Discord as a DriveThruRPG Alternative?

[AsenRG]

Partly because it isn't hairsplitting to me. I see arguments about this could or might or maybe be bad in the future if someone evil takes over. But so far it seems largely run effectively, with mostly consumer benefits and what no one is saying but also seems to be true is mostly publisher benefits. I mean BedrockBrendan I'm guessing you make more now under a large OBS environment that you did in a fragmented market where folks first had to know you existed then find where on the internet you might sell and then trust your shopping engine. People seem to be forgetting the benefits of OBS's position TO THEM and only focusing on where it might hurt them.

The one exception that I completely agree with is the instant off for complaints over content and that's a big one.

Here's the full quote which provides a lot more and different context:

Monopoly is a control or advantage obtained by one entity over the commercial market in a specific area. Monopolization is an offense under federal anti trust law. The two elements of monopolization are (1) the power to fix prices and exclude competitors within the relevant market. (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen or historical accident.

A market condition in which there is only one seller and one buyer is called a bilateral monopoly. A situation where one buyer controls the market is called monopsony.

My emphasis added.

Man, the definition is in the first sentence! After this, as law works, you have a mention of the relevant area which is treating the problem, and clarification of the elements that courts are looking for to determine whether the punishable offense was committed.
Your emphasis is from one of those elements. But the definition is only part of the whole.

For comparison, you can check their definition of mail theft, which is even more limited: the definition is only part of the sentence.

Mail theft occurs when thieves steal mail that is not their own from postal trucks, collection boxes, apartment mailbox panels, co-op mailing racks, and neighborhood delivery and collection box units. Thieves often steal mail to obtain credit cards, social security numbers, bank statements, checks, and other personal information.
Mail and identity theft has been reported by postal inspectors to be the #1 white-collar crime in the U.S today. Some of the steps recommended to prevent mail theft, among others, include not leaving mail in the mailbox overnight, having the post office hold mail while you're out of town, and not sending cash in the mail, not leaving bills in your mail box for the mail carrier to pick up, and immediately notifying your post office and anyone with whom you do business via the mail if you change your address.
The following is a federal statute governing mail theft:
Section 1702.
Obstruction of correspondence
Whoever takes any letter, postal card, or package out of any post office or any authorized depository for mail matter, or from any letter or mail carrier, or which has been in any post office or authorized depository, or in the custody of any letter or mail carrier, before it has been delivered to the person to whom it was directed, with design to obstruct the correspondence, or to pry into the business or secrets of another, or opens, secretes, embezzles, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

Again, the first sentence is clearly the definition - the rest is known as "details".
Mind you, I'm not arguing that OBS should be punished by law, I'm arguing that it fits the definition of monopoly. So all I needed was the definition.
And seriously, buying the RPGNow and merging with Roll20 would cover the rest of the element (no, it doesn't matter that it was a good idea, business-wise). The first element has been stated in the thread already by all the publishers present...

Luckily, I'm not in a court of law and have no intention to help any such suit, if one was started.

But for arguing on a forum the definition was plenty, in my book.

 

[Bunch]

I am not on Lulu or Itchio. But I am on plenty of other platforms (like I said, I am not exclusive to OBS). Right now there isn't much you can do because there isn't a viable alternative. Paizo I've stopped using because it just wasn't worth the effort, and now I have PDFs up on OBS and on our Print seller website. There are still PDFs out there scattered on other sites but for the most part there are just two places to go.

If you did want me and other publishers to invest more time in other platforms, the way to do that is to start buying PDFs from other sites and letting publishers know about sites you find that you think are better than OBS. Itchio looks interesting to me but like I said, I don't really understand it.

I would say check out itch.io. Due to the number of bundles they have run and especially a few back in 2020 my pdf catalog there is now substantial enough that I try to check it before I buy anything on the more indie side of the publisher scale. Humble Bundle if you have enough games is also something to maybe consider.

But part of my point here is there isn't much to be done at the moment, because OBS has such a dominant position in the market.

