(I know this was already posted in the OBS thread, but I want it to get more coverage than that, and particularly for publishers to know about what we're planning to do. Solidarity is the only way to protect yourself)

I tried, well beyond the call of courtesy, to speak with Mr. Wieck about the choices he was making, in selling his site over to the would-be censors, the pseudoactivists of the hobby who demand the RPGnow and DrivethruRPG should have to appease their growing demands that anything they personally find offensive be censored, and be censored immediately.  He has made it clear that he has no interest in reasoning with anyone who supports freedom of speech, and everything I've seen indicates to me that he is determined to go forward with a policy whereby anyone who claims offense will be able to have a product IMMEDIATELY pulled from OBS' shelves at the click of a button. This is a move that will assure considerable profit-damages to many publishers, particular Old School publishers who will be a target of the D&D-hating pseudoactivist mob. But more importantly, it will create a climate of fear: with no rules as to what constitutes "offense", with the possibility that ANY publisher's product could be taken down for no good reason at all with no defense permitted and not even any judgment until after the fact, the environment this will create will be exactly the one the psuedo-activists want: one where people will be terrified of writing or publishing any kind of game that could be even the slightest bit controversial, or potentially catch the ire of the censorious mob.

So, with all reasonable means to a solution apparently ineffectual, ALL of us must dedicate ourselves now to a more rigourous measure to fighting this move to censor the biggest marketplace in our hobby.  It's time we created a climate of fear, for any would-be censors out there.


There are three steps I propose that anyone who opposes this kind of censorship will need to take in order to fight back:

1. Publishers: Everyone who is an RPG publisher and who is afraid of being targetted by censors, or who values free speech even if they don't think they'd be hit (but if you don't think you'd be a potential target, you're being naive: these people went after Monte Cook, remember?) must follow Ben Franklin's old adage: "We must hang together, or else we will hang separtely".
We need to form a Solidarity Coalition.  In a post in response to this situation, James Raggi already publicly stated that if a single product of his was banned, he would pull his entire catalog from OBS. This is a good and noble gesture, but even a publisher as significant as LotFP, alone, would not stop OBS from implementing a pro-censorship policy.
What we need to do is to be signatories to a promise, coming together as a group, where if any of the products of ANY of those publishers who have signed to this coalition is censored, then ALL the undersigned publishers will pull ALL of their product from OBS.   Any one publisher won't scare OBS, but imagine if he loses all the OSR and quite a few other publishers in one foul swoop.  We must create a situation of assured destruction, where the cost of censorship of any single product will be too great to risk.

2. Businessmen: One or a group of people, whether publishers or otherwise, need to take advantage of this situation by getting ready to potentially launch a competitor site to OBS.  If OBS suddenly sees 20-30 of its hottest publishers drop it like a rancid turd, there would be a golden opportunity for someone to pick up the slack in the name of free speech, and create a PDF-sales site that would have everything OBS has plus a large number of publishers that OBS no longer gets to have because they decided to like banning books.

3. Everyone else: there's two things you could do. First, make it clear to OBS and Mr. Wieck that if they implement a pro-censorship policy you will refuse to purchase any further products on their site. You can contact them at custserv@onebookshelf.com, or stevew@onebookshelf.com

Second, you could think hard about just how easily offended you are.  If the policy that any offense will get a product taken down should happen to go through, I'm sure this means that, in fairness, Mr. Wieck WANTS you to be offended. So if a game or its author is offensive to you, if you can think of a reason (and really, if you think just a little, I'm sure you could find THOUSANDS of causes for offense), then you should go ahead and look at every game you can on OBS' shelves and click the "Report" button on any of those which you feel have offended you.  Maybe you're offended at the thought of malicious hats. Or maybe the notion of a world of darkness full of vampires is triggering to you.  Or heck, maybe you find the presence of overtly supernatural elements and the lack of a "chaotic Atheist" alignment in Wizards of the Coasts' products to be deeply offensive to your values.

The point is that if OBS wants to create a safe space, you should go out of your way to try to help them in that erstwhile quest to use the reporting function to purify the site of any and every product you can imagine holds offense to you. Of course, pay particular attention to those that might get missed by the other people already dedicated to the quest of telling everyone else what is best for them, and also to those really big publishers that bring in a lot of money, because I'm certain Mr. Wieck wouldn't want to be a hypocrite and make them feel that they would be immune to this policy.


So there you are: this is the response.  Up until now, a tiny tiny gang of complete assholes have managed to manipulate the hobby and push an agenda of censorship, blackballing and thought control because they operate as a mob, and the other side does not unite. We must now UNITE, and work together, if we want to make sure that they do not undo the hobby you love piece by piece.

RPGPundit

I honestly think (as someone with zero stakes in the matter mind you) to just getting those like minded publishers and making a competitive site. Be as proactive as possible, because this is going to go down like the titanic.

I'm a publisher on DTRPG and I think this is a ridiculous persecution fantasy that has no basis in the reality of what has happened.

If DTRPG started removing your games, or James Raggi's games, or any other games that aren't so clearly beyond the pale as a tournament of PC rapists who gain mechanical bonuses for raping women to death, then I would be taking action as well. But I see no evidence whatever that this is going to happen.

