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Mongoose politiely ignore the large amount of whining about their pricing on pretty much every product. I assume they aren't doing so because they're averse to profit, they just recognise that the kind of people who throw public tantrums about 30 dollar books really aren't worth trying to get as customers.
I have mixed feelings about Mongoose. I been burned on the quality of their products one too many times. If they were consistently priced $10 lower I would not mind so much. On the other hand, I think they keep trying to improve and that stuff like Mongoose Traveller 2e has some outstanding products. But then they put out something like the Sector Construction Guide and I am back to feeling like they produce overpriced shit.
 
On the other hand, I think they keep trying to improve and that stuff like Mongoose Traveller 2e has some outstanding products. But then they put out something like the Sector Construction Guide and I am back to feeling like they produce overpriced shit.

LOL, I could write that book:

1. Roll up a subsector.
2. Repeat Step 1 sixteen times.

Done!
 
The last few messages reminded me that Classic Traveller, 3LBB boxed set, has to be on any list of the all-time best ways to get deep into the hobby basically for free. Trawling for online pdfs or buying a hard copy with a blown out box are both basically free, and this game delivers the goods year in and year out without a single module, supplement, etc.
 
I can understand people pirating because they are broke; I don't support it but I understand it. The people I don't understand are cheap losers who can afford to pay for legit copies but will spend precious time digging up pirated, poor quality media just to save miniscule amounts of money. It seems stupidly inconvenient to me. As an example, I know a guy with full time employment and zero bills who will go through convoluted steps to watch a pirated video in terrible quality rather than just pay $4 to rent it on his mom's Amazon Prime account.
I tend to think that piracy is at least partially justified in the following situations.

If people genuinely can't afford stuff. Although I think that's become less and less supportable with the rise of community copies. If you genuinely have no money there are now ways they can still get RPGs without issue.

If there's a conflict between the creator and the IP owner. I'm fine saying openly I have a pirated copy of Golden Heroes and in exchange bought everything for Squadron UK legtimately. Because fuck Games Workshop for sitting on IP for decades and stopping creators making anything from it.

If it's out of print. I don't really think people are obliged to pay £250 for a copy of Alma Mater off Ebay. The creator sees no money either way.

While I wouldn't describe it as justifiable in the same way, I can't really get that bothered about the likes of Fox or WOTC. It's the smaller creators I care about.

The one standard argument I don't think ever holds weight is "I'm pirating this game because I don't like the creator". Don't play it at all then. I have more respect for someone who just goes "I like free stuff" than I do for this excuse falsely dressed up in moralist clothing.
 
I did a double take when I saw the first post because I momentarily forgot I wasn't on RPGnet, where complaining that books are too expensive is a bannable offense.

 
I did a double take when I saw the first post because I momentarily forgot I wasn't on RPGnet, where complaining that books are too expensive is a bannable offense.

Having independent thought is the banable offense. How you express it is just the symptom.
 
Mongoose politiely ignore the large amount of whining about their pricing on pretty much every product. I assume they aren't doing so because they're averse to profit, they just recognise that the kind of people who throw public tantrums about 30 dollar books really aren't worth trying to get as customers.
Actually...

We don't really divide (potential) customers that way.

The reason we price books and PDFs the way we do is because something like 80-85% of our revenue (quickly looking at last month's figures) goes to the creatives behind the work - writers, editors, artists, layout, and so forth. When we use the services of freelancers, we pay within 24 hours of receiving an invoice from them, without delaying 30 days or until the book is in print or 30 days after the book has come out in print. The rest gets eaten up with shipping, printing, energy bills, legal fees and all the other bits and pieces you need to run a modern company.

Given that, we think other publishers sell PDFs too cheap. The content between PDF and book is (usually) exactly the same, the work that has gone into them is exactly the same, and book printing costs, while high these days, do not swallow a massive chunk when you look at the overall development cost of a book and what proportion is going to the creatives.

Add to that, and without wanting to blow our horn (too much), we are strong believers in creatives being paid not an acceptable amount, not a decent amount, but an amount that allows them to live their lives properly and not worry about the future (from a financial perspective, at least). Put another way, I am not sitting here at Mongoose HQ counting coins like Scrooge McDuck, but the Mongoose staff are able to make decent life plans and have a fighting chance of fending off the current cost of living crisis here in the UK while working in a pleasant environment. Put yet another way, whether you buy a PDF or actual book from us (and if you get the book from our website, we will send you the PDF for free :smile:), most of that is indeed going to the people who put that book together.