Individually, something you can probably do is, if you know a publisher is putting a PDF out and it isn't on OBS, promote them where you can. That is good general advice whether something is on OBS or not (if you want to see more of something in the RPG world, make sure you are posting about it, reviewing it (and I mean writing actual reviews not leaving star reviews, letting gamer YouTube channels know about it so it gets covered, etc). Part of the issue here is there used to be a more vital RPGs news ecosystem and lots of places you could go to get the word out. Over time the reach of most of those have shrunk or they've gotten saturated with so much content coming out, and it is just harder and hard to get eyes on something from a press release or initial marketing effort. That is a reason OBS is so important as well. They are effectively the RPG news page for a lot of people. That is where people go to find out what just got released and what is hot.

But my big point isn't even any of that. It is just: Don't weaponize OBS to help control the RPG content landscape. Even well intentioned efforts mean there is just greater likelihood of self censorship on the part of Publishers (which again wouldn't be a problem if OBS was one among many competitors, but it is basically the only game in town). There are a lot of things like policy guidelines that sound nice, there are occasionally very unpopular people who get taken down for whatever reason, but any changes to OBS have a lasting effect for all publishers to consider (and it isn't always going to be in the direction people expect).

This last point I agree with completely but then I'm pretty tolerant of free speech in general even things I find disgusting. I vote with my wallet. I don't care if other people want something I don't like.

 

[chuckdee]

Also, it shouldn’t be a requirement for these online sellers to unify their libraries. That’s up to the customer to keep all their usernames and passwords straight.

It's not a requirement, but it sure is a QOL improvement to have them all in one place. Saves on multiple purchases, etc, and the retailer who can have the largest library consolidation gets my money.

 

[chuckdee]

I do now, but I still occasionally get very strong demands for POD. Admittedly, a part of that is likely coming from overseas folks, who I have to charge an arm and a leg for shipping if they want my stuff. DTRPG takes care of that for them.

Which is an advantage that the store has because of its position in the market. There's a lot of things that DTRPG just does that we take for granted, and that they didn't always do- they built up to it. I remember when they didn't have EU friendly shipping.

 

[chuckdee]

See here is where we probably disagree a lot. I think we are best to just leave points A and B as we have gone back on those two points again and again (and it is just clear we aren't going to see eye to eye). But in terms of the consequences of OBS suddenly doing something like saying 'no more story games', yes it would seriously impact how many story games get made. There is not question in my mind about that. It would be like Amazon suddenly saying "No science fiction" (actually it would be more significant than Amazon saying that, because int eh case of Amazon there are alternative streaming platforms). Would story games go away entirely? No. Would they fully recover? I doubt it. And if they did I think it would take a long time for them to find a platform and migrate an audience and build an audience on that platform.

I think whether they would recover and how they recover is dependent on one thing that you don't have in your calculus - whether there is someone that is willing and able to step in. At one point, Steam had relatively few older games, concentrating on only the new market. GOG stepped in that space, and Steam saw that they had to start to do some of it in order to not lose the market share to GOG. If DTRPG said 'No Storygames' and someone with enough capital (after all, it was a relatively underfunded few that started the site in the first place), stepped in to take that niche- then started to add other things to their site, do you think that DTRPG would still maintain that position?

 

[Ladybird]

I am not saying the government needs to step in and bust up OBS or something. I am just saying we should be mindful of what the actual situation is and what impact it is both having on content and what potential problems it could create. I think the best way forward is for people to at least consider supporting competition when they see it and when it emerges, and be more cautious about applying pressure to OBS to take down stuff they don't like or rise up new content policies (because I think a lot of these kinds of efforts will have damaging unintended consequences to the hobby).

TBH I actually do this, because I do agree that having a variety of stores around is better.

But, as an idle aside, if my first trip to a site they show me open nazi imagery, and their corporate social media contains open hate speech, I'm never going to buy anything from that site, or direct people to it. There's clearly a market for it, sure, but I'm not going to contribute to it.

