers have integrity levels to a much higher standard than some who have posted here. The inevitable outcome of the sort of conduct above is not as suggested, but rather the rules creators would simply call it a day, no one likes to see their property stolen.

However,  I can tell you that the integrity of the vast majority of players is beyond reproach and thanks to them the hobby is largely self  policing. In fact we have to thank a number of players world wide who have written to  us in confidence reporting both theft and piracy. Thanks to them we have been able remove a number of pirate copies from circulation and in one particular instance we have commenced proceeding against an individual thief. 

I think putting this in perspective is important, this is not regarded as petty theft by us or the law and in fact in USA if we take this down the criminal route it is a federal offence.

Note that describing how things happen does not mean I do it or support it, which is implied by your answer. No one here, as far as I have read, has encouraged people to commit ilegal activities, but have pointed out rightly that it can happen (more if you cut all the means to access your product) and it has to be dealt effectively. Piracy kills the hobby but denial is not the solution. Experience has shown that devoting many of your scarce resources to fight it is not the best way to go. And the most effective way is devoting your resources to provide a top quality product that can't be copied, thing that FoG has provided in the past and most players (83%) are fearing won't do in the future.

In fact I have bought the rules and several army lists to support your initiative and because they were quality products. I hope you keep the quality of your products and, as halbaraddebrest points out, some of us want to buy an official printed book that is not just a simple rewording of V1.

[Sarmaticus]

So the best we have to look forward to is the inevitable theft of our property, strikes me as a first class reason to leave this as digital only!! And having  read this mail and looking at the poll where 6% of players brazenly post that they will steal our work it makes me wonder if we really should bother at all.

So if someone makes a note on a slip of paper, to the effect that, say, Elephants get 3 dice - or some such - and puts that in their V1 book, that would be prosecutable piracy? Sounds like human minds are being treated like machines and ideas as software. I hate to think how many ideas have been co-opted from rule-set to rule-set over the last century or more. Sounds like an heyday for lawyers.
Of course, the threat of piracy shouldn't be used to coerce authors and publishers. Nor should they be denied their due nor their rightful control over their products. I'm just curious as to what exactly constitutes pirating of content in this context.

[batesmotel]

The wording of the original poll certainly implied larger scale piracy than making a few notes covering the changes in your V1 rules. And in the current digital world where content is easily copied and reproduced, I can understand why Slitherine is very sensitive to what appears to be people advocating/encouraging piracy. I am not sure that in their position that I would have reacted quite as strongly to what I think was really an insensitively/poorly worded poll choice rather than an encouragement of piracy but then my next meal isn't dependent on the sales of legitimate copies of Slitherine products either.

As a Slitherine customer for PC games as well as TT rules, I will definitely credit Slitherine with being much more reasonable about allowing customers to install more than one version of Slitherine games for their personal use and in assisting customers who have had problems with losing their installed copies of downloaded games or need to switch to a different platform for running it. Given that the PC/MAC games are almost certainly a much bigger portion of their revenue stream, I think that says a lot for their intentions in the TT space. I also believe that being a privately held company allows Slitherine to make decisions based on more than just the business dollars and sense for the bottom line. While JD and Iain may not currently be active TT gamers, my impression from what they say is that they do still want to support that aspect of the hobby with out losing their shirts.

Chris