The reason we don't necessarily engage with the comments you describe above is because it is not a fight I think we can win. There is a perception (not universal) that PDFs are somehow 'less', to the extent that they should be priced way, way lower than the physical book. Perhaps at a near zero cost. But that, we feel, really devalues the work, skill and talent that goes into making these books. Text, art, layout and so forth are all the same... so we think there is something of a disconnect there.

I just don't think we can get all of that into a quick response on Drivethru's comments section :smile:
 
The thing is that for a small, independent producer if they can sell 4x as many pdfs at $5 as they can at $20 it makes sense for them to do so because they will probably sell more to those $5 guys. Phil Reed at SJG has some articles and stuff. His belief in that model has pretty much killed GURPS support though it has probably produced more revenue.

I gave up on trying to publish stuff through existing companies but I keep thinking about how to make money off my work. My understanding of the market is that if I were to take Galaxies In Shadow and break it up into, say 5 x 60 page booklets and sell those for $5, I'd probably make more than if I sold the whole volume for $25. It's just the nature of the market. People are less likely to consider the total impact of micro transactions.
 
Given that, we think other publishers sell PDFs too cheap. The content between PDF and book is (usually) exactly the same, the work that has gone into them is exactly the same, and book printing costs, while high these days, do not swallow a massive chunk when you look at the overall development cost of a book and what proportion is going to the creatives.

Thanks for providing a publisher' POV, and I'm inclined to agree with most of what you wrote.

The part I'll question, though, is where you state that you think other publishers sell PDFs too cheap. Isn't that really going to vary from publisher to publisher, considering the wide range of costs, overhead, etc?

For example, a solo operator who creates only PDFs (with maybe a POD option) and who is doing it in addition to a day job is going to have different needs than a company that has to pay staff, lease office/warehouse space, pay for the print run, and so forth.
 
The part I'll question, though, is where you state that you think other publishers sell PDFs too cheap. Isn't that really going to vary from publisher to publisher, considering the wide range of costs, overhead, etc?
It is, of course. I only mentioned that because, having spoken to other publishers in the past, there is a very real idea that the content of a PDF is somehow worth less than that of a book. I would like to challenge that :smile:
 
The pdf doesn't have material costs, shipping costs, or that weight of product sitting unsold in the warehouse. You can sell a million pdfs without doing a reprint. I'll agree that the content value is about the same though pdfs can have all kinds of features like hyperlinks and multilayered design. I'm not up to date on it but you can probably even put in little apps like dice rollers and chart result generators.

My point being that some pdf features would justify a higher price.
 
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I don't know about warehousing or shipping, but the marginal cost of a book is about £2.
 
I have been switching over to making my own paper standups for minis, instead of buying new ones.

I quit buying things on Kickstarter.

I am in the process of doing a big re-think of all the items I own. I am something of a packrat, and have mass quantities of all sorts of things, from gaming materials to books to knick-knacks to tools, etc. To give some examples, I have close to 900 rpg print items, very few of which are adventures or modules, accumulated over 40+ years. I have hundreds of unpainted minis (not counting the other ones). I am down to about 2,000 non-rpg books (fiction, non-fiction, etc.) after having sold off about 2,000 others in the last couple of years. I have almost every toy I have ever owned, going back to my toddler years. As a result, I have been going through everything I own, one category at a time, and selling things off. A lot of what I have is actually worth enough money to warrant selling it, as opposed to giving it to Goodwill or something. The rpg stuff is next on my list, after I finish going through some older collectible non-gaming books.
 
I don't have a budget, probably spend 1000s of £ a year on RPGs. Mostly that I'll never play and some that I don't really read apart from scanning and it FUCKING DEPRESSES ME NO END.

I recoup some of the money selling them on ebay but the empty space is easily filled by the next thing. I don't even game that much anymore because my face-to-face group is... well... lets just say its easier herding feral mutant cats than getting them organised.

It's just a reflex action. The only fortunate thing is, is that I have a job that pays well so it doesn't hurt me financially.
Very similar. I sometimes beat myself up over it, but I have the means to buy. It’s just a matter of buying stuff that won’t get used or I don’t need.
 