 

[Bunch]

I think there would be outrage. But even if you look at the OGL, which was a massive burst of outrage, and definitely a bright red line for like most gamers who are online, it has kind of settled down. Now maybe there is still enough energy that when 6E comes out, that anger is going to impact sales. And I can only speak to the little sliver of the universe I see from my vantage point only and in reality, but my impression initially was the OGL thing was going to destroy WOTC. Now I am not so sure. I think ultimately people still want WOTC D&D and that is what they are going to buy. They might not like what WOTC did, but I also see a lot more people defining them now. But we will see

The outrage died down because they backed down and went 180 degrees into the "lets make it free and clear through a license they could never pull" direction. That's what I would expect would happen if OBS tried to pull something outrages like ban OGL/Storygames. Part of why I feel the strongest arguments are not extreme examples because I don't believe they could be pulled off. We might permanently disagree on that but that's where I'm coming from.

Like I said, Story games wouldn't go away. But that kind of move would create enormous uncertainty and I am not confident they would recover from that (also in that time, it would also mean for at least like a 2-6 month period while people try to recalibrate, you have a bunch of releases that get completely torpedoed). So it wouldn't be good, even if in the end something like a new platform emerged and was able to rectify the situation in some way. Now would all the angry gamers, even those who don't play story games, go to this new platform? I doubt it. If you look at how angry people get at social media companies in large numbers and say they are going to migrate elsewhere, and how that never quite seems to take hold, I think it isn't impossible but it shows there is huge risk of that energy dissipating. Or just look at what happened when Google + went away. We all tried to salvage whatever groups we had on there (I had one with over 100 members for example, can't recall the exact number). It just proved impossible to migrate that energy onto another platform in my case. But then you do occasionally get things like Discord. So i am not saying "No, a good outcome can't happen". I just think there is a great likelihood that them doing that would have a more harmful effect on story games long term than a positive one.

Social media exists solely on the size of it's network because you can't have a social media platform if you don't have a large group. Sales platforms don't but it's nice to have. I think a point of sale site will recover faster than a social network because the need for all my friends to be there doesn't exist for me to buy a PDF. Only the publisher needs to be there. I do notice almost all the big guys run their personal shops and an OBS presence and to me that mitigates the power OBS has. Even for indie games because it becomes blatantly obvious if they pull indie developer X's product because it mentions XYZ but oh hey Goodman has a product with the same thing and hey so does Frog God Games why weren't those pulled? Why? Because you can't pull that crap with them and leverage size over them due to personal storefronts.

 

[chuckdee]

I am not saying the government needs to step in and bust up OBS or something. I am just saying we should be mindful of what the actual situation is and what impact it is both having on content and what potential problems it could create. I think the best way forward is for people to at least consider supporting competition when they see it and when it emerges, and be more cautious about applying pressure to OBS to take down stuff they don't like or rise up new content policies (because I think a lot of these kinds of efforts will have damaging unintended consequences to the hobby).

So I have to ask this - you said that you self-censor. The incidents of DTRPG taking down content are not that widespread. How do you know what you censor would fall under that? It seems that it has to be pretty extreme to get this treatment from the incidents I've seen, and this is pretty much theoretical based on a few incidents of them using some clause on some things that were pretty out there.

 

[Luca]

OBS is quite obviously an effective monopoly, if not a formal one meeting some legal definition.
If you're not convinced, all you need to remember is what happened with James Raggi and Zak Smith.

Zak was, without doubt, one of the best (if not THE best) golden gooses for Raggi. Most of his supplements were consistently in the top 5 sellers for LotFP (Raggi's RPG company).

The moment future Zak's products were banned by OBS due to Mandy's allegations, Raggi was forced to drop him as an author. Raggi himself stated that, apart from the loss of sales on potential future products, this immediately cost him several thousands bucks as at the time there was a new supplement which was already in an advanced state of production and all the work and costs incurred instantly became lost money.

Now, LotFP is one of the very few RPG companies which allow their owner to make a living. In fact, I believe Raggi also employs another 2-3 people and has stated in the past the company was routinely able to gather a 5-digit yearly revenue. And yet, the moment OBS forced his hand, he had to immediately submit or he would have 100% gone bankrupt.

If LotFP is in such a situation, you can be fucking sure that 99.99% of existing RPG companies are in the same boat (or worse).

Basically, if your company's name doesn't rhyme with Lizards of the Toast, if you want to sell RPGs for any not-irrelevant amount of money you sell on OBS, or you don't sell.

