Chriton227 like I've said allways I arrive here nearly like you .. . Now I've bought all the new sets and all the old that I use (I think that the only ones missed are Maiden and Siege...and someday They will fall also) ...

One good way to combat that would be for the people who actually go to Cons, if they find someone using WWG products they didn't pay for, to try and convince the person to actually pay for the product. Maybe inform them of how cheap it is, and if there isn't enough monetary support, how it might just disappear from the gaming world altogether.

A friendly, consumer representative with a professional attitude and convincing argument can go a long way in preventing future piracy.

Maybe if they respect the WWG consumer, as well, they will start behaving accordingly.

You can do this with password protected PDF's. The password information is in teh PDF. Avery press does this for there PDF books. Every time you open the PDF you have enter your email address. Makes it very easy to see were a PDF came from

Personally I am not fond of DRM protections schemes for 3 reasons. 1) They inevitably increase the price. 2) They make the product harder to use. 3) They simply don't work, to date just about every DRM scheme has been broken. 4) Either the user loses the magic pass or the company shuts down gate keeper, rendering a purchase unusable.

As noted else where, there generally is much less piracy of reasonable priced, good customer service, quality products. That I think is often the best way to ensure people pay for things.

[ I really should check thread dates, to prevent thread necromance.

Denny, Would the above referenced concept for a future date be TerraClips? ]

Wow, this is an ancient thread! But as relevant as ever



No but I suppose you could say that the spirit of TerraClips was in some ways birthed from those early attempts with WhiteWolf. It was a great learning experience and helped me fine tune what works and what doesn't in a retail product.



From my experience this is an absolute fallacy. It doesn't matter how affordable you make your products, it will never be cheap enough to prevent or dissuade piracy. In point of fact, we've reduced prices of newer releases substantially and piracy is at an all-time high. The inside joke at WWG is that we are potentially the best known and most broke terrain maker out there Our traffic speaks volumes on that one.

It remains as one of our most detrimental battles and it has made each subsequent year that much more difficult to stay afloat. Its an issue that is so huge that we don't really stand a chance of winning. The best we can do is plead for support at this point.

If we do consider anti-piracy schemes they will largely be targeted at "casual shares" which accounts for a large majority of the kind of piracy we see. Nothing is uncrackable but some things just make it not worth the bother to Joe Blow.

Denny, have you considered adding a "tip the artist" link to your product pages? I know people could accomplish the same thing by repeatedly buying the same set, but to me at least, offering a tip would feel much more natural.

We could but it would feel really unprofessional. It also sends the wrong signal "If you'd rather tip us than actually buying stuff, that's ok!". The pricing structure is already rock bottom contrasted against how much work is actually involved in developing a product. It might sound counter intuitive but if more people actually supported us vs file-sharing, we could reduce our prices even further.

We're doing ok at the moment. I think if things ever got that desperate you'd just see us shut down completely rather than asking for charity. I wish more file-sharers understood the stakes though. Its either support us or we'll literally just disappear.

That's the big challenge: finding the price spot that brings in the most revenue. Could be a higher price, could be a lower one. Often the only way to know for sure is to try out some different price points and watch what happens.

This is where one-off specials can help, as they can be a quick way of identifying price sensitivity without committing to a permanent price drop.

Another trick (often used in the computer games market) can be to discount products once they reach a certain revenue level - the idea being that once you've sold to the bulk of customer that will buy at a certain price point, you then lower the price to draw in the customers that will buy at the next lower price point.

Of course this doesn't solve the piracy issue. But then those ratbags probably weren't ever going to buy your product anyway.

A ratty problem piracy is. Music, movies, cardstock ... so much gets ripped off. I think there is a sense of entitlement and they'll never stop me attitude. They are thieves but don't see it that way.

Even if you are not a thief and don't use a pirated copy offered to you, you give your approval by accepting it from the person, validating the action of piracy in that person's mind. Its like laughing at jokes that reek of prejudice even though you are not, by doing so you thereby are facilitating those who are.

