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Two words: "fewer lawsuits". RPG companies, with a couple of exceptions (ahem: Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, Games Workshop), are tiny. Which means there's a s
by cstross 13y ago
Two words: "fewer lawsuits".
RPG companies, with a couple of exceptions (ahem: Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, Games Workshop), are tiny. Which means there's a single desk labelled "the buck stops here".
Whereas at a big corporation with billion dollar revenues at stake, nobody wants to make a decision that triggers a shareholder lawsuit -- especially if it's one that's devilishly hard to prove either way. (If you've got DRM on ebooks, then remove it, activist shareholders can in principle try to sue you either for losing revenue to piracy by dropping DRM, or for having lost revenue in the past due to embracing DRM. So it's much safer not to do anything at all ...)
It is no accident that the first of the Big Five English-language conglomerates to break step on DRM was Macmillan. Macmillan is the English-language subsidiary of Holtzbrinck, which is privately owned.
- mattl 13y agoEven GW is selling DRM-free epub now.
- rXoX 13y agoVery good point re: "activist shareholders". Too few people appreciate what can happen when corps aren't seen to be squeezing out every last drop...
- pjc50 13y agoShareholder lawsuits are vanishingly rare, though.
- gboudrias 13y ago> (ahem: Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, Games Workshop) Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast now, btw. Abandon hope all ye etc.
- leoc 13y agoAvalon Hill too, of course (or what's left of it).