The new and improved defender of RPGs!

Thursday 4 January 2018

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.


UPDATE 3: 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??


UPDATE 4: 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.

10 comments:

  1. The first one (above) works from my phone. The second one leads to a blank RPGNow form.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just ordered the HC + PDF. I try and get a review up this weekend.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks a lot for your support. You're one of the good ones, Tenkar!

      Delete
  3. I will keep http://rpg.deals/liondragon updated to the proper URL.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It would be funny if Lion & Dragon ended up on the best seller list twice because of all of this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well the Pundit is obviously trying to spin this situation into a publicity stunt and I can't say I blame him.

      I'm still waiting for a big Lulu coupon to get the hardcover...

      Delete
    2. What Thomas says is TECHNICALLY true in the sense that you could read it that way, sure. I'm fighting for the survival of my game, with the tools I have.

      Part of what's good about all this is that I think a bunch of people have ended up checking out Lion & Dragon who might not have otherwise, and I also found out who my friends are in a big way. Including a few friends I never knew I had.

      Thomas, I understand you waiting. It's no problem, I hope you let me know what you think of the game when you get it.

      Delete
    3. Rob: Well, it's already back in the top 15, thanks to all the people who have stepped up and helped spread the word. It's currently #13!

      We're very, very close to breaking back into the top 10! So please keep sharing the link and checking out the book!

      Delete
    4. I didn't mean it in a bad way, Pundit. Either from incompetence or malice (my version of Occam's razor : when in doubt, assume incompetence), your game suffered a bad blow that could severely impact its sales. From that point on, whatever tactics you used to recover from that seem fair to me and I would be happy for you if this eventually leads to L&D turning more successfull that it would have been otherwise.

      Delete
    5. And it's definitely worked! We went from having our entire sales record erased, to getting back to #30 within a few hours, to getting to #11 a bit over a day after that!

      This is an insane level of growth, it's incredibly difficult for a game to get back to the bestseller list after the initial momentum of it's first sales are lost.

      But we're not quite done yet. If you want to help, please share the L&D URL everywhere you can, get us into the the top 10!

      Delete