RPGnow Sabotaged Lion & Dragon, & What You Can do About It

Yesterday I left a pretty mysterious blog entry. This was because I was busy working on yet another promotional blog for Lion & Dragon, when suddenly I realized that the entire RPGNow L&D page was GONE.

This when literally a few short hours earlier everything was fine.


So what happened?

Well, it seems that OBS basically screwed us over.

The whole thing was, they claim, some kind of an 'error'. They sold us some bullshit of how 'the system' mistook some prototype page for the real page we'd been using all month, and that now it couldn't be switched back and the old page was lost.
At first they gave us a new page with no pdf option, without our copper status. After some gentle shouting and threats on my part, they restored the copper button.

But now the URL is completely different.  Now Lion & Dragon is found here.
(Edited to add: As you see in the next day's entry, RPGnow SCREWED me again!)
This is the current location of Lion & Dragon, as of the last time I remembered to update this.
And if that doesn't work, just click on this to search for it on RPGnow.

This means that every single one of the HUNDREDS of links I had posted in the past month to the former Lion & Dragon rpgnow product listing will just lead people to a "file not found" section.

This 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.

I'm pretty sure that someone over on OBS, still angered about how I opposed censorship measures there (that no doubt some people there were lobbying for) decided to 'punish' me for it, by taking the product out. They had to make it look like an 'accident' because there is NOTHING in L&D that is objectionable to justify them trying to ban it. So whoever did this knew I would come back eventually, but set it up so that I would come back in a totally different URL, and their plan was that then I'd have to start from a zero-sales count (meaning that later they'd be able to pretend in internet arguments that L&D 'wasn't successful') and would lose the momentum to stay on the top 10.


Incredibly, we've already gotten back on the RPGNow sales list by virtue of sales alone, but we're somewhere around 28th place, which is essentially useless.
Before they dropped us from the list we were 20 spots higher and I'm pretty sure that was what was irking some ultra-leftist RPGNow employee.  So they fucked us.

Watch out, it could happen to you too.

What can you do to help?

Well, I'm not telling anyone to boycott OBS. They're not going to try this again. It would make it all too obvious. They restored my copper bestseller status (though now that we know they can fiddle with the numbers who's to say that they won't be secretly keeping me from reaching Silver or higher, or for that matter that games that have reached to high positions like that got a "little help" for being ideologically correct??).   There would be no real point, in any case, from me leaving OBS. That's what whoever did this WANTS.  They wanted me off the bestseller list.

So I say, if you want to help, get me back on.

If you haven't bought Lion & Dragon yet, and were planning to, please do so! Do so at RPGnow if it's possible for you (note: I'm not asking you to do so if it's not, or if it's highly inconvenience, but if it's all the same to you, buy it there).

And if you have already bought L&D (and aren't too inclined to just order a 2nd copy)?? Then what you can do is to share this blog entry, or just the link to L&D's new address on RPGnow, and tell people what happened and help me to make up for one entire month of promotion they RUINED.  Share it on all your social media. And especially if you see anywhere that has a link to L&D's old page, put a correction there, so people know the product still exists and they can buy it.


Thank you to any of you who help. I really appreciate it. And the people who wanted me gone won't appreciate it, and you should revel in that.


As for me, you'll have to excuse me, because I'm going to probably be spending the next several days scouring all my history of posts to replace every single link. Because if these assholes thought I'd quit, they obviously don't know me very well.  They've just gone and made me angry, and lusting for revenge.

RPGPundit

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