OBS - Monopolies and their TOC. (Split off thread).

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
Basically, Raggi said everything I wanted to say but couldn't articulate so well. Brilliant vid!


He's not actually suggesting doing anything about it though, no?

"I have a strong moral stand as long as it does not in any way inconvenience me"

*Shrug*
 
He's not actually suggesting doing anything about it though, no?

"I have a strong moral stand as long as it does not in any way inconvenience me"

*Shrug*
I dunno, is there no element of risk to his business interests by calling out OBS when they've said, "Thou shalt not!"?
(though I think a stronger stand though would be to take back Zak)
 
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Maybe we can get him to buy the Pub. We might have to change it to the Duck & Musk but I'm sure we'd adapt.
I seem to recall Virgin stores carrying D&D and Warhammer back in the day. Mostly from ads in Dragon I think.
 
He's not actually suggesting doing anything about it though, no?

"I have a strong moral stand as long as it does not in any way inconvenience me"

*Shrug*
Simlasa pretty much summed it up there. :smile:

Raggi is basically saying 'puck u' in defiance of their hostile one-strike marketing warning. So you could say he's taking direct action. Will this do anything? I can't rightly say, but I got to fully respect a person that puts their income on the line for their art.
 
I dunno, is there no element of risk to his business interests by calling out OBS when they've said, "Thou shall not!"?
(though I think a stronger stand though would be to take Zak)
Honestly, I don't think there is. If they were going to ban Raggi they would have by now. Taking Zak on would be a stronger stance, because he is banned on there (the only person I know of so far). But that's why it won't happen; that'd pretty much be the same as withdrawing your products in protest.

I strongly suspect that the "hostile marketing" clause is going to come up once in a blue moon. It's not there for standard stuff, they'll only invoke it in cases where people are obviously trying to stir up controversy deliberately and then blame OBS for putting their product in review.

I was trying to remember what we know of bans so far on Drivethru and this is what I've come up with.

Tournament of Rapists by ?. Technically not (it was withdrawn and the publisher then agreed to pull it). It's worth mentioning though because it's the reason Drivethru put up a content policy in the first place.

The Gamergate Card game by GrimJim. We can't really get into that one because that's obviously politics but I'm pretty sure this definitely was.

Some game that said "ACAB" by ?. All I know about this is it was reported by Tenkar.

All games by Zak S. This is the only full designer ban I know of. It only applies to future titles, not in hindsight.

Dryads by ?. I know nothing about this one apart from the allegation was "child pornography" so not going near that with a fucking ten foot pole.

Curse of Hearts AKA A House of Gay Vampires by Oliver Darkshire. Technically they asked him to alter some of the illustrations and he refused. This is complex because it seems to have been WOTC's family friendly policy (it was DM's Guild) and Drivethru were just the messengers. This is worth looking at more closely for those interested in the subject though because he added "censored" patches to some of the art and was told that was "adversial and inadequate".

The Good Syma'arian by Venger Satanis. Like the last one, this wasn't technically banned, they asked for changes that were refused. We don't know if Venger's lastest is banned or not but I suspect it's likely.

I'm sure there's more (some people may have been removed without making waves) and am interested to hear of others people are aware of.

Some initial observations from the data I have collected.

I had actually expected a bias but the evidence isn't there yet. I count two on what people would consider "one side" (ACAB Game/Curse of Hearts) and two on the other (Curse of Hearts/The Good Syma'arian). Of those, I'd consider all but Curse of Hearts to be political statements first and foremost rather than games.

Dryads is... yeah, if the accusation is true none of us want that shit on there. Tournament of Rapists seems to be general "bad taste" grounds rather than politics. Zak is a unique case and we've already gone back and forth with it on here.

Someone I do think genuinely got a raw deal on this is Oliver Darkshire. I've seen the illustrations. They're raunchy, but nothing more than you see all over the place in D&D material. I also think it's a bit notable about how the people apparently against "all censorship" seem to have mostly ignored this particular example. It is complicated by the fact it's likely to be WOTC policy not Drivethru.