Ugh I need to finally sell my complete WFRP 3e collection. Haven’t touched that in over 10 years.
 
Reselling stuff can save you money, unless you re-purchase it later. True story the first time I bought Rolemaster Standard System, I decided it was just way too much and sold it off. Then I couldn't stop thinking about it and had to buy it all over again. I've generally given stuff away and often regretted it later but frankly you can't move everything every single time.
 
The pdf doesn't have material costs, shipping costs, or that weight of product sitting unsold in the warehouse. You can sell a million pdfs without doing a reprint. I'll agree that the content value is about the same though pdfs can have all kinds of features like hyperlinks and multilayered design. I'm not up to date on it but you can probably even put in little apps like dice rollers and chart result generators.

My point being that some pdf features would justify a higher price.

You can put rollers and generators in PDFs. I did that for my DtD40k7e1.t rework (because 80+ pages of houserules doesn't work), but there are potential issues.

1. Adobe. You need to use the fillable form & field calculating abilities, and not a lot of free software actually supports displaying & working all of it correctly. I haven't yet found a nice cheap/free mobile pdf app that isn't bloaty adware/spyware that will do it.
2. Adobe. The only way I of know to get the full code in is with a full paid & subscribed version of AcrobatPro. I don't know if there might be legal issues surrounding packaging a functional program in a document in a for-profit setting either.
3. Adobe. The tools & working environment in AcrobatPro look like they haven't changed or been updated from the early 90s. I've met some newer programmers who have issues with a user-hostile developer environment. Plus you'll have to code & link each button or text box individually by hand.

The actual coding is trivial, the PDFs use an old & slightly stripped version of javascript. Anyone who can make a html page with a button & rng that does something can do it.
 
It is, of course. I only mentioned that because, having spoken to other publishers in the past, there is a very real idea that the content of a PDF is somehow worth less than that of a book. I would like to challenge that :smile:
While you are here... lol

Why the fork does it seem next to impossible to find Traveller in any Canadian brick n mortar or Canadian online gaming store?

I know we are a small market but, CMON! :smile:
 
As others have said here the trick is probably to only buy what you actually end up playing. But I don't think most of us ttrpgers are noted for that level of self-control. On the bright side we're helping support a niche industry and making up for all the deadbeats grabbing in-print pdfs online.
 
I have been switching over to making my own paper standups for minis, instead of buying new ones.
I just want to chime in with some love for paper standups. When I was broke and couldn't afford minis, paper standups were a great solution. Springing for color copies, cardstock paper, and Litko bases is a nice upgrade for a negligible cost. They transport easily and look good on the table.

Paper standups are a great alternative to spending hundreds of dollars on miniatures for games with a limited run. Even though I own a pretty decent mini collection nowadays I still rely paper standups. I ran two successful Savage Worlds Conan campaigns with paper standups; it would have cost me a fortune to represent the various cultures of the Hyborian Age with traditional miniatures. Call of Cthulhu and sci fi games? Paper standups.
 
Okay, as a Canadian retailer I can honestly say with some authority that that is because our distributors suck.
Yeah I've given up before and just ordered from the USA or UK for some games. Cost me more but... well that's life.
 
As others have said here the trick is probably to only buy what you actually end up playing. But I don't think most of us ttrpgers are noted for that level of self-control. On the bright side we're helping support a niche industry and making up for all the deadbeats grabbing in-print pdfs online.
I am a model of self control. Broken and poorly designed to fit reality but a model none the less!
 
I tend to think that piracy is at least partially justified in the following situations.

If people genuinely can't afford stuff. Although I think that's become less and less supportable with the rise of community copies. If you genuinely have no money there are now ways they can still get RPGs without issue.

If there's a conflict between the creator and the IP owner. I'm fine saying openly I have a pirated copy of Golden Heroes and in exchange bought everything for Squadron UK legtimately. Because fuck Games Workshop for sitting on IP for decades and stopping creators making anything from it.

If it's out of print. I don't really think people are obliged to pay £250 for a copy of Alma Mater off Ebay. The creator sees no money either way.

While I wouldn't describe it as justifiable in the same way, I can't really get that bothered about the likes of Fox or WOTC. It's the smaller creators I care about.

