Quote from: RPGPundit;1017625This to me was very intentional SABOTAGE. I think the ultimate goal was to get us off the Bestseller list.  As of the moment we were blocked, we had been on the TOP 10 of the Bestseller list from the moment L&D had first launched. This makes a HUGE difference, because everyone who goes on the RPGnow main page will see it prominently. This is part of why we hit copper status so quickly.

James Mathe used to pull BS like this. It's why back in 2004 I stopped doing business with him (and RPGNow) entirely. Ended up costing me thousands, ...by the way, ...in lost sales. I thought things would be different with the new owners whom are working very hard to stay behind the scenes. Did find two still active contacts for OBS and RPGnow, Mike Todd out of Stone Mountain, Georgia currently registers and administers all of the OBS websites, and a management corporation out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Minion Development Corporation. Owned by James Mathe. My understanding is that James sold out or retired not too long ago, however it wouldn't surprise me if he was still in the gaming business. He's about as slimey as they come.


OneBookShelf (OBS) is a digital marketplace for roleplaying games, fiction, comics, and other traditional games. It serves as the home of the online storefronts DriveThruRPG (DTRPG) and RPGNow, and is the exclusive retailer for digital books from publishers like White Wolf and Onyx Path.

OBS was formed in 2006 by a merger of the digital retailers RPGNow and DriveThruRPG; RPGNow was established in 2001 by James Mathe (and was one of the very first dedicated marketplaces for RPG ebooks), and DriveThruRPG was established in 2004 by White Wolf alumni Mike Todd, Chris McDonough and Steve Wieck. Both sites are still used as nominally distinct storefronts following the merger, although the lion's share of traffic and marketing go to DTRPG. Other specialized storefronts were added over the years that followed, including DriveThruFiction, DriveThruComics, DriveThruCards. In 2010, OBS launched its print-on-demand (POD) service, allowing customers to purchase hard copies of an increasing selection of out-of-print or never-in-print books from its back catalog, including many books from White Wolf.

PM me directly if you end up needing their address or contact phone numbers for legal purposes as I have that all archived, and can, also if necessary, pull the legally required annual corporate reports info for Minion to see if James is still active in the business.

Steve a.k.a. Stephan Weick registered Onebookshelf, Inc. in 2017 in Georgia, and I have that contact information as well, if you end up needing, it. Currently stated revenue for OBS is approximately $140,000 a year (This seems a bit low to me), and they have (...at last count? when?) twelve employees. Not sure if this includes the folks up in Wisconsin who are working for them.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1017774Once is incompetence.

Twice is suspicious.

Thrice is intentional.

I would agree, except that my own experience with tech departments suggests that if they have some dysfunctional software setup, then some downstream consequence keeps happening, despite all the assurances that they absolutely fixed it this time is completely reasonable.

More to the point, I think JeremyR has it:

Quote from: JeremyR;1017720I'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)

I'm pretty sure this is true. Most people at Pundy's favorite place to hate have no idea who he is. The idea that anyone at OBS knows, cares, much less would make the effort (and risk the appearance of favoritism)... if not completely unbelievable, is at least less likely in my mind than they just don't know what they are doing and every attempt to get their act together just fails harder.

And don't forget "Dave is gone today so I'll try to fix it" and the next day Dave gets back and says "No, dipshit, THIS is what you should have done."

I've received another email from RPGnow. They were quite apologetic in their tone, trying to be reassuring and promising to work things out and make it up to me. But no actual concrete solution has actually been enacted on their part yet, and I've been told that until the next day when the "tech team" comes back to work no solution will be forthcoming. That means this will be going for FOUR DAYS at least. Also, there's no assurance given that forwarding the other link to the working link will be possible, the claim being that "a redirect of the kind that you were describing would not work due to the particular architecture of our site ".

Those of you who know about this sort of thing: is it actually likely that a redirect would be so hard??

Quote from: RPGPundit;1017799I've received another email from RPGnow. They were quite apologetic in their tone, trying to be reassuring and promising to work things out and make it up to me. But no actual concrete solution has actually been enacted on their part yet, and I've been told that until the next day when the "tech team" comes back to work no solution will be forthcoming. That means this will be going for FOUR DAYS at least. Also, there's no assurance given that forwarding the other link to the working link will be possible, the claim being that "a redirect of the kind that you were describing would not work due to the particular architecture of our site ".