And OBS will absolutely gatekeep based not just on content, but even on internet shit storms with zero official legal standing. They already did it at least once.
No matter what you think of that specific incident, I think it should be rather obvious where the problem lies, here.

 

[Bunch]

OBS is quite obviously an effective monopoly, if not a formal one meeting some legal definition.
If you're not convinced, all you need to remember is what happened with James Raggi and Zak Smith.

Zak was, without doubt, one of the best (if not THE best) golden gooses for Raggi. Most of his supplements were consistently in the top 5 sellers for LotFP (Raggi's RPG company).

The moment future Zak's products were banned by OBS due to Mandy's allegations, Raggi was forced to drop him as an author. Raggi himself stated that, apart from the loss of sales on potential future products, this immediately cost him several thousands bucks as at the time there was a new supplement which was already in an advanced state of production and all the work and costs incurred instantly became lost money.

Now, LotFP is one of the very few RPG companies which allow their owner to make a living. In fact, I believe Raggi also employs another 2-3 people and has stated in the past the company was routinely able to gather a 5-digit yearly revenue. And yet, the moment OBS forced his hand, he had to immediately submit or he would have 100% gone bankrupt.

If LotFP is in such a situation, you can be fucking sure that 99.99% of existing RPG companies are in the same boat (or worse).

Basically, if your company's name doesn't rhyme with Lizards of the Toast, if you want to sell RPGs for any not-irrelevant amount of moment you sell on OBS, or you don't sell.

And OBS will absolutely gatekeep based not just on content, but even on internet shit storms with zero official legal standing. They already did it at least once.
No matter what you think of that specific incident, I think it should be rather obvious where the problem lies, here.

Zak really is a crappy poster child for getting me and probably most people to care about something.
I'll counter with Bill Webb who also faced an internet outrage mob. OBS didn't feel compelled to react to that in any way.
Maybe the lesson is if you want to be all edgy know where the ledge is and don't jump off.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

So I have to ask this - you said that you self-censor. The incidents of DTRPG taking down content are not that widespread. How do you know what you censor would fall under that? It seems that it has to be pretty extreme to get this treatment from the incidents I've seen, and this is pretty much theoretical based on a few incidents of them using some clause on some things that were pretty out there.

First off, I don't know what the actual rates of things coming down are. I am not sure if that is tracked or not. And so I not know off hand 1) how many things get temporarily taken down for review and 2) how many things have permanently been taken down. Both would be a major concern though. And the issue is you have to consider what might happen not just what has happened. Keep in mind the reporting change is fairly recent. So prior to that I wasn't terribly concerned. Now it is very much a big deal if you include something and it goes into an area where someone can theoretically report you and you get pulled.

So I don't know what I censor would fall under it or not that is both the point and the problem. If I knew exactly where the line was, it would be a lot easier. But without that knowledge you have to manage risk and if I am investing the amount I invest in an RPG and I know I have this one window to gather steam and recoup, then that is going to impact the content (and I can tell you it has-----and I don't think I am being overly paranoid at all by adjusting things if I have a concern that it might trip up that reporting system). Do I want to do that? No. Do I think it makes RPGs worse overall? In many cases yes. My stuff isn't particularly edgy but I do worry about it and I definitely will have an idea I think is interesting but realize if it got read the wrong way, or if someone who really hated me needed a reason to report, it could be an issue. And in some cases you do say, well I am going to do this anyway because I think it is a matter of quality and or I think the intent is pretty clear.

Again having things come down, even if the review period is brief, is not minor. That is very real concern, not something that is just theoretical. And it is how the system is now designed to work

 

[BedrockBrendan]

But, as an idle aside, if my first trip to a site they show me open nazi imagery, and their corporate social media contains open hate speech, I'm never going to buy anything from that site, or direct people to it. There's clearly a market for it, sure, but I'm not going to contribute to it.