Overall, it's actually a really small number of games. If we get lots more coming to light that's worrying. But at the moment, unless Drivethru's policy changes in practice I think the vast majority of designers are fine. Perhaps the ones who go out of their way to piss them off aren't, which is how I read the hostile marketing policy.

If there are mass flagging campaigns going on they don't seem to be working. Pundit (who it is fair to say is a man who makes enemies) doesn't seem to have anything not allowed on there from what I can tell.

The one person I think has been censored is GrimJim who seems to have had stuff taken down (largely on taste rather than political reasons I think). I note that Final Straw (his game about High School Shooters where you play a shooter) isn't on there anymore, nor is Hentacle (hentai game).

So I think games that are deliberately stretching the boundaries of good taste are probably risky on there. (If anyone really wants to argue that Final Straw isn't in appalling taste feel free and I say that as someone who owns it and finds it funny). That's a possible niche for anyone looking at setting up a distributor - specialise in those. This is probably why Jim is shifting to his own webstore. I'll also note most of his "banned games" are now on Game Crafter, although that obviously makes sense for card and board games but doesn't for RPGs.

Conclusion of sorts: Bans are rare. So far not enough has been banned to know either way if it's partisan. The one thing that is censored on there is bad taste games about rapist tournaments, hentai, school shootings etc. and you'd be well advised to plan for alternative distribution there. I'm not really able to get outraged about that, we're talking about the kind of games no RPG store would likely stock either.
 
I seem to recall Virgin stores carrying D&D and Warhammer back in the day. Mostly from ads in Dragon I think.
Virgin carried some remarkably obscure stuff as well. "200 copies optimistically printed by a gaming group" homebrews. I really miss them as a RPG store.
 
At present? Perhaps not. But they certainly have the infrastructure and logistics to do so. They're already selling digital books, music and movies. Seriously, what would prevent Amazon from the exact same thing OBS does?
To be fair, they bought Comixology and then proceeded to absolutely mangle it to the point of being unusable by folding it into the Amazon Store.

I don't think it'll ever be a destination for niche RPG purchases.
 
Honestly, I don't think there is. If they were going to ban Raggi they would have by now. Taking Zak on would be a stronger stance, because he is banned on there (the only person I know of so far). But that's why it won't happen; that'd pretty much be the same as withdrawing your products in protest.

I strongly suspect that the "hostile marketing" clause is going to come up once in a blue moon. It's not there for standard stuff, they'll only invoke it in cases where people are obviously trying to stir up controversy deliberately and then blame OBS for putting their product in review.

I was trying to remember what we know of bans so far on Drivethru and this is what I've come up with.

Tournament of Rapists by ?. Technically not (it was withdrawn and the publisher then agreed to pull it). It's worth mentioning though because it's the reason Drivethru put up a content policy in the first place.

The Gamergate Card game by GrimJim. We can't really get into that one because that's obviously politics but I'm pretty sure this definitely was.

Some game that said "ACAB" by ?. All I know about this is it was reported by Tenkar.

All games by Zak S. This is the only full designer ban I know of. It only applies to future titles, not in hindsight.

Dryads by ?. I know nothing about this one apart from the allegation was "child pornography" so not going near that with a fucking ten foot pole.

Curse of Hearts AKA A House of Gay Vampires by Oliver Darkshire. Technically they asked him to alter some of the illustrations and he refused. This is complex because it seems to have been WOTC's family friendly policy (it was DM's Guild) and Drivethru were just the messengers. This is worth looking at more closely for those interested in the subject though because he added "censored" patches to some of the art and was told that was "adversial and inadequate".

The Good Syma'arian by Venger Satanis. Like the last one, this wasn't technically banned, they asked for changes that were refused. We don't know if Venger's lastest is banned or not but I suspect it's likely.

I'm sure there's more (some people may have been removed without making waves) and am interested to hear of others people are aware of.

Some initial observations from the data I have collected.