There are many ways to make a 'statement', and if a enough people do the thief might come to see their self as they truly are ... a thief! They might stop.

Security comes up in my work quite often. I've also done some computer forensics to sue X employees for cutting and pasting our source code into their products.

First, you have to understand what you're trying to prevent. Second is how.

In this day and age, the biggest concern is that 'script kiddies' can just copy stuff. I see the younger ones with PDF laden laptops all the time. Therefore I think that the level of security required for any product is 'script kiddie' proof, and PDFs are an absolute boon to script kiddies.

Watermarking only scares people who use their real credit cards and IDs. I'm positive that some hackers are just using stolen info... downloading, then sharing. It scares honest people. Its only other use is in suing up-loaders. Not exactly a money making proposition.

The only thing that comes to mind is to use software to select what pages get printed, and print those. The process has to be somewhat onerous to prevent a bulk print to PDF operation. Node lock said software. To a hacker he has to crack each separate program, and may just give up. Note: a hacker is not a script kiddie.

Another thing that comes to mind is uploading some of this stuff, but either make it incomplete, or just a few bits and slap some solid advertising in it with a broad "Don't pirate our stuff slogan." i.e. TLX start set. (Who knows.. might lead to actual sales.)


In my own work, the level of protection I apply to my firmware is sufficient to require a competitor to hire a cryptographer. Just reading a book and trying a few things will not crack our protection.

It would be onerous (good term UHF), but there are ways to fetch the client's NIC MAC address. Embed THAT in the PDF, and any piracy of the file is much harder to 'anonymize' unless the uploader wants to replace his network card every few days...

And all I have to do is change the MAC address. LAA's are easy to put in and you have literally Millions of combinations.

Now if you obtain the original MAC and put it somewhere in a program to where if that changes, then it won't open/run.. that's a different story.

BTW, my entire home network has LAA's that I set on each box as it comes into the house. Obfuscation of the types of NICs and possible vulnerabilities of the NIC drivers.

My favorite B0:0B:EE:00:00. Try to figure out the manufacturer of that one

One company I worked at used MAC addresses and it DROVE US NUCKING FUTS!

If you have multiple NICs, windows seems to randomly decided which one you're using from one day to the next. You'd ask for the primary, and receive a random number. (Our software was selling for $50k, and in oil and gas, that would attract the 'script kiddies'.)

Meh, it's one of the few ways I know of to fight filesharing without crippling honest users. I realize there are ways around it, but if you can make things harder for the bad guys without making it harder on the good guys, I think that's a good route to take.

I totally agree with what you are saying, but in order to defeat/deter the bad guys you have to think like them.

I am an honest user, but I also think of ways to defeat security (I actually get paid to do that) so I can come up with really off the wall ways of defeating security.

One thing I don't think people have considered in this thread, if someone has malware on their system that grabs all files that are updated or new to the system and upload them for later review. So someone could be unintentionally providing pirates with their ill-gotten goods.

Having security built into the file (ie a password or some other mechanism) would probably fail here too since any malware that uploads new files to a server would probably capture keystrokes.

A multi layer authentication system would help, but that would require resources that small companies like WWG probably can't allocate.

I agree with you on this. I think you set the price and that is it. In my line of work we call this the walk away price., i.e., the lowest we will sell a product or service for and still accept the work.



I work with construction companies providing solutions for their accounting, project management, and estimating needs (among other things). We have learned that pricing things uber-low tends to bring in clients who do not value what we provide as much as others. We have turned away from trying to compete on that level and have really focused on the value we bring our clients.

I have a competitor who is literally miles from my office who always offers discounts on software and has lower rates on service yet we consistently beat them out for new sales and, in the last five years, we have converted a large portion of their portfolio to us. We tell clients right up front we are not the cheapest, but we are the best, and we make an effort to show them the value we provide as opposed to just offering a low-cost solution.