I am not talking about nazi imagery though

 

[BedrockBrendan]

If DTRPG said 'No Storygames' and someone with enough capital (after all, it was a relatively underfunded few that started the site in the first place), stepped in to take that niche- then started to add other things to their site, do you think that DTRPG would still maintain that position?

it would be very iffy in my opinion because this is such a niche industry and the profit margins are super narrow. So whoever stepped in would also have to have all their ducks in a row, a good bit of luck, and make all the right moves. I think it is possible. I don't think it is at all clear how this would pan out, and I am not particularly optimistic in the present environment

 

[Ladybird]

OBS is quite obviously an effective monopoly, if not a formal one meeting some legal definition.
If you're not convinced, all you need to remember is what happened with James Raggi and Zak Smith.

Zak was, without doubt, one of the best (if not THE best) golden gooses for Raggi. Most of his supplements were consistently in the top 5 sellers for LotFP (Raggi's RPG company).

The moment future Zak's products were banned by OBS due to Mandy's allegations, Raggi was forced to drop him as an author. Raggi himself stated that, apart from the loss of sales on potential future products, this immediately cost him several thousands bucks as at the time there was a new supplement which was already in an advanced state of production and all the work and costs incurred instantly became lost money.

Now, LotFP is one of the very few RPG companies which allow their owner to make a living. In fact, I believe Raggi also employs another 2-3 people and has stated in the past the company was routinely able to gather a 5-digit yearly revenue. And yet, the moment OBS forced his hand, he had to immediately submit or he would have 100% gone bankrupt.

If LotFP is in such a situation, you can be fucking sure that 99.99% of existing RPG companies are in the same boat (or worse).

Basically, if your company's name doesn't rhyme with Lizards of the Toast, if you want to sell RPGs for any not-irrelevant amount of money you sell on OBS, or you don't sell.

And OBS will absolutely gatekeep based not just on content, but even on internet shit storms with zero official legal standing. They already did it at least once.
No matter what you think of that specific incident, I think it should be rather obvious where the problem lies, here.

Raggi and his store could have been the exclusive location to buy Zak's books; rather than paying that DTRPG 35% cut, Raggi and Zak could have made all of the money, and all Raggi would have had to do was not upload one book to DTRPG. It's not like Raggi's audience cared about the accusations anyway; there were (And still are) plenty of folks wanting to buy Zak's work. And Raggi's not bad at business, he knows what he's doing.

But he didn't.

That should tell you something.

 

[Luca]

Zak really is a crappy poster child for getting me and probably most people to care about something.
I'll counter with Bill Webb who also faced an internet outrage mob. OBS didn't feel compelled to react to that in any way.
Maybe the lesson is if you want to be all edgy know where the ledge is and don't jump off.

Zak could be the mix of the worst qualities of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, and the problem would still be here, completely unchanged.

I don't want to be in a position where someone else decides what I can or cannot read. OBS can do just that, in the most efficient way possible: by choosing what is or is not written in the first place.

 

[Luca]

Raggi and his store could have been the exclusive location to buy Zak's books; rather than paying that DTRPG 35% cut, Raggi and Zak could have made all of the money, and all Raggi would have had to do was not upload one book to DTRPG. It's not like Raggi's audience cared about the accusations anyway; there were (And still are) plenty of folks wanting to buy Zak's work. And Raggi's not bad at business, he knows what he's doing.

But he didn't.

That should tell you something.

Uhm, yes? that tells me that OBS has a stranglehold on the RPG PDF market and that even someone like LotFP won't be able to sell enough with their own online store.

I fail to see how this counters my point. In fact, it directly confirms it: Raggi *ALREADY HAS* an online store, and is still forced to sell through OBS (giving them a huge cut) because his store alone can't make the numbers.

 

[Bunch]

Uhm, yes? that tells me that OBS has a stranglehold on the RPG PDF market and that even someone like LotFP won't be able to sell enough with their own online store.

I fail to see how this counters my point. In fact, it directly confirms it: Raggi *ALREADY HAS* an online store, and is still forced to sell through OBS (giving them a huge cut) because his store alone can't make the numbers.

It tells you the value OBS brought to Raggi was greater than 35% of the cover price. It makes Raggi more money to ditch Zak than keep him. Raggi wants to keep Zak and sell his books he knows just fine how to incorporate a separate publisher, not put them on OBS and use Kickstarter or his storefront or any other method and he can still sell books by Zak no problem. Neither he nor Zak are unknowns who need to drum up buyers from the ether. They have a ready audience.