The one standard argument I don't think ever holds weight is "I'm pirating this game because I don't like the creator". Don't play it at all then. I have more respect for someone who just goes "I like free stuff" than I do for this excuse falsely dressed up in moralist clothing.

Agree that the offence is minimalized in these situations, and if the pirate is willing to buy a legit copy when able (has money, or the game becomes available again) then the impact is pretty well negated. Unfortunately I think many "forget to repent" down the road.
 
Actually...

We don't really divide (potential) customers that way.

The reason we price books and PDFs the way we do is because something like 80-85% of our revenue (quickly looking at last month's figures) goes to the creatives behind the work - writers, editors, artists, layout, and so forth. When we use the services of freelancers, we pay within 24 hours of receiving an invoice from them, without delaying 30 days or until the book is in print or 30 days after the book has come out in print. The rest gets eaten up with shipping, printing, energy bills, legal fees and all the other bits and pieces you need to run a modern company.

Given that, we think other publishers sell PDFs too cheap. The content between PDF and book is (usually) exactly the same, the work that has gone into them is exactly the same, and book printing costs, while high these days, do not swallow a massive chunk when you look at the overall development cost of a book and what proportion is going to the creatives.

Add to that, and without wanting to blow our horn (too much), we are strong believers in creatives being paid not an acceptable amount, not a decent amount, but an amount that allows them to live their lives properly and not worry about the future (from a financial perspective, at least). Put another way, I am not sitting here at Mongoose HQ counting coins like Scrooge McDuck, but the Mongoose staff are able to make decent life plans and have a fighting chance of fending off the current cost of living crisis here in the UK while working in a pleasant environment. Put yet another way, whether you buy a PDF or actual book from us (and if you get the book from our website, we will send you the PDF for free :smile:), most of that is indeed going to the people who put that book together.

The reason we don't necessarily engage with the comments you describe above is because it is not a fight I think we can win. There is a perception (not universal) that PDFs are somehow 'less', to the extent that they should be priced way, way lower than the physical book. Perhaps at a near zero cost. But that, we feel, really devalues the work, skill and talent that goes into making these books. Text, art, layout and so forth are all the same... so we think there is something of a disconnect there.

I just don't think we can get all of that into a quick response on Drivethru's comments section :smile:
I don't disagree with pretty much anything you said. The one thing that makes a book much more valuable to me as a consumer is the ability to resell it later and recoup my costs to some extent. In the current market I value a physical book at roughly double the price of a pdf just due to it's resale ability. I don't see any way for PDF to overcome that really.
 
Of course, the way things work these days is part of the problem with distribution. Everything is about what's coming out next, there is no back stock catalog any more. Things are preordered, one and done unless they're D&D or the latest Magic set. Even Games Workshop claims that the majority of sales for any product come in the first month and slow to a trickle by the third. Distributors got burned pretty badly by the d20 boom and are pretty gunshy about rpgs these days.
 
Of course, the way things work these days is part of the problem with distribution. Everything is about what's coming out next, there is no back stock catalog any more. Things are preordered, one and done unless they're D&D or the latest Magic set. Even Games Workshop claims that the majority of sales for any product come in the first month and slow to a trickle by the third. Distributors got burned pretty badly by the d20 boom and are pretty gunshy about rpgs these days.
This has always been the case, at least as long as I have been in the game. Publishers chase after the 'evergreen' books, the ones that maintain high sales month after month for years. For us, that would be titles like the Traveller Core Rulebook, its Companion, Sea of Thieves and Paranoia. The obvious suspects, I guess. Other long-running publishers will have their own evergreens.
 
This has always been the case, at least as long as I have been in the game. Publishers chase after the 'evergreen' books, the ones that maintain high sales month after month for years. For us, that would be titles like the Traveller Core Rulebook, its Companion, Sea of Thieves and Paranoia. The obvious suspects, I guess. Other long-running publishers will have their own evergreens.
I frequently have people wanting to order things that are a couple years old and I have to explain to them that those things came and went and there's no way I can get them. As it is I've ended up doing a lot of direct ordering from producers rather than distributors but it makes it hard to have steady availablitity of products because I generally need to order $800 to get a retail discount and there are things I will never sell $800 of. SJGames is actually pretty good about this, they give retail discounts on their webstore, but there are things like GURPS books that they have cases of in their warehouse that you can't order physical copies of from their webstore. It's frustrating. I run a lot of GURPS in store and I could sell a lot of GURPS books if I could get them.
 