My point is this: WWG is the PREMIUM cardstock terrain manufacturer, hands-down. I started with one of your competitors (just happened to find them first) but not I exclusively purchase WWG products because I like the consistency, quality, and customer service you provide. I would pay more for your products if your raised the prices because I believe in what you provide and the manner in which you provide it (no Few Good Men cracks). If you are selling a commodity, you look for the lowest price, if not, then you have to compare what you are receiving to the ask price.

If you raise the prices, you may have less people purchasing, but those that do go for the higher price point would be less likely to pirate it. I have no data to back that up but I think it makes sense. Perhaps you can experiment with it.

That's a good point. Some years back, I was working for a consulting company that couldn't manage to sell services to save their lives. (in 2 years they went from 96 employees to 17) They forced us consultants to undergo sales training, thinking that we need to be selling to the customers. Anyways, in the training, I heard a really interesting story related to this:

Some vineyard out in Washington state made and sold perfectly good wine at reasonable prices for a number of years, but couldn't seem to grow beyond being a regional supplier. So, they finally hired a marketing company to look into what was going wrong. The marketing company had a whole bunch of people go sit in liquor stores and watch how people bought wine. They found out a couple of key things: 1) People didn't know how to buy wine. 2) The stores arranged the wine by vintage (ya know, like the cabernets together, the rieslings together, etc.)and then by price within that vintage--increasing from left to right. When people bought wine, they would find a vintage that they recognized, then look at how they were arranged. They didn't want to buy the cheap stuff and they didn't want to spend too much, so they started right in the middle. In the middle seemed "average" so they would shift just a little to the right so they had "above average" and they would buy something in that price range.

The marketing company came back to the vineyard and made the following recommendation: create a new label for your bottles so it looks like something new and price it so it fit right into that "above average" range. (they had previously been pricing the wine much more cheaply) The vineyard did that and demand soared. Within 2 years, they had grown so much that they were bought out by a national chain for millions.

The moral of the story: don't underestimate the market value of your goods. Often, you will find that the price can generate a "perceived value" to a customer.

Great story! Perceived value is a great tool to use. Some of our "old school" sales people work by the law of attrition: throw enough $h*t against the wall, and eventually something will stick. "We do this! Oh, you don't need that? Well we do THIS!" and so on. They are looking for short term, quick returns, and customers see through that or are just low-level. Others, like what I was expressing above, take a step back, slow the process down, and take the time to find out what is important to the prospect, speak to those points (if possible) and in the long run build value and ultimately bring more money in the door, with a satisfied, quality customer at the other end.

Now, in a retail environment, the metrics may be somewhat different and the timing is obviously a lot faster, but on the whole potential (and repeat) customers want two basic things: quality products and good support. For the cardstock market, I KNOW WWG consistently delivers on both, so I support them. I could go to other places and pick up cheap products (under a dollar some of them) but they are a poor substitute for what I get here, plus how many other vendors are as interactive with their client base? Not many, that is for sure.

While those are great examples, I don't think they apply to the actual piracy portion of WWG's issues. Price point vs quality sure, but not piracy.

Digital widgets are the examples here (or things that can be turned into digital widgets).

While I'm sure WWG could take pirates to court, it is expensive AND you usually don't get what you spent back, unless someone is re-selling the items (ie Company X decided to sell WWG's PDFs without WWG's permission).

And WWG could price their sets at $1.00, people will copy/share just cause it's Free.

Interesting that People will pay $9.99 USD for an over priced restaurant meal with proportions that will make you FAT, but won't spend that on Good Quality Terrain PDF's.


What would help WWG (and other cardstock terrain makers) is if Gamers see the terrain and question people in a nice way to find out if they paid for it or not, then influenced them to pay for it if they didn't.... might make piracy drop some.

A lot of what you're saying makes sense. Although I kind of doubt price point will make a difference on whether it gets pirated. However, raising prices may reduce sales somewhat, but bring in more profit.... think 'Games Workshop'.