Every storefront has the ability to control content. It's always going to be a bit vague. At some point you have to decide to trust them just like they decide to trust you. What's the other option? I as a storefront am obligated to carry whatever anyone walks through the door and wants me to sell? That equally outrageous.

 

[Ladybird]

Uhm, yes? that tells me that OBS has a stranglehold on the RPG PDF market and that even someone like LotFP won't be able to sell enough with their own online store.

I fail to see how this counters my point. In fact, it directly confirms it: Raggi *ALREADY HAS* an online store, and is still forced to sell through OBS (giving them a huge cut) because his store alone can't make the numbers.

He'd only have had to not sell new Zak stuff on DTRPG, not remove his entire store there.

And he didn't do that.

That tells you everything you need to know.

 

[chuckdee]

it would be very iffy in my opinion because this is such a niche industry and the profit margins are super narrow. So whoever stepped in would also have to have all their ducks in a row, a good bit of luck, and make all the right moves. I think it is possible. I don't think it is at all clear how this would pan out, and I am not particularly optimistic in the present environment

DTRPG itself stepped into a hole and it worked out pretty well. Same for quite a few ventures in this niche. I think it's more likely than you make it out to be.

 

[chuckdee]

Zak could be the mix of the worst qualities of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, and the problem would still be here, completely unchanged.

I don't want to be in a position where someone else decides what I can or cannot read. OBS can do just that, in the most efficient way possible: by choosing what is or is not written in the first place.

But as Ladybird said, they could have just not sold his books on OBS. It didn't have to do with OBS, it had to do with the rest of the community. The community is what made Raggi distance himself from Zak- not OBS. And to be frank, I totally disagree with the community wielding pressure like that. They even turned it on Hite, which was crazy.

 

[Luca]

Raggi wants to keep Zak and sell his books he knows just fine how to incorporate a separate publisher, not put them on OBS and use Kickstarter or his storefront or any other method and he can still sell books by Zak no problem. Neither he nor Zak are unknowns who need to drum up buyers from the ether. They have a ready audience.

He'd only have had to not sell new Zak stuff on DTRPG, not remove his entire store there.

And he didn't do that.

That tells you everything you need to know.

Maybe I'm really being stupid here, but I keep thinking the things you're saying are just reinforcing my point.
Raggi could have obviously avoided eating a loss by producing at least that book which was already in writing and selling it on his store alone, thus "bypassing" OBS ban.
The fact he didn't tell me he was convinced the sales he could get through his store would be so few that he would have ended up eating an *even greater* loss by producing the book (even just in PDF format, you still need to e.g. pay artists) and trying that.
So basically, if you don't sell through OBS, you don't sell, period.

 

[Endless Flight]

Raggi and his store could have been the exclusive location to buy Zak's books; rather than paying that DTRPG 35% cut, Raggi and Zak could have made all of the money, and all Raggi would have had to do was not upload one book to DTRPG. It's not like Raggi's audience cared about the accusations anyway; there were (And still are) plenty of folks wanting to buy Zak's work. And Raggi's not bad at business, he knows what he's doing.

But he didn't.

That should tell you something.

Yeah, it tells me that he didn’t think he would probably sell a 10th of the books on his own site compared to DTRPG. And we are talking about a hobby where a hundred books can make a huge difference in income.

 

[Baulderstone]

TBH I actually do this, because I do agree that having a variety of stores around is better.

But, as an idle aside, if my first trip to a site they show me open nazi imagery, and their corporate social media contains open hate speech, I'm never going to buy anything from that site, or direct people to it. There's clearly a market for it, sure, but I'm not going to contribute to it.

Nobody was asking you to. Stop trying to softly suggest people are upset about OBS's anti-consumer policies because they are nazis.

 

[Ladybird]

But as Ladybird said, they could have just not sold his books on OBS. It didn't have to do with OBS, it had to do with the rest of the community. The community is what made Raggi distance himself from Zak- not OBS. And to be frank, I totally disagree with the community wielding pressure like that. They even turned it on Hite, which was crazy.

