Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1017647Or more likely, they just fucked up. It happens. OBS like the rest of the industry is made up of enthusiastic amateurs. The 1337 skillzorz aren't quite there.

If you get paid, you're a professional.  Being amateurish isn't the same as being an amateur.

Pundit - I'm getting the "product not available" when I follow the link in the top post here...

I can search and get this link --> http://www.rpgnow.com/product/226022/Lion--Dragon?term=Lion+%26+Dragon&test_epoch=0

Quote from: estar;1017702Seriously? Whatever RPGNow is doing it is database driven and the best pages are autogenerated. The solution may not be straightforward and take considerably more time than it took you to type the above.

I don't know what they are using or if this is something they've built from scratch, but they need to own their mistake. There are some crap ecommerce systems out there that are still being marketed which like you say, have byzantine and horrible numbers of tables and make them very hard to update or fix. But they aren't impossible to update. They are just expensive to update. I would speculate that doing so is more work than they want to do, and they value their work investment over the work investment of the creators that broker there.

Quote from: Dumarest;1017712If you get paid, you're a professional.

Yeah, that's the definition the Olympic committee used to use. But most people take it as "makes a living from it." A vanishingly small proportion of the people involved in the rpg industry make a living from it. It's pocket money for most, at best.

But they're enthusiastic. Enthusiastic amateurs. And not smart enough to conspire. Now, I know one of Pundit's hobbies is imagining conspiracies, but ordinary old fuckups is enough to explain this. After all, fuckups are a regular and expected part of IT, which each update reduces functionality.

I'm pretty sure OBS is a business that has actual full time employees and not a part time/amateur operation.

I'm sure this is a screw up rather than deliberate (since I really doubt anyone at OBS ever even thinks of the Pundit, much less maliciously), but they shouldn't be excused due to amateurishness, it's basically the only source of RPG PDFs.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1017719Yeah, that's the definition the Olympic committee used to use. But most people take it as "makes a living from it." A vanishingly small proportion of the people involved in the rpg industry make a living from it. It's pocket money for most, at best.

But they're enthusiastic. Enthusiastic amateurs. And not smart enough to conspire. Now, I know one of Pundit's hobbies is imagining conspiracies, but ordinary old fuckups is enough to explain this. After all, fuckups are a regular and expected part of IT, which each update reduces functionality.

Except OBS is making real money off of people producing actual content. And they have a real staff. For example, they assign representatives now to every publisher and those are your contact points when you have complaints. They are the ones making a living off of the smaller RPG companies who earn far less. And while I agree, a fuck up can totally explain this, I think more than a few publishers have that thought when something goes catastrophically wrong at OBS and the timing impacts their revenue in a big way (and part of that is because none of us really knows what goes on there behind the scenes and if the people who are employed are the same people making noise about publishers on forums and stuff----or if they are just people who would rather see one game win over another). I think it is more likely a screw up, but I also don't think it is a crazy thought for Pundit to have in this instance. And I suspect most publishers have had that thought even if they never voice it (if only because we lack information about how the mess-ups occur). But again, whether it is intentional, accidental, or some other cause, the end result for publishers is the same and when these kinds of screw ups happen, a game can die on the vine. Because that top seller list is everything. It is visibility. It drives sales. Pundit is fortunate because he has a large enough voice, that when he asks people to step up and help the book get back onto the list, I am sure it helps. A lot of publishers and writers don't have that, so when OBS messes up, their products just fade form view.

OBS are not enthusiastic amateurs IMO. If they are employing enthusiastic amateurs behind the scenes (which I don't think they are anymore), I do think that would be a recipe for the kind of concern Pundit is raising. Given how much anger there is in the gaming community between different camps of people.

But OBS are making a good deal of money doing what they do.

Why is anyone claiming that OBS is an 'amateur' enterprise.  They're a licensed business according to the U.S. owning several imprints under the name One Bookshelf.  Which makes them accountable for every mistake they make, and should try to repair and improve.

OBS is definitely professional, but with all of the "little" problems that have cropped up between titles disappearing, titles duplicating, prices being reduced without notice to near free, etc., I'd say that their database has major issues.  If they want to continue being a monopoly in the tabletop RPG scene, they need to get their IT in order, and quickly.

Here's hoping that a new company arises to challenge them, but in the meantime I'll double check to make sure I have everything downloaded...

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1017724Why is anyone claiming that OBS is an 'amateur' enterprise.  They're a licensed business according to the U.S. owning several imprints under the name One Bookshelf.  Which makes them accountable for every mistake they make, and should try to repair and improve.

I think its amateur in the context of not highly skilled experienced. Of course, they're accountable and seem to be trying to improve they're not polished to a great degree (ATM, Drivethru is down). Its like a things in the rpg market, practically a garage industry. Look at how badly mismanaged some FLGS could be as an example.

Pundit,

FYI

The link in your signature for L&D isn't pointing to anything. If you update your sig, that should show up on all your posts.

Yes, OBS has CHANGED THE URL AGAIN.