I frequently have people wanting to order things that are a couple years old and I have to explain to them that those things came and went and there's no way I can get them. As it is I've ended up doing a lot of direct ordering from producers rather than distributors but it makes it hard to have steady availablitity of products because I generally need to order $800 to get a retail discount and there are things I will never sell $800 of. SJGames is actually pretty good about this, they give retail discounts on their webstore, but there are things like GURPS books that they have cases of in their warehouse that you can't order physical copies of from their webstore. It's frustrating. I run a lot of GURPS in store and I could sell a lot of GURPS books if I could get them.
Have you tried IMing Phil Reed directly? He’s pretty important there isn’t he? And he’s active online.
 
I cannot remember the last time I saw a GURPS book for sale in a FLGs. Back in the late 90s their sourcebooks were everywhere. I still have some of them in the house somewhere.

It’s interesting to get the view from the other side of the sales counter. I have suspected for years that a lot of games just get printed once and never again.
 
Of course, the way things work these days is part of the problem with distribution. Everything is about what's coming out next, there is no back stock catalog any more. Things are preordered, one and done unless they're D&D or the latest Magic set. Even Games Workshop claims that the majority of sales for any product come in the first month and slow to a trickle by the third. Distributors got burned pretty badly by the d20 boom and are pretty gunshy about rpgs these days.

It isn't any kind of recent development. That's how it has always been.
 
You might look into tabletop RPG's on itchio. A lot of them are less expensive, and some have community copies. I appreciate the last part (I got one game that way then bought it when I did have some funds.)
 
I frequently have people wanting to order things that are a couple years old and I have to explain to them that those things came and went and there's no way I can get them. As it is I've ended up doing a lot of direct ordering from producers rather than distributors but it makes it hard to have steady availablitity of products because I generally need to order $800 to get a retail discount and there are things I will never sell $800 of. SJGames is actually pretty good about this, they give retail discounts on their webstore, but there are things like GURPS books that they have cases of in their warehouse that you can't order physical copies of from their webstore. It's frustrating. I run a lot of GURPS in store and I could sell a lot of GURPS books if I could get them.
Do you deal with Studio 2? They have our entire line as well as Savage Worlds and a whole slew of other publishers.
 
Not yet, but I probably will eventually. When my distributor has had it I've brought in Traveller and Savage Worlds product but they haven't had any since before COVID.
Do you deal with Studio 2? They have our entire line as well as Savage Worlds and a whole slew of other publishers.
 
I just want to chime in with some love for paper standups. When I was broke and couldn't afford minis, paper standups were a great solution. Springing for color copies, cardstock paper, and Litko bases is a nice upgrade for a negligible cost. They transport easily and look good on the table.

Paper standups are a great alternative to spending hundreds of dollars on miniatures for games with a limited run. Even though I own a pretty decent mini collection nowadays I still rely paper standups. I ran two successful Savage Worlds Conan campaigns with paper standups; it would have cost me a fortune to represent the various cultures of the Hyborian Age with traditional miniatures. Call of Cthulhu and sci fi games? Paper standups.

I print mine on cardstock using a little template I came up with, based on one a friend uses. I can get 18 regular sized ones on a page. If I am GMing and need a lot of the same creature (for a horde), I put a number at the top of each one, to make it easier to keep track them during combat. Then I cut each one out, fold it in half, and insert the bottom into a base. So, for example...

critters.jpg


When I'm done, I take each group (ex. a horde of goblins), clamp each set together with a paper binder clip, and carry a bunch of different sets, along with the bases, in a fairly small container, to use whenever I need it. I have a goblin set, an orc set, a gnoll set, a soldiers set, a barbarian set, etc. I also do individual ones (minus the numbers) for non-group creatures, and print out some bigger ones to represent common larger critters.

I get the art from a variety of online sources. These days I tend to like to use black-and-white art for most things, just to save ink, but I have a lot of sets I made earlier on that are in full color. Once I have the picture, I can insert the images and print off a new sheet in a couple of minutes, max.