If I were to be cynical, I might suggest that it allowed a lot of people who had previously been associated with Zak and later grew disillusioned with him to disassociate from him consequence free.

But that's very cynical. I'm sure nobody would ever do that.

(As regards the community, I dunno, I think he shat in his own bed on that score, by being a dick to everyone for a decade beforehand. Nobody is entitled to a career in games.)

 

[Voros]

I completely agree with your immediate take down concerns. That's messed up. No crank on the internet should have so much power to destroy a publisher out of the gate. There should be some process whereby you can purchase an advanced review and guarantee that doesn't happen.

Life is generally better if there is competition. That's a pretty central theme to capitalism. The question is why hasn't a successful competitor emerged if there is money to be made here, consumers willing to buy from them and publishers willing to use them? I was just reviewing itch.io to complain about how much their UI sucks and how hard it is to find TTRPGs there and noticed they seem to have realized there is a large enough market there to devote resources to improving that UI. It still looks too much like a reject from the Myspace days but it's getting better.

itch.io kinda just stumbled into the rpg market. DIY RPG designers noticed it and started posting their games on it, it was and still largely is a DIY video game platform.

But it has grown a lot and lots of games that are available on DTRPG are also available on itch.io.

To me, unlike with Audible the fact you can carry games on both platforms undermines the claims of monopoly.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, underground bands (largely) didn't complain that the majors weren't signing them, they formed their own labels and distribution networks.

Yes, they weren't going to ever make the kind of money on Touch & Go they'd make on Geffen but for decades it was financially viable. It was the net that really put an end to the independent record label/record store network that had taken decades to build.

On itch.io apparently the cut for the designer is better than on DTRPG.

If they had a better UI I think they'd be a really strong competitor to DTRPG. I have a fair number of games from itch.io in my library.

So I can't really see DTRPG being that much of a threat of a monopoly, you'd just need itch.io to make improvements or something like them with better UI to come along.

In terms of content concerns, mostly a tempest in a teacup imo. Bookstores have the right to decide what they carry, I wouldn't expect Barnes & Noble to carry anything too avantgarde, pornographic and/or politically extreme books.

If you want to produce that kind of content (and a lot of important literature can be considered pornographic) you understand that those larger commercial streams are probably not going to be available to you.

Similarly, although the major labels dipped their toes in the ends of extreme noise rock after Nirvana hit it big, none of those bands (e.g. The Melvins, Jesus Lizard, Butthole Surfers) ever expected that the majors would ever pay them anymind, or that they were owed it.

To complain that these capitalist corporations owe it to you to carry your radical, avantgarde pornography seems to be a misunderstanding of what the goal of that kind of material even is.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

Every storefront has the ability to control content. It's always going to be a bit vague. At some point you have to decide to trust them just like they decide to trust you. What's the other option? I as a storefront am obligated to carry whatever anyone walks through the door and wants me to sell? That equally outrageous.

This is probably one of the disadvantages of a digital storefront, that everything available has to be there all the time. I mean, if I had a physical book store, there would certainly be books I wouldn't have standing on my shelves. But if someone came in and wanted me to order one to them, I would do it. A sale is a sale, and I don't care about what other people like or dislike.

 

[chuckdee]

(As regards the community, I dunno, I think he shat in his own bed on that score, by being a dick to everyone for a decade beforehand. Nobody is entitled to a career in games.)

I meant the community forcing other people to take a stance. They were going to cancel Kenneth Hite of all people unless he categorically made a statement. This hobby is too niche for mobs to rule and decide what individuals can do and how they act.

 

[chuckdee]

Yeah, it tells me that he didn’t think he would probably sell a 10th of the books on his own site compared to DTRPG. And we are talking about a hobby where a hundred books can make a huge difference in income.

Or, as said earlier, it was the community's reaction and the community's implied cancellation if he didn't comply. That's totally different from OBS. He even said it in his video that he made about the incident.

 

[Endless Flight]

Or, as said earlier, it was the community's reaction and the community's implied cancellation if he didn't comply. That's totally different from OBS. He even said it in his video that he made about the incident.

Yeah but what if OBS never pulled the product in the first place?