After they expressly told me it was "impossible" and that I had to change every URL I had to the new one, they changed it again. Coincidentally, I'm sure, after seeing L&D leap up TWELVE SPOTS on the bestseller list in just 24 hours.
Someone decided that L&D hadn't had enough "accidents" apparently.

RPGNow Has Screwed Me Over YET AGAIN, Day 3


So first off, before getting to today's news, I want to thank everyone who helped out so far with trying to get Lion & Dragon back into its top-10 position. Here's the good news: thanks to your efforts, Lion & Dragon jumped up TEN SPOTS on RPGnow's Bestselling list in just one day, from about 28-30th spot, all the way down to 18th! We almost got to be on the top 15!


But I guess that's it. Because today, I wake up to find that OBS has fucked me over yet again.

My tactic was calling out OBS, with the idea that if they kept causing me problems that would make it increasingly obvious that it wasn't accidental.  But it seems they figured out at least one more "accidental" way to completely fuck me.

I woke up this afternoon to find that they'd emailed me, after previously having sworn that "we cannot reverse the process for the links to point to 226022 since that URL is now blocked in our system" (and that's a direct cut-and-paste quote) and SPECIFICALLY INSTRUCTING me that I MUST change all my links to the new url because there was NO WAY they could change the link back, today I find that THEY FUCKING CHANGED THE LINK BACK.

I did no work yesterday because I spent the ENTIRE DAY changing EVERY SINGLE LINK I could find to the new one in a desperate bid to save the status of my product which was dropped from the bestselling top-10 BECAUSE OF THEM.
Now, they went and made goddamn sure that ONCE AGAIN, for the THIRD FUCKING DAY IN A ROW, every single link to L&D GOES NOWHERE.


Note that I did NOT tell them, after their response I quoted above, to change it back. I told them to put a redirect from the old URL to the new one. But they didn't do that. Instead, they restored the old URL and KILLED the new one, so that once again what you get when you go there is:






So they made damn sure that the new URL, the one I spent ALL yesterday promoting, the one I made it very clear I was promoting, in defiance of OBS fucking with us, the one I changed every L&D link I could find into, apparently leads nowhere.

 This means that either their bungling incompetence has reached Clouseau-esque levels of idiocy, or there's a very intentional forethought of malice here to show other "errors" they can commit to keep isolating us from our potential customers.

I'm waiting to see if we get any kind of response or restitution or just a fucking redirect.

But in the meantime, you'll notice I didn't put up a single link to L&D yet. Why? Because there's no way for me to know what they're going to do next. I can promote the fuck out of a single link, and tomorrow they'll just DECIDE ARBITRARILY TO GET RID OF IT again and I have to repeat all this. On the other hand, me not promoting L&D is, I'm increasingly convinced, exactly what someone at OBS wants. They absolutely want it gone from the Bestseller list, they thought their previous asshole act would have made it happen, but now they saw that it was literally SOARING back up the list, 12 spots in 24 hours, and threatening to break the top-15, so they pulled another fucking trick.

So here's what I'm going to do:

1.  Here are all currently known URLS for Lion & Dragon. At least one of these is likely to not be working at any time:

Try this Lion & Dragon first, it was the one working at the time of writing

If that link doesn't work, try this one, it was working yesterday, and who knows they may switch it all again

PLEASE promote BOTH these links together, or just share this blog entry. Please buy the game if you were planning to and hadn't done so yet! If you have no interest in the game, please share the links and promote the game to any gamers you know on any social media, but always with both those links for now, or the link to this blog entry so people know just what their game is.


2. If BOTH  links above aren't working, go to RPGnow and do a SEARCH for "Lion Dragon" or for "RPGPundit". Hopefully you'll be able to find it that way if it's there at all.

3. I will continue to post updates here on my blog as events develop. So if all the above fails look at later entries than this one.


Thank you to everyone.  Special thanks to Tenkar's Tavern for their support blog, Jeffro Johnson who did a big job of spreading the news on G+, Sword & Stitchery for making a big positive blog entry calling attention to L&D.  Unfortunately, all the links they shared now go nowhere, again.  And I know it's a lot to ask, but I hope you all and more of you reading this will take up the fight to not the motherfuckers doing this (be it through GROSS NEGLECTFUL INCOMPETENCE or INTENTIONAL MALICE OF FORETHOUGHT) win.


I'll keep all of you posted.


RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Neerup Hawkbill + Image Virginia



UPDATE: Apparently, according to some users on G+, NEITHER of the links above work on a mobile/cellphone.  Can anyone confirm?


UPDATE 2: Apparently this link is the one that works on mobile. If you're on a cellphone use this:
https://www.rpgnow.com/m/product/226022
Note that before, any link worked on a mobile. Now apparently that one does, not the usual one.

I'll also try to keep this link working: http://rpg.deals/liondragon

Quote from: brettmb;1017758I'll also try to keep this link working: http://rpg.deals/liondragon

Thanks, Brett! And sorry that this whole fiasco is causing delays with the release of RPGPundit Presents.

Once is incompetence.

Twice is suspicious.

Thrice is intentional.