I use these bases, and lately have been using a Miniature Market zipper case as a container, since I can get a lot of dice, some note cards, a small pen/pencil, 20 of the bases, and a couple of dozen sets of creature groups in it, with room to spare. I just pull out whatever paper minis I need to use in a given encounter, stick them in the bases (takes less than a minute for all of them), and we're ready to go.
 
Given that, we think other publishers sell PDFs too cheap. The content between PDF and book is (usually) exactly the same, the work that has gone into them is exactly the same, and book printing costs, while high these days, do not swallow a massive chunk when you look at the overall development cost of a book and what proportion is going to the creatives.
I have been buying, playing and following Traveller for decades.

1662244178365.png
Rob's Note: My digest stuff in the white boxes to the right.

Given the amount of content and quality in Mongoose products have I consistently feel like I get overcharged by $5 to $10.

Like I said in my previous post, Mongoose 2e line overall is a step up from the 1e line. So I see that progress is being made. But there still too many glitches or poor design choice in many products. Sorry if I sound discouraging, but until the release of the Sector Construction Guide, I thought most of the issue I had were resolved. I think some of the recent stuff like Deepnight Revelation really helped open up interesting corners of the Third Imperium and Traveller. But it too expensive to purchase on the regular. I wait until enough feedback is in to form a consensus about it's quality.

I am only bringing this up because we are discussing pricing.

Actually...

We don't really divide (potential) customers that way.

The reason we price books and PDFs the way we do is because something like 80-85% of our revenue (quickly looking at last month's figures) goes to the creatives behind the work - writers, editors, artists, layout, and so forth. When we use the services of freelancers, we pay within 24 hours of receiving an invoice from them, without delaying 30 days or until the book is in print or 30 days after the book has come out in print. The rest gets eaten up with shipping, printing, energy bills, legal fees and all the other bits and pieces you need to run a modern company.

That great and keep on doing all of that. But at the end of the day the quality, utility and presentation of the product has to be worth the price. I am not adverse to high pricing I have been a subscriber to Harn stuff form Columbia Games and Kelestia for decades and they are not cheap by any means. But I know the quality I am getting and the Harn team consistently delivers.

Given that, we think other publishers sell PDFs too cheap. The content between PDF and book is (usually) exactly the same, the work that has gone into them is exactly the same, and book printing costs, while high these days, do not swallow a massive chunk when you look at the overall development cost of a book and what proportion is going to the creatives.
All I can do is speak for myself. I live in a world of print on demand and pdf distribution. My cost basis is completely different. Sure it hard for me to do certain projects like boxed sets or anything that involves combining different physical media like a product with a book, poster map, and cards like The Fantasy Trip or you own 2300 AD Boxed Set. But for the bread and butter stuff like books my overhead and capital requirements are stupidly low even after paying top rates for the things I can't handle like art and editing services.

Thus I price accordingly. Sorry if I sound sarcastic but I being serious when I say what we are facing is the same thing as when the Monks of St Albans and their scriptorium went up against Guttenberg and his printing press. The tech is such, that in the time I have for a hobby I can consistently publish something once every year or two years and still make enough of return to fund the next project, pay for my RPG hobby, and give a decent return enough to pay bills, expenses, and maybe some luxuries. All while pricing my PDFs accordingly.

Add to that, and without wanting to blow our horn (too much), we are strong believers in creatives being paid not an acceptable amount, not a decent amount, but an amount that allows them to live their lives properly and not worry about the future (from a financial perspective, at least). Put another way, I am not sitting here at Mongoose HQ counting coins like Scrooge McDuck, but the Mongoose staff are able to make decent life plans and have a fighting chance of fending off the current cost of living crisis here in the UK while working in a pleasant environment. Put yet another way, whether you buy a PDF or actual book from us (and if you get the book from our website, we will send you the PDF for free :smile:), most of that is indeed going to the people who put that book together.
Again, I recognize that you are your staff are putting the work in. And I see improvements being made every year. I am glad you are looking out for your creatives and your staff.
 
I run a lot of GURPS in store and I could sell a lot of GURPS books if I could get them.
I think the ultimate solution is something involving print on demand. Either a machine at the store, or a machine at the company/distributors that allows them to handle small volumes profitably. This wouldn't be for first run release but as a way to handle back catalogs.
 
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