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DriveThruRPG

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For the company known as DriveThruRPG that once owned the website, see OneBookShelf.

DriveThruRPG is a website and digital marketplace for role-playing game rulebooks, supplements and other publications and products. It deals in both e-books (usually pdfs) and physical media. The marketplace RPGNow was merged into DriveThruRPG after their companies' merger in 2006. It is owned by the resultant company of that merger, OneBookShelf.

DriveThruRPG is the world's largest online marketplace for RPGs, and as such it is the platform that can gain new original role-playing games that largest exposure and theoretically the highest number of sales. However, it takes more of a cut per sale than alternatives like itch.io.

DriveThruRPG is generally only for publications for which all rights are owned or properly licensed by the seller. Publications using the intellectual property of certain large and existing games can be sold (with permission) through other marketplaces owned by OneBookShelf, such as Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition products through Dungeon Masters Guild.

DriveThruRPG has a partnership with the Bundle of Holding, and titles purchased through the Bundle of Holding are stored and managed in a user's DriveThruRPG library.

History[]

RPGNow[]

RPGNow was established in 2001 by James Mathe.[1][2] Sebastian Deterding and José Zagal wrote that "in the beginning, the bestselling products on RPGNow were nearly always d20 products. Mathe made attempts to reach out to established publishers of other types of games, but many were hesitant about selling digital versions, worried that would increase piracy or cannibalize existing print sales. Nevertheless, RPGNow recorded better than 10% growth in every year of its operation".[3]

DriveThruRPG[]

DriveThruRPG was established in 2004 by Mike Todd, Chris McDonough and Steve Wieck.[4]

In 2005, DriveThruRPG abandoned selling DRM protected products. "Customers hated the hassle of dealing with it, and it didn't offer very good protection against piracy, Wieck said. Now, the site sells unprotected PDFs with a faint 'watermark' with the customer's name on every page. Sales rose 30 percent after the change".[4] Two more DriveThru digital storefronts, DriveThruComics and DriveThruFiction, were also launched in 2005.[2]

In 2007, it was reported that DriveThruRPG did $2 million in business annually.[4]

Wieck said "the business idea of first-mover advantage is more commonly discussed than that of second-mover advantage or being a fast-follower. Despite the many advantages that accrue to first-movers into a new market segment [...], I personally prefer to be a second-mover into many business opportunities. For example, when starting DriveThruRPG, we were a second-mover behind James Mathe, who had already started RPGNow".[5]

Merger[]

In 2006, RPGNow and DriveThruRPG merged into a new company called OneBookShelf. Originally, OneBookShelf maintained the separate digital storefronts of RPGNow and DriveThruRPG while merging the digital inventory.[6][7] However, in November 2018 it was announced that in February 2019 the RPGNow digital storefront would be shutdown and redirected to the DriveThruRPG digital storefront.[8]

From February 2016 to March 2016, DriveThruRPG held a bounty program for high quality scans of old hard-to-find Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, modules and boxed sets.[9][10]

Controversies[]

On April 6, 2009, Wizards of the Coast suspended all sales of its products for the Dungeons & Dragons games in PDF format from places such as OneBookShelf and its subsidiaries RPGNow and DriveThruRPG due to concerns of piracy and copyright infringement.[11][12] ICv2 reported that OneBookShelf "took a hit to its volume when Wizards of the Coast abruptly halted sales of PDFs of its products" and that although Sean Patrick Fannon (RPG Marketing, Communications, and Publisher Services Manager for OneBookShelf) "acknowledged that the move was a negative for PDF sales, he said that Wizards of the Coast was 'not even close' to half the company’s sales".[13] In 2013, OneBookShelf was once again allowed to sell Dungeons & Dragons products through a new partnership with Wizards of the Coast, creating a new digital storefront (DNDClassics)[14][15] and paving the way for the creation of the Dungeon Masters Guild and other community content programmes.

OneBookShelf did not originally have an offensive content policy. In 2015, "DriveThruRPG was involved in a controversy due its decision to sell a title called Tournament of Rapists. DriveThruRPG was initially criticized for its slow reaction to complaints about the offensiveness of the product [...], and the product was eventually removed from the store".[3] This led to the creation of an offensive content policy for all of OneBookShelf's platforms. Wieck said:

So, going forward, our offensive content policy is simply going to be this: Offensive Content: We'll know it when we see it. I will be the final arbiter of what OneBookShelf deems offensive. [...] Any title in which racial violence, rape, torture, or a similar subject is treated as a central feature will naturally be subjected to increased scrutiny. [...] We will continue to be reactive, not proactive, on judging new title releases. Historically, 99.99% of publishers' content has been inoffensive. Being able to activate their own titles for sale with our marketplace tools gives publishers additional control over their release marketing timing and generally gets RPG products to market more quickly. [...] Once the reporting feature is live, we will review titles already on the marketplace that are reported by customers. There will be no "grandfathering in" of past content.[16]