I guess a good question is "How much does it save to steal? Is it worth it?" Because, the other barrier to entry in this hobby is all the materials you need. Selling branded stuff might help recoup costs.

Speaking of branded and materials... WTF is the WWG real stuff? Its not in my LGS yet! (Denny? I'm talking to you!)

Yeah, you bring up a good point that my story works well for the retail market, but might not be the same for something like cardstock modeling.

Then again, your primary target market is long-term hobbyists like us--and we're much more likely to chose someone like WWG that provides great quality than go for a cheaper brand.

And, yes, you are right that this talk of price isn't really going to affect piracy. I mean, people can buy a song online for $.99, but they'd rather pirate it.

The court costs are horrendous. If you win, the other party pays for your legal fees. On the other hand, if they loose, they pay your legal fees. This is often why people settle out of court. Its still too expensive and too risky.

Violating an EULA is typically a slap on the wrist. i.e. a Cease and Desist. The courts like to see that you tried to settle things before it got out of hand.

The problem with piracy is this - those who pirate your product are probably not interested in purchasing it. Maybe 1% of those who pirate WWG's product would purchase it under any circumstances. The excuses are varied and creative - "I can't afford it", "I'm just trying it out - if I like it enough I'll buy", "I just want the one piece - if they sold it individually I'd totally pay!"

Most of them center around somebody justifying their actions to themselves. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a thief - if they can come up with some rationalization it makes them feel much better about themselves. I have a friend who fits into this camp, specifically about DLC. He feels that all DLC should be given away for free because there's "no real cost". I've tried to explain the very real cost of paying the people who develop that DLC to no avail.

I saw a news snip about the national campaigns for free meals on Veteran's Day. In a college town the ROTC person was at an Applebee's when he saw two students come in and be seated. They caught his attention because their uniforms were about 15 years out of date and he had never seen the students before. He questioned them for a while - one was dressed in a major's uniform and just stared at his plate, refusing to answer. The same sense of entitlement those students felt is shared by the piracy crowd - it doesn't matter that they haven't paid the price. Somebody is getting something that they like, and they don't see any reason why they shouldn't have it.

My only recommendation (and I'm not at home to check whether they already do this) would be to add as a footer to the TLX template a note at the bottom of the page. It could say something along the lines of "This product pays for the livelihood of the employees of WorldWorks Games. Please do not steal or illegally distribute our products." Sure - that would probably drive the script kiddie crowd to take a stand on principle that "Hey, we're not stealing! We should share this with everybody just to prove our point!" On the other hand it would also act as a small reminder and maybe, just maybe, a twinge of remorse sufficient to convince a few people to support you guys.

I would love to see more content and I'm excited to see TerraClips out the door. Tangible goods are more difficult to copy (and it's typically obvious that you've done so). I'm hoping that little forray will end up securing a sufficient revenue stream to fund more efforts toward developing a wider variety of terrain products. You guys ARE the best in the business - I've looked. There are others who might match (or nearly match) the quality level on props, standees, adventures and so forth but when it comes to terrain you guys are king.

I guess the point I was trying to make was that people who want to pirate typically do not want to part with a lot (or any) cash, so if the price point is only a few bucks, they might buy it and just throw it in a torrent or something, but if the price point is 20 or 30 dollars and you can only get them from WWG (i.e., can't scan it from a book in the bookstore or library), then that might make it that much harder to get onto the pirating circles.

Of course, the flip side is once one copy is out there, it can be replicated infinitely, but is could still slow it to the point that, as was mentioned previously, the bulk of likely purchasers have purchased the item.

Also, I think it safe to say, and there are plenty of examples out there, that pirating income should probably not be considered lost income as these people would never have purchased in the first place. I think digital products have an advantage over physical products in that respect as there is no replacement cost as there would be if it was stolen. Yes, you are not getting paid what you are due, but you are not having to spend extra (and by extension raising prices) to cover lost physical product.