I had actually expected a bias but the evidence isn't there yet. I count two on what people would consider "one side" (ACAB Game/Curse of Hearts) and two on the other (Curse of Hearts/The Good Syma'arian). Of those, I'd consider all but Curse of Hearts to be political statements first and foremost rather than games.

Dryads is... yeah, if the accusation is true none of us want that shit on there. Tournament of Rapists seems to be general "bad taste" grounds rather than politics. Zak is a unique case and we've already gone back and forth with it on here.

Someone I do think genuinely got a raw deal on this is Oliver Darkshire. I've seen the illustrations. They're raunchy, but nothing more than you see all over the place in D&D material. I also think it's a bit notable about how the people apparently against "all censorship" seem to have mostly ignored this particular example. It is complicated by the fact it's likely to be WOTC policy not Drivethru.

Overall, it's actually a really small number of games. If we get lots more coming to light that's worrying. But at the moment, unless Drivethru's policy changes in practice I think the vast majority of designers are fine. Perhaps the ones who go out of their way to piss them off aren't, which is how I read the hostile marketing policy.

If there are mass flagging campaigns going on they don't seem to be working. Pundit (who it is fair to say is a man who makes enemies) doesn't seem to have anything not allowed on there from what I can tell.

The one person I think has been censored is GrimJim who seems to have had stuff taken down (largely on taste rather than political reasons I think). I note that Final Straw (his game about High School Shooters where you play a shooter) isn't on there anymore, nor is Hentacle (hentai game).

So I think games that are deliberately stretching the boundaries of good taste are probably risky on there. (If anyone really wants to argue that Final Straw isn't in appalling taste feel free and I say that as someone who owns it and finds it funny). That's a possible niche for anyone looking at setting up a distributor - specialise in those. This is probably why Jim is shifting to his own webstore. I'll also note most of his "banned games" are now on Game Crafter, although that obviously makes sense for card and board games but doesn't for RPGs.

Conclusion of sorts: Bans are rare. So far not enough has been banned to know either way if it's partisan. The one thing that is censored on there is bad taste games about rapist tournaments, hentai, school shootings etc. and you'd be well advised to plan for alternative distribution there. I'm not really able to get outraged about that, we're talking about the kind of games no RPG store would likely stock either.
Judges Guild for either General bad behavior/politics I believe but they also have a long running failed KS that robertsconley robertsconley can provided better detail than me.
 
Judges Guild for either General bad behavior/politics I believe but they also have a long running failed KS that robertsconley robertsconley can provided better detail than me.
Good point. I think there I'll follow the established precedent on here that the kind of comments in question are so reprehensible as to be outside of politics and that it's both wrong and insulting to associate any "side" with them.
 
Honestly, I don't think there is. If they were going to ban Raggi they would have by now. Taking Zak on would be a stronger stance, because he is banned on there (the only person I know of so far). But that's why it won't happen; that'd pretty much be the same as withdrawing your products in protest.

I strongly suspect that the "hostile marketing" clause is going to come up once in a blue moon. It's not there for standard stuff, they'll only invoke it in cases where people are obviously trying to stir up controversy deliberately and then blame OBS for putting their product in review.

I was trying to remember what we know of bans so far on Drivethru and this is what I've come up with.

Tournament of Rapists by ?. Technically not (it was withdrawn and the publisher then agreed to pull it). It's worth mentioning though because it's the reason Drivethru put up a content policy in the first place.

The Gamergate Card game by GrimJim. We can't really get into that one because that's obviously politics but I'm pretty sure this definitely was.

Some game that said "ACAB" by ?. All I know about this is it was reported by Tenkar.

All games by Zak S. This is the only full designer ban I know of. It only applies to future titles, not in hindsight.

Dryads by ?. I know nothing about this one apart from the allegation was "child pornography" so not going near that with a fucking ten foot pole.

Curse of Hearts AKA A House of Gay Vampires by Oliver Darkshire. Technically they asked him to alter some of the illustrations and he refused. This is complex because it seems to have been WOTC's family friendly policy (it was DM's Guild) and Drivethru were just the messengers. This is worth looking at more closely for those interested in the subject though because he added "censored" patches to some of the art and was told that was "adversial and inadequate".