Also, in 2015, OnceBookShelf had a credit card breach and hackers "used the OneBookShelf's servers to launch DDOS attack on other sites".[17] ICv2 reported that "one of two load-balanced servers was compromised, the company said, and it had no way of knowing which of the customers that had transactions during that period were processed on which server. [...] It said it had no information to indicate that encrypted credit card numbers of customers that did not make purchases during the period were taken, but could not rule it out".[18]

On February 12, 2019, OneBookShelf announced that it would no longer work with Zak Smith "after multiple women publicly accused Smith of abuse. [...] The company went on to say that its own portion of any revenue generated by Smith’s existing titles already up for sale on its storefront will be donated to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization".[19]

In July 2020, Wizards of the Coast added a sensitivity disclaimer to some of their legacy products for sale on DriveThruRPG and DMsGuild.[20][21] Many of these products feature cultures inspired by Asia, Mesoamerica and the Middle East.[21]

Reception[]

In 2015, Paste reported that "RPGs can be expensive, so while PDFs can be harder to pass around or to look up rules on, they are a much more financially astute option. DriveThruRPG.com is a great place to find PDFs".[22]

In 2018, Deterding and Zagal wrote that "by its own account, DriveThruRPG, run by OneBookShelf, is currently the largest online marketplace for TRPGs. [...] It allows TRPG publishers to offer their current and historic catalogs as PDFs and print-on-demand books. As online digital and print-on-demand distribution maximizes reach and minimizes up-front investment hurdles and risk, it has contributed to the flourishing of 'long tail,' 'indie' RPGs".[3]

When co-founder Mathe passed away in June 2019, Wieck wrote "well before the iPhone, iPad, or the Kindle, James recognized the opportunity for RPG publishers to reach more fans through digital versions of their titles. By 2004, when I and a few others started DriveThruRPG, we were the Johnny-come-lately to the pioneering work James had already done with RPGNow. Nevertheless, it was through the resulting friendly business rivalry between DriveThruRPG and RPGNow that I got to know and soon came to respect James. [...] James was a very smart entrepreneur in a hobby business full of smart people. He embodied the best of the US Midwestern virtues of work ethic, honesty, and fairness. He's gone too soon".[23]

In 2019, The Verge included DriveThruRPG on a roundup of websites to purchase from that are not Amazon.[24]

References[]

  1. ↑ "| MY BIO |" (in en-US).
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "A Brief History of OneBookShelf".
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 (2018). Role-playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-26831-4
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Template:Cite news
  5. ↑ Steve Wieck (2013-09-25). "OneBlogShelf: The Coming Revolution in Card Game Design".
  6. ↑ "RPGNow & DriveThruRPG Merge" (in en).
  7. ↑ Shannon Appelcline (2011). Designers & Dragons: 230. Mongoose Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7
  8. ↑ Editor. "OneBookShelf to Shut Down RPGNow" (in en-US).
  9. ↑ Stew Shearer (February 26, 2016). "Have Old D&D Books? Scan Them For Cash" (in en).
  10. ↑ Michael Kozlowski (2016-03-07). "DriveThruRPG Suspends D&D Book Scanning Bounty Program" (in en-US).
  11. ↑ "WotC Ends PDF Download Sales" (in en).
  12. ↑ Ed Grabianowski (April 7, 2009). "Wizards of the Coast Ignites the Great PDF Controversy of '09".
  13. ↑ "POD Joins PDFs" (in en).
  14. ↑ Template:Cite news
  15. ↑ Michael Kozlowski (2013-01-23). "New Digital Dungeons and Dragons Website Launches Today" (in en-US).
  16. ↑ Steve Wieck (2015-09-01). "OneBlogShelf: Offensive Content Policy".
  17. ↑ "Comics A.M. | OneBookShelf experiences credit card breach" (in en-US) (2015-08-12).
  18. ↑ "Credit Card Breach at OneBookShelf" (in en).
  19. ↑ Charlie Hall (2019-02-20). "Dungeons & Dragons publisher scrubs contributor from handbook amid abuse allegations" (in en).
  20. ↑ "Dungeons & Dragons Adds Cultural Sensitivity Warnings to Legacy Titles" (in en-US) (2020-07-10).
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Jeremy Blum (2020-07-11). "'Dungeons & Dragons' Book 'Oriental Adventures' Receives A Sensitivity Disclaimer" (in en).
  22. ↑ Bryce Duzan (2015-03-10). "10 Tabletop RPGs for Beginners" (in en).
  23. ↑ Steve Wieck (2019-06-12). "OneBlogShelf: Tribute to James Mathe".
  24. ↑ Barbara Krasnoff (2019-07-16). "Where to shop online that isn't Amazon" (in en).

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