 

[opaopajr]

Cartels, like OPEC, are also a thing. It needn't be a monopoly or monopsony to be a worrisome lack of diversity for resilient redundancy. I for one welcome the new revolution to be our new overlords. Let's see how far Mickey's Underpants, er, Discord shall straddle us.

 

[chuckdee]

Yeah but what if OBS never pulled the product in the first place?

They didn't pull the product until the community was already in a furor and waving pitchforks, if I remember correctly.

 

[Endless Flight]

They didn't pull the product until the community was already in a furor and waving pitchforks, if I remember correctly.

How many people does it take for OBS to pull something? 10? 100?

 

[Toadmaster]

Zak really is a crappy poster child for getting me and probably most people to care about something.
I'll counter with Bill Webb who also faced an internet outrage mob. OBS didn't feel compelled to react to that in any way.
Maybe the lesson is if you want to be all edgy know where the ledge is and don't jump off.

Isn't Zak the only example of where OBS pulled products? There have been several other cases where a mob was demanding product be pulled or risk a broad boycott, and to my knowledge they all failed.

As far as I am aware content based outrage has failed to meet the bar for OBS to pull something, although several alleged cases have ultimately turned out to have been withdrawal or revision of the product by the publisher in response to the outrage, not pressure from OBS.

It seems to me based on past practice OBS isn't so much censoring material, as deciding some people (ie one) are just not worth the trouble of working with.
DTRPG offers quite a lot of risqué content if you set your filters to allow "mature" content to be shown. Not quite the prude squad some make them out to be.

I'm in full agreement, OBS is only a monopoly of convenience. Sure they are big enough to flex some muscle, and make some influence, but they can't really hurt an established publisher, only the little guys who don't have ready access to the masses.

I mostly buy games from small publishers through DTRPG, but I go direct with the better established games like CoC, Mythras, Free League etc.

I see OBS as being quite a bit like Steam. If you are a small developer, Steam is a very useful place to offer your games. Steam does not have access to some games, like Diablo because Blizzard chooses to run their own competing platform.

SJG and Warehouse 23 is an RPG example of DTRPG's competition, like Battlenet is to Steam, or Walmart is to Amazon.

 

[Endless Flight]

Sure they are big enough to flex some muscle, and make some influence, but they can't really hurt an established publisher, only the little guys who don't have ready access to the masses.

That’s still a problem though.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

I see OBS as being quite a bit like Steam. If you are a small developer, Steam is a very useful place to offer your games. Steam does not have access to some games, like Diablo because Blizzard chooses to run their own competing platform.

SJG and Warehouse 23 is an RPG example of DTRPG's competition, like Battlenet is to Steam, or Walmart is to Amazon.

Well Diablo 1 is available on GOG and Overwatch 2 is available on Steam, so Blizzard is loosening a bit on their Battlenet exclusivity.
I also fully expect Blizzard games to become available on Steam, once Microsofts Activision deal goes through.
I have a sneaky suspicion, that Microsoft would really want to acquire Steam. That would really be a horror scenario, if that happens. Although we're safe as long as Gabe lives.

 

[chuckdee]

I also fully expect Blizzard games to become available on Steam, once if Microsofts Activision deal goes through.

 

[Toadmaster]

That’s still a problem though.

So where do you set the cap on how successful a business gets? Do you recall the Microsoft lawsuit from the US Government? It is a good thing the government stepped in or everybody would be stuck using Windows and MS Office...

 

[chuckdee]

So where do you set the cap on how successful a business gets? Do you recall the Microsoft lawsuit from the US Government? It is a good thing the government stepped in or everybody would be stuck using Windows and MS Office...

Only to allow Google to take advantage and now be the Microsoft of the new era.

 

[Bunch]

So where do you set the cap on how successful a business gets? Do you recall the Microsoft lawsuit from the US Government? It is a good thing the government stepped in or everybody would be stuck using Windows and MS Office...

By the time Microsoft was being investigated the Internet was already cutting off their control. It certainly helped Google to have a competitor in constant fear of government intervention.

 

[Toadmaster]

Only to allow Google to take advantage and now be the Microsoft of the new era.

What about Bing?