The Good Syma'arian by Venger Satanis. Like the last one, this wasn't technically banned, they asked for changes that were refused. We don't know if Venger's lastest is banned or not but I suspect it's likely.

I'm sure there's more (some people may have been removed without making waves) and am interested to hear of others people are aware of.

Some initial observations from the data I have collected.

I had actually expected a bias but the evidence isn't there yet. I count two on what people would consider "one side" (ACAB Game/Curse of Hearts) and two on the other (Curse of Hearts/The Good Syma'arian). Of those, I'd consider all but Curse of Hearts to be political statements first and foremost rather than games.

Dryads is... yeah, if the accusation is true none of us want that shit on there. Tournament of Rapists seems to be general "bad taste" grounds rather than politics. Zak is a unique case and we've already gone back and forth with it on here.

Someone I do think genuinely got a raw deal on this is Oliver Darkshire. I've seen the illustrations. They're raunchy, but nothing more than you see all over the place in D&D material. I also think it's a bit notable about how the people apparently against "all censorship" seem to have mostly ignored this particular example. It is complicated by the fact it's likely to be WOTC policy not Drivethru.

Overall, it's actually a really small number of games. If we get lots more coming to light that's worrying. But at the moment, unless Drivethru's policy changes in practice I think the vast majority of designers are fine. Perhaps the ones who go out of their way to piss them off aren't, which is how I read the hostile marketing policy.

If there are mass flagging campaigns going on they don't seem to be working. Pundit (who it is fair to say is a man who makes enemies) doesn't seem to have anything not allowed on there from what I can tell.

The one person I think has been censored is GrimJim who seems to have had stuff taken down (largely on taste rather than political reasons I think). I note that Final Straw (his game about High School Shooters where you play a shooter) isn't on there anymore, nor is Hentacle (hentai game).

So I think games that are deliberately stretching the boundaries of good taste are probably risky on there. (If anyone really wants to argue that Final Straw isn't in appalling taste feel free and I say that as someone who owns it and finds it funny). That's a possible niche for anyone looking at setting up a distributor - specialise in those. This is probably why Jim is shifting to his own webstore. I'll also note most of his "banned games" are now on Game Crafter, although that obviously makes sense for card and board games but doesn't for RPGs.

Conclusion of sorts: Bans are rare. So far not enough has been banned to know either way if it's partisan. The one thing that is censored on there is bad taste games about rapist tournaments, hentai, school shootings etc. and you'd be well advised to plan for alternative distribution there. I'm not really able to get outraged about that, we're talking about the kind of games no RPG store would likely stock either.
Gee it's almost as if making a mountain out of a molehill is the entire point
 
To be fair, they bought Comixology and then proceeded to absolutely mangle it to the point of being unusable by folding it into the Amazon Store.

I don't think it'll ever be a destination for niche RPG purchases.
Not trying to be contrarian, but Comixology is still one of the most popular digital comics services, so "unusable" might be subjective here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying your reasons for taking issue with it aren't valid, but it's still pretty damn successful.
 
Not trying to be contrarian, but Comixology is still one of the most popular digital comics services, so "unusable" might be subjective here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying your reasons for taking issue with it aren't valid, but it's still pretty damn successful.
I do stand somewhat corrected. Looks like they just updated the app to function as a reader again. Until recently, I was directed to Amazon's app to find my purchases and it routinely cross referenced with physical media, or would only tell me that I had "previously acquired" the books in question, but had no simple way of actually accessing them unless I added them to my Kindle app on my tablet, where they were lumped in with literally hundreds of other books. (I don't find the merging of the two to be in any way convenient. Literally the exact opposite.)

So they have made some improvement.

Anecdotally, I know that DriveThruComics saw more publishers shift to publishing on their platform because of the mess Amazon made of it when it tried to fold it into the Kindle store.
 