Those of you who know about this sort of thing: is it actually likely that a redirect would be so hard??

Yes.

It because everything you see is auto generated from an underlying database. Speculating beyond that requires understanding the specifics of their IT setup. I can tell from 30 years of software development whatever caused the issue will be blazing obvious in hidensight but a bitch to figure out due the history of their setup. (the merger)

What he said.

There is a reason IT people tend to have bad attitudes.  Shit is complicated and compatible subsystems aren't.

That's good to know guys, thank you for the expert input. It helps give me a reading on how accurate what RPGnow is telling me might be.

UPDATE: Thanks to the help of so many of you, and in spite of everything else, Lion & Dragon  has made it back into the top-15 of RPGnow's Bestseller list!  Thank you so much to everyone who bought the game, and to everyone who's been sharing the link.

This isn't over yet though, so if you were considering getting L&D please go ahead and do so, and if you already have it or weren't planning on getting it but still want to help, please keep sharing the current link to game to your social media! You guys are truly awesome, thank you again.

Quote from: estar;1017800Yes.

It because everything you see is auto generated from an underlying database. Speculating beyond that requires understanding the specifics of their IT setup. I can tell from 30 years of software development whatever caused the issue will be blazing obvious in hidensight but a bitch to figure out due the history of their setup. (the merger)

Yeah, and it usually boils down to some twat has deleted something they should not have and any decent audit log should allow you track down what twat did it and when fairly quickly.

Quote from: waltshumate;1017827Yeah, and it usually boils down to some twat has deleted something they should not have and any decent audit log should allow you track down what twat did it and when fairly quickly.

I suspect there's a twat involved somewhere in all this.

Quote from: waltshumate;1017827Yeah, and it usually boils down to some twat has deleted something they should not have and any decent audit log should allow you track down what twat did it and when fairly quickly.

Maybe, but the eight ball is cloudy because there isn't sufficient information know about the software behind the OBS site. But the good news with the Pundit being visible the way he is, OBS will inch forward on this. Even it is an inch it bettter than ignoreing it.

Sorry to hear about this, Pundie! :confused: It is a mystery... and I welcome our new AI overlords! (No, I really don't. Too much experience like this. My brief amateurish IT dabbling feels like being an underappreciated fireman to a tempermental kindergarten.)

Best of luck!

This reminds me when I was working timetableing car mechanics. A customer was very angry because of unforeseen complications, he was on the verge of assaulting me physically. Then he finally saw my side when I told him that we have money riding on it too in the form of spare parts and mechanics time, and we are losing money because of the delay.

Why would a company intentionally hurt their sales?! Incompetence is the likely answer, and the fact that they have timetabled their tech guys unprofessionally.

Quote from: Moracai;1017899This reminds me when I was working timetableing car mechanics. A customer was very angry because of unforeseen complications, he was on the verge of assaulting me physically. Then he finally saw my side when I told him that we have money riding on it too in the form of spare parts and mechanics time, and we are losing money because of the delay.

Why would a company intentionally hurt their sales?! Incompetence is the likely answer, and the fact that they have timetabled their tech guys unprofessionally.

This. Anything else, especially the allusion to some sort of weird conspiracy, just doesn't make any sense, especially if this is a big seller. They'd only be hurting their own pocketbook.

Quote from: Moracai;1017899This reminds me when I was working timetableing car mechanics. A customer was very angry because of unforeseen complications, he was on the verge of assaulting me physically. Then he finally saw my side when I told him that we have money riding on it too in the form of spare parts and mechanics time, and we are losing money because of the delay.
.

Writers and publishers are not customers though. I think this is part of what gets lost in these conversations. We make the content that generates revenue for their website. OBS makes a lot of money. Most publishers and writers don't. So we get very protective of what little we are making. We are not buying content from them.  When something goes wrong with an individual product, to OBS it is just one in a long chain of daily released, for the publisher or writer, that represents months of work and money invested. When a publisher gets angry and contacts OBS, they are not like a customer making unreasonable demands for something they paid for, they are in a position where OBS's mistake is costing them money. And I can't emphasize enough, the lack of good communication and transparency is one of the main reasons people end up speculating.