Someone hacked Plate Mail Games OneBookShelf account and set the prices to all of the audio tracks to ZERO. While the price was so set, there were 3,200 downloads. In theory, thats about a $4,000 hit.
The reality is something different, as many of those sales were probably from folks that were curious about using music in their RPG sessions and might not have purchased a copy otherwise. So, is it a loss of 3,200 potential sales? Perhaps.
It is certainly the loss of some sales and one heck of a hardship on a small small publisher.
Plate Mail Games' tracks sell for $1.25 a pop.
Wes does good work and can use some community support.
Hello All,
This morning I found out that my products had been switched to $0 and 3200 tracks where downloaded. The theory is that someone got hold of my publisher account password. Luckily, I had recently transferred my balance to Paypal, so no money was stolen. Your information is secure; it's handled on the DrivethruRPG side. So, for 24 hours, people were able to download tracks for free. I think 99% of the people that did figured I had put the prices at $0 and thought nothing more about it. I'm not rich. My family uses the money we make from sales to pay bills. I don't charge a lot for my products. There is no real recourse at this point because multiple people downloaded products, and as I said, I think they didn't understand something was wrong. If I had sold that many products, my cut would have paid my rent and a good chunk of bills. Anyway, here is what I'm asking: if you can afford to get one track today, consider doing so. If everyone was to buy one track, I would recoup the money lost over the last 24 hours.
Also, I want to thank the customer who recognized something seemed amiss and alerted me right away. That was very thoughtful and I greatly appreciate it.
Plate Mail Games
Thanks,Sales made via The Tavern's RPGNow links go to support The Tavern. Believe it or not, pennies and nickels do add up ;)
Wes Otis
I didn't get any when they were free, and I can't afford much, but I just bought their starter fantasy bundle with a gift certificate I got for my birthday.
ReplyDeleteNo need for music or sfx, but I bought a track on principle. Hope it helps.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that the downloads don't directly correlate to lost sales (I'd be tempted to download a track for free but don't really go looking to buy audio for my games) this is still a really horrible thing to have happened because SOMEONE in the gaming community *did* knowingly change those prices and download those materials. I think that Wes Otis' response to things is perfect. He doesn't blame the people who couldn't have known and instead just reaches out.
ReplyDeleteWes Otis is a class act.
As a publisher using OBS I would be horrified if that happened to me. I'll head over there now and buy a couple of tracks. While I do t use OBS as income (money just goes to paying my business' taxes), any loss hurts. This begs the question, does OBS have any protection on compensation? While this case is different, if a WoW account is hacked and item stolen, Blizzard will set it strait and give items back. Currency in WoW does have a $ value behind it. Of a bank, if a bank is robbed, they are bound to return anything being protected. Sad that they are not helping with your loss.
ReplyDeleteJust bought a couple of cool supers related tracks. Useful for my "someday when it gets off the ground" supers game.
DeleteI have a bunch of Plate Mail tracks I play on loop in the background during game, I really enjoy them. From my experience Wes is a great guy (further evidenced by his response to this) so I'm more than a little pissed that a fellow gamer from our community would do this. I'm definitely purchasing some more tracks from DriveThru today, hope it helps.
ReplyDeleteI have quite a few Plate Mail tracks myself. Good stuff. Will pick up some more today. Thanks for the 411
ReplyDeleteJust an idea - look to see who the first person was to download the tracks at that price. If it was a comprehensive download of all of them (as in, someone downloaded every track they had right after the prices went to 0), I'd say that's at least a possible suspect.
ReplyDeleteI just checked out with the three starter sets, hope that helps. :)
ReplyDeleteI've backed the Plate Mail Games kickstarters and can attest to the quality of the tracks. Furthermore, Wes is a generous and stand-up guy. Please give him a hand.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing this out! I hadn't bought anything from DriveThru in quite some time, and I'd always wanted to pick up some of these tracks. So I've just taken the opportunity to treat myself to the Temples, Tombs & Dungeons Collection. Excellent stuff!
ReplyDelete