Honestly, I don't think there is. If they were going to ban Raggi they would have by now. Taking Zak on would be a stronger stance, because he is banned on there (the only person I know of so far).
Though it looks like most all the work Zak did for LotFP is still available there... Red & Pleasant Land, Death Frost Doom, Vornheim, Frostbitten & Mutilated...
 
Though it looks like most all the work Zak did for LotFP is still available there... Red & Pleasant Land, Death Frost Doom, Vornheim, Frostbitten & Mutilated...
Yeah, the position is that all future work he puts out is banned but that they weren't going to punish people he worked with previously.
 
And having just checked the Amazon Comics storefront, compared to the old Comixology storefront? It's traaaaaaaaash and the same would absolutely kill smaller companies in comparison to what DriveThru does.
 
A lot of this is going to come down to personal views on censorship. I do think there is such a thing as corporate censorship. It is a gray area because businesses have the right not to publish things they don't want to. But you can also see major changes to art when large publishers or large sales platforms place rules on content. Some of this is going to be generational too I am assuming, depending on when you grew up and how to you responded to different efforts to curtail media content.

There is corporate censorship and radical artists with transgressive content have always been denied a platform by large corporations.

Catherine Breillat's films are not playing at your local multiplex and never would have. This is not new.
 
There is corporate censorship and radical artists with transgressive content have always been denied a platform by large corporations.

Catherine Breillat's films are not playing at your local multiplex and never would have. This is not new.
Keep in mind that one of the concerns at the moment is DriveThru's new policy of banning publishers based on their social media content and blogs. That's a whole different thing than your art being rejected for being too transgressive.
 
Catherine Breillat's films are not playing at your local multiplex and never would have. This is not new.

No, but Last Temptation of Christ did. Of course some movies, some books, some RPGs, are going to be so far across a line, finding a platform for sales will be difficult. But you that is a large terrain of art that occupies space between complete vanilla and outrageously shocking. And I think it is healthy for people to have easy access to art that isn't always everyone's cup of tea. Importantly on a platform like OBS, if there is something on there one doesn't like, we all have the option of not buying (personally I don't buy anything that is overtly political for instance). I think people are worried about where the line is exactly here. I can only speak for myself, but personally, because OBS is so important to be on, that you might as well not have a publishing company if you aren't on there, I think it is better for the hobby when their guidelines are light and rarely enforced. Because just by virtue of the space they occupy, anything they do in that respect is going to have an impact on content people make. If people are worried about these guidelines being enforced for things like children being eaten by a witch for example, or having a crime based plot in an adventure, that could have a pretty big chilling effect. I am not saying that is where OBS is. Like I said before, they have earned a lot of good will. They have enforced their guidelines better than most people in their position probably would. But when the topic comes up I always am in favor of expression my preference for more free expression rather than less in the hobby (and what OBS does is going to impact how freely RPG publishers and designers think they can express themselves). And whenever there is a shake up like this, especially when they issue a stark new policy, it makes someone like me concerned that they are going to enforce their guidelines more aggressively
 
There is corporate censorship and radical artists with transgressive content have always been denied a platform by large corporations.

Catherine Breillat's films are not playing at your local multiplex and never would have. This is not new.
My teenage punk band Gonorrhea never got offered a single gig. :sad:

We weren't transgressive. We just sucked.
 
My teenage punk band Gonorrhea never got offered a single gig. :sad:

We weren't transgressive. We just sucked.


And there is always that. Some things are just bad and the shock value can almost serve as cover. For me, just in terms of personal preference, not in terms of the OBS issue, it comes down to whether the artist has something to say by being transgressive, or if the transgression produces humor. And some art is just interesting to watch burn (figuratively not literally)

One of the big bands at my high school had a name I wouldn't even be comfortable mentioning here (but they were good and the name was kind of witty: it was the 90s though so the mood was very different)
 
I was thinking. If I wanted to be prepared to take on OBS in case of drastic policy implementation changes I wouldn't do direct competition.

