How one company’s over-reaction becomes a marketing ploy for the competition…

Two days ago, Wizards of the Coast, a game company, announced they were no longer going to provide pdf copies of their rule books for sale over the Internet.  They discovered eight people had put their pdf copies online and made them available to anyone to download.  Clearly, Wizards of the Coast copyrights were being violated, and they had to take action.

However, the reaction was an over-reaction; and most likely initiated by attorneys or an overzealous manager.  In response to this, several other game companies announced they were making their rulebooks available online. Some companies offered their books for free. This was covered in the industry press.

Copyright violations are not a joke. You have to defend against every single one, because even one violation can destroy your business.  However, what seemed like an end to a program that may not have been working turned into a coup for their competition.  Instead of announcing an end to a product release, the situation turned into a fiasco for Wizards of the Coast. It looks like they are punishing the market, blaming a few people for ending a program. Inadvertently, they made heroes out of other companies who are willing to offer their product for free.

Should Wizards of the Coast go after the copyright violators? Yes.

Should they make that public? Probably so. Clearly, giving away an electronic book that was for sale is a violation.

Should the end the program of the electronic books at the same time? Absolutely not. They should know better than to do that. Wizards of the Coast management become easy fodder as silly people for overreacting.  Worse, they look stupid for taking away what seems like a popular product.  Instead, they should have waited a couple of weeks and quietly pulled the electronic books down from the electronic shelves.

Furthermore, they should have foreseen someone would violate the copyright. They probably did!  At the same time, they should have seen that other companies would take advantage of the situation.

So, as my opening statement says: This over-reaction became a marketing ploy for the competition, giving the competition even free press showing how they are the good guys. You cannot buy better advertising.

Where does this lie in the grand scheme of business planning? Contingency plans. Wizards of the Coast should have planned for this when they released e-books and created a response that would not make them look bad.  Contingency plans belong in your business plan!

(Next week we will continue with our discussion of how looking for a job and looking for an investor are similar.)