I'm not sure how you think it makes any sense for the owner of the dominant PDF marketplace to suddenly want to stop selling a whole load of popular games.

I'm also not sure how you can try to claim the moral high ground on the one hand, and advocate a scorched earth attempt to sabotage DTRPG's entire operation (including all publishers who don't join with you) on the other hand.

Do we have conclusive proof that the censorship button will activate an istantaneous removal of the product pending further review?

Because to me, apart from any other consideration, it sounds like an incredibly dumb business decision. Any moron with an axe to grind would be able to take down a given product on the day of its launch, causing considerable economic damage. I can't think of any sane publisher who would want to stick with OBS in such conditions, the instant another credible alternative appears in the market.

When does this policy take effect?

Quote from: Luca;853577Do we have conclusive proof that the censorship button will activate an instantaneous removal of the product pending further review?

Because to me, apart from any other consideration, it sounds like an incredibly dumb business decision. Any moron with an axe to grind would be able to take down a given product on the day of its launch, causing considerable economic damage. I can't think of any sane publisher who would want to stick with OBS in such conditions, the instant another credible alternative appears in the market.

+1

I hope DTRPGNOW will tell the publishers with clear emails, what they intend to do before implementing it. I am of course opposed to a one-click button that lets anyone forbid to sell any product they dare click onto. Of course some people would just click for fun, without any knowledge of what's inside said product. And of course, if someone click on a product of mine with the effect of immediately banning it, you can count on me for me immediately clicking two dozens of other products at random. And of course the victims would be in their own right to also click at random in protest...

Is a "Remove from OBS with a single mouse click" button actually in existence? Has OBS said it will be?

Are those of us who find products offensive supposed to keep our mouths shut if the High and Mighty RPGPundit does not agree that they are offensive? Are we supposed to keep silent about finding them offensive because any attempt to maintain community standards is de facto censorship? Should network TV start airing hard core porn and snuff films in prime time because it is censorship not to?

Quote from: Luca;853577Do we have conclusive proof that the censorship button will activate an istantaneous removal of the product pending further review?

Because to me, apart from any other consideration, it sounds like an incredibly dumb business decision. Any moron with an axe to grind would be able to take down a given product on the day of its launch, causing considerable economic damage. I can't think of any sane publisher who would want to stick with OBS in such conditions, the instant another credible alternative appears in the market.

This is the policy announcement that OBS issued. Bolded some of the important things (may have missed stuff though so read the whole thing). The part that says the following concerned a lot of people (myself included): "If a reported title looks questionable, then we will suspend it from sale while we review its content internally, and we will speak with its publisher to determine the fate of the title on our marketplace."

There were other concerns in the policy as well but this one seems to indicate a product could be suspended before the review is even completed provided they think there is validity to the complaint on first inspection. That could mean like Soviet said elsewhere that they are looking for egregious cases, but it might not. It could mean that they will just spend games like LotFP or Arrows of Indra from one or two coherent reports:

QuoteOffensive Content Policy
At DriveThruRPG, we see a huge variety of content published and sold on our marketplaces. Something not broadly known to visitors on DriveThru is that we entrust most publishers to upload their new releases and activate them for sale without anyone at DriveThru reviewing the title before it goes public.


Over fourteen years of operations, with tens of thousands of roleplaying titles activated, thousands of RPG creators have demonstrated that this trust-based system works quite well; the vast majority of publishers will not upload offensive content and make it public on DriveThruRPG. Ours is a wonderful hobby.


Because this system has worked so well for so long, over a huge volume of products, we have had no need to create a content guideline for what we will not sell on DriveThruRPG due to its offensive nature.


Further, in the case of roleplaying games, especially new games put out by independent creators or new companies, our marketplaces are a key distribution channel. If we were to ban an RPG product, the de facto result is very much like censorship. That fact causes me grave concern, for if we were to create a content guideline that all publishers on our store must follow, and then ban titles that do not meet those guidelines, then we would be playing dictator with the RPG art form, and that is a role I am acutely uncomfortable playing.

Having grown up in the U.S. Bible Belt, where attempts to ban books from school and public libraries were common, and given my various experiences with distribution channels as a publisher at White Wolf in the early 90s, I have had a lot of firsthand encounters with attempts to ban content.


There is, however, a growing problem we face as a marketplace. A few RPG creators have designed content in the recent past that people have viewed as disturbing, distasteful, or depraved. For example, we recently — and understandably — received a lot of criticism for selling an RPG supplement entitled "Tournament of Rapists."

I'll say a few words about that product and then move on to the broader topic of how we will handle offensive content on DriveThruRPG.

Hearing the title “Tournament of Rapists,” one is naturally repulsed. Sometimes the purpose of art is to make us feel revulsion, though, so we shouldn't judge a book by its title alone. In this case, though, reading the brief cover copy or product description the author entered on DriveThruRPG to explain the contents of the book does nothing but amplify that revulsion and call into question if the subject matter is being treated at all appropriately. So, naturally, people asked us various