I'd start with an app that tracks all the various RPG selling sites so a user could see everything they own across all sites and see any duplicates. Then I'd track as many of the Bundling/sale sites so a user could see what in the bundle they own vs don't own. I'd calculate the value of the bundle assuming they purchased the items individually at full retail and at known discount values(summer sales/Black Friday/Xmas etc standard sales days). That way you could see if the discount is still likely worth it if you bought only the things you don't already own at a discount. The goal here is to get you interacting with my app as your go-to for inventory tracking.

Phase two is to allow you to automatically download all this content into one of several cohesive storage methods on your drive. Or allow you to store it online at my site for some minimal fee(cost basically). The goal here is to be your content interaction site.

Phase three would be partnering with some POD source. Sure for now it will be POD of PDFs not intended for printing but it's a start. Plus you can take advantage of others experience and provide reviews feedback of the quality.

Phase four would be to start allowing publishers in. At this point I would hope to have a user base to sell to somewhat boosted by the success of any and all other competitors since either having all your eggs in the OBS basket could be undesirable and/or the success of other marketplaces makes an aggregator more valuable. Now publishers at other sites can move their products over since the company already has some experience with POD.


That's my initial thoughts
 
Catherine Breillat's films are not playing at your local multiplex and never would have. This is not new.
They are streaming on Amazon though...
It's the same old thing where I can easily see people being shot, knifed, burned, and torn apart all day long at the theater... but put one penis on screen and people lose their minds (while continuing to watch porn at home in their closet).
 
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Judges Guild for either General bad behavior/politics I believe but they also have a long running failed KS that robertsconley robertsconley can provided better detail than me.
Concerning Judges Guild

Concerning Judges Guild, Further Developments

Basically for posting and then doubling down on anti-Semitism and racist comments. As a result DriveThruRPG deactivated their account. You can still download anything you bought from them.

As for my situation, his debt to me is looking to be paid off by the end of the year. After which I will remove my Judges Guild products from sale and turn over the files per my license contract. By then I hope to have my Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms up and additional volumes of my Majestic Fantasy RPG up.
 
Concerning Judges Guild

Concerning Judges Guild, Further Developments

Basically for posting and then doubling down on anti-Semitism and racist comments. As a result DriveThruRPG deactivated their account. You can still download anything you bought from them.

As for my situation, his debt to me is looking to be paid off by the end of the year. After which I will remove my Judges Guild products from sale and turn over the files per my license contract. By then I hope to have my Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms up and additional volumes of my Majestic Fantasy RPG up.
So I need to finally buy the printed editions if I'm ever going to.
 
Keep in mind that one of the concerns at the moment is DriveThru's new policy of banning publishers based on their social media content and blogs. That's a whole different thing than your art being rejected for being too transgressive.

If I'm an author and I go around saying 'Fuck Chapters' on social media should I be surprised if they don't stock my book?
 
No, but Last Temptation of Christ did. Of course some movies, some books, some RPGs, are going to be so far across a line, finding a platform for sales will be difficult. But you that is a large terrain of art that occupies space between complete vanilla and outrageously shocking. And I think it is healthy for people to have easy access to art that isn't always everyone's cup of tea. Importantly on a platform like OBS, if there is something on there one doesn't like, we all have the option of not buying (personally I don't buy anything that is overtly political for instance). I think people are worried about where the line is exactly here. I can only speak for myself, but personally, because OBS is so important to be on, that you might as well not have a publishing company if you aren't on there, I think it is better for the hobby when their guidelines are light and rarely enforced. Because just by virtue of the space they occupy, anything they do in that respect is going to have an impact on content people make. If people are worried about these guidelines being enforced for things like children being eaten by a witch for example, or having a crime based plot in an adventure, that could have a pretty big chilling effect. I am not saying that is where OBS is. Like I said before, they have earned a lot of good will. They have enforced their guidelines better than most people in their position probably would. But when the topic comes up I always am in favor of expression my preference for more free expression rather than less in the hobby (and what OBS does is going to impact how freely RPG publishers and designers think they can express themselves). And whenever there is a shake up like this, especially when they issue a stark new policy, it makes someone like me concerned that they are going to enforce their guidelines more aggressively

There's an order of magnitude difference between Scorsese's film and Breillat's films. Outside of the US, Scorsese's film was not particularly controversial, Kazantzakis is a widely admired writer who was long considered for a Nobel Prize.