Let me qualify that last statement as well and say that I realize the value of the intellectual property of these items outweighs the cost of physical items where produced, but it is a small consolation.

I agree. I've met more than one person who offered me a free copy of (for instance) all the D&D manuals and handbooks ever made. They're all very frank about the fact that they wouldn't buy the books for half price, let alone full. I don't mean to sound defeatist here, but I think that there are only a few steps that can be taken to fight piracy that don't 'DRM' the honest users, and all of those steps (as CCotD points out) can be defeated. I think the most basic rule of security holds true here: no matter how complicated your locks are, locks are only meant to keep honest people honest. The determined thief will find a way to pick it. I mean, you could get into a situation where your client must access your files through a dedicated software layer employing 30second rotating geospin-relative-to-Rigel-II-based MD5 hashed encryption keys, but what kind of repeat business will you have from a customer who loves the product but has to have a blood sample and an encyclopedic knowledge of 13th century French literature every time they want to print a TLX tile? The point is, you can go wild with security but there comes a point when the loss of frustrated customers is more costly than a loss to pirates who wouldn't buy anyway.

Does anyone know if there are statistics out on how many people who pirate WWG stuff actually use it?

I ask because of the point made that people wouldn't pay for D&D for 1/2 the price... but do they use them for free (which to me is idiocy, if you enjoy the use, pay for it)

That seems like a difficult statistic to acquire. I would assume that most people that pirate something aren't letting the entire world know that they do (this is obviously different than telling a few people in person).

You never know, WWG may have put in actual trackers and we don't know it. It could very well be tracked.

I'm just curious if there is any informal data. I remember Denny saying something about talking to some pirates on-line, just curious if that might have brought up some data.

There are a number of things WWG could do, right now, to stop its products being pirated. But will they help WWG's business?

For better or worse, WWG is in a market where piracy is rife. The things that make piracy so easy in this market, are the same things that enable WWG to exist commercially in the first place:
- Instant access to the global market at negligible cost
- Customers can locate and access ultra-niche suppliers easily and instantly
- Copying and distributing digital media is as almost free, instant and requires minimal investment
- Product is automatically downloadable and readable by customers

Eventually web technology will evolve to the point that it meets these criteria and prevents illegal copying and distribution of digital products. Until then, ultra-niche players like WWG are just going to have to a) accept a background of piracy, or b) accept reduction of their market.

I can't say that we have to like this, but this is the state of play right now.

I think plenty of people who pirate would have payed if the free version wasn't available. I can't put a number on it, but I'm sure it's WAY over 1%. Otherwise, wouldn't WorldWorks be pulling in significantly more business than it used to? Surely, they're more well known now. They have more sets available now. So why aren't they raking it in?

The root of the problem is that WorldWorks' primary product has no intrinsic value. It's a file. More accurately, it's a link that I can click on to have a file appear on my hard drive. Sure, it costs a lot of time to produce. Sure, people will pay for it - but what are they really buying? I know that when I buy a set from WorldWorks, I do it to support the work of the company and its artists. I buy the sets I like because I think Denny and company should be fairly compensated. I also want them to make more sets in the future. On the other hand, I can easily see how plenty of people could simply not care about Denny, nor the consequences of bleeding WorldWorks dry.

While I don't like DRM, I strongly suspect that anything that makes piracy harder would improve sales (assuming you don't take it too far and end up punishing your loyal customers).

I disagree. Nearly any DRM scheme hurts loyal customers more than pirates, unless the "DRM" somehow manages to add features to a product rather than remove them. I am a strong supporter of Valve/Steam, because I believe that the benefits of a consolidated backup of all of my games that allows me to easily access and reinstall them is worth the requirement for a constant constant connection to their servers.

All most DRM schemes do is slightly delay the length of time between release and availability on filesharing sites. Not only that, but DRM conjures up an image of a huge dominating corporation. I think you have to live and let live, and just continue to remind people that if they keep pirating your stuff, you aren't going to be able to continue making it.

Sacretis