A better comparison would be Pink Flamingos, which you will never see on any streaming service besides Criterion.

And that's really only because the film is older and a recognized classic of its kind. The BBC reversal of their ban on the film admits as much.
 
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They are streaming on Amazon though...
It's the same old thing where I can easily see people being shot, knifed, burned, and torn apart all day long at the theater... but put one penis on screen and people lose their minds (while continuing to watch porn at home in their closet).

For sure, and Venger could use Itch.io if he cared to. Lots of ttrpgers are on both these days anyway.
 
Sorry for the multiple posts, I've gotta learn how to use the quote function better.
 
The CCA is a particularly bad example, because with the advent of alternative avenues of distribution (e.g., the direct market and dedicated comic book stores, rather than just drugstores and newspaper stands), the CCA vanished into obsolescence as publishers simply started to ignore it.


I mean, yeah, eventually....it took close to 20 years for any comics publisher in the US to dare publish without it (the famous drug issue of Amazing Spider-man), and I doubt by that point it was of much comfort to EC Comics and the many other publishers driven out of business by the code.
 
A better comparison would be Pink Flamingos, which you will never see on any streaming service besides Criterion.
Man, those early John Waters movies made such an impression on my sister and me. They were like discovering a hidden world. Luckily, they were readily found at our local video stores (NOT Blockbuster). Desperate Living was quite a revelation.
 
Honestly, I don't think there is. If they were going to ban Raggi they would have by now. Taking Zak on would be a stronger stance, because he is banned on there (the only person I know of so far). But that's why it won't happen; that'd pretty much be the same as withdrawing your products in protest.

I strongly suspect that the "hostile marketing" clause is going to come up once in a blue moon. It's not there for standard stuff, they'll only invoke it in cases where people are obviously trying to stir up controversy deliberately and then blame OBS for putting their product in review.

I was trying to remember what we know of bans so far on Drivethru and this is what I've come up with.

Tournament of Rapists by ?. Technically not (it was withdrawn and the publisher then agreed to pull it). It's worth mentioning though because it's the reason Drivethru put up a content policy in the first place.

The Gamergate Card game by GrimJim. We can't really get into that one because that's obviously politics but I'm pretty sure this definitely was.

Some game that said "ACAB" by ?. All I know about this is it was reported by Tenkar.

All games by Zak S. This is the only full designer ban I know of. It only applies to future titles, not in hindsight.

Dryads by ?. I know nothing about this one apart from the allegation was "child pornography" so not going near that with a fucking ten foot pole.

Curse of Hearts AKA A House of Gay Vampires by Oliver Darkshire. Technically they asked him to alter some of the illustrations and he refused. This is complex because it seems to have been WOTC's family friendly policy (it was DM's Guild) and Drivethru were just the messengers. This is worth looking at more closely for those interested in the subject though because he added "censored" patches to some of the art and was told that was "adversial and inadequate".

The Good Syma'arian by Venger Satanis. Like the last one, this wasn't technically banned, they asked for changes that were refused. We don't know if Venger's lastest is banned or not but I suspect it's likely.

I'm sure there's more (some people may have been removed without making waves) and am interested to hear of others people are aware of.

Some initial observations from the data I have collected.

I had actually expected a bias but the evidence isn't there yet. I count two on what people would consider "one side" (ACAB Game/Curse of Hearts) and two on the other (Curse of Hearts/The Good Syma'arian). Of those, I'd consider all but Curse of Hearts to be political statements first and foremost rather than games.

Dryads is... yeah, if the accusation is true none of us want that shit on there. Tournament of Rapists seems to be general "bad taste" grounds rather than politics. Zak is a unique case and we've already gone back and forth with it on here.

Someone I do think genuinely got a raw deal on this is Oliver Darkshire. I've seen the illustrations. They're raunchy, but nothing more than you see all over the place in D&D material. I also think it's a bit notable about how the people apparently against "all censorship" seem to have mostly ignored this particular example. It is complicated by the fact it's likely to be WOTC policy not Drivethru.

Overall, it's actually a really small number of games. If we get lots more coming to light that's worrying. But at the moment, unless Drivethru's policy changes in practice I think the vast majority of designers are fine. Perhaps the ones who go out of their way to piss them off aren't, which is how I read the hostile marketing policy.

If there are mass flagging campaigns going on they don't seem to be working. Pundit (who it is fair to say is a man who makes enemies) doesn't seem to have anything not allowed on there from what I can tell.

The one person I think has been censored is GrimJim who seems to have had stuff taken down (largely on taste rather than political reasons I think). I note that Final Straw (his game about High School Shooters where you play a shooter) isn't on there anymore, nor is Hentacle (hentai game).

So I think games that are deliberately stretching the boundaries of good taste are probably risky on there. (If anyone really wants to argue that Final Straw isn't in appalling taste feel free and I say that as someone who owns it and finds it funny). That's a possible niche for anyone looking at setting up a distributor - specialise in those. This is probably why Jim is shifting to his own webstore. I'll also note most of his "banned games" are now on Game Crafter, although that obviously makes sense for card and board games but doesn't for RPGs.

Conclusion of sorts: Bans are rare. So far not enough has been banned to know either way if it's partisan. The one thing that is censored on there is bad taste games about rapist tournaments, hentai, school shootings etc. and you'd be well advised to plan for alternative distribution there. I'm not really able to get outraged about that, we're talking about the kind of games no RPG store would likely stock either.
Is the domain Badtastegames.com still free:grin:?
 
Sorry for the multiple posts, I've gotta learn how to use the quote function better.
As the pretty much official Pub Master of The Multi-Quote (a.k.a. "the multi-quote is my bitch, 'cause I'm the one who ab/uses it until it starts to like it" guy:devil:), I do it by opening the different posts I want to reply to in different tabs. Right-click on the reply button of the post, select "open in new tab", then keep reading (if you decide not to reply after finishing the thread, just close the tab). If/when you start replying, though, copy/cut the quoted text and paste it in the tab you're working in:thumbsup:!
 
It's amazing to me that One Book Shelf says they have a "no politics" policy now, but what they're really doing is picking and choosing what's "political" and what isn't according to what makes the largest number of their most sensitive customers uncomfortable.

Who could have possibly predicted this behavior in advance? And furthermore, who could have possibly predicted which posters on the RPG Pub would suddenly have a fucking problem with it when they're neither the arbiters of apolitical correctness nor the crybullies being pandered to?

The world may never know.
 
As the pretty much official Pub Master of The Multi-Quote (a.k.a. "the multi-quote is my bitch, 'cause I'm the one who ab/uses it until it starts to like it" guy:devil:), I do it by opening the different posts I want to reply to in different tabs. Right-click on the reply button of the post, select "open in new tab", then keep reading (if you decide not to reply after finishing the thread, just close the tab). If/when you start replying, though, copy/cut the quoted text and paste it in the tab you're working in:thumbsup:!

hmm, that seems way more complicated than just pressing the +quote button after each post and then "insert quotes" into the reply
 
hmm, that seems way more complicated than just pressing the +quote button after each post and then "insert quotes" into the reply
Yeah, this one used to not work (maybe only for my browser) when I started posting on the Pub, and now I'm kinda used to it:thumbsup:!
 
Again I think the panic is overblown. OBS new policy seems specifically aimed at getting Venger to stop bad-mouthing DTRPG to market his games. If they were planning to declare certain content "Political" and ban it, why have none of Pundits books been pulled?

If you are concerned, follow the example set by Frog God Games, Open Ended Games, D101 Games, Postmortem Studios and others: diversify. Host your own website, run your own storefront that you can't be removed from and partner with Shop. Locate desktop publishing companies and partner with them directly. Most of all, don't poke the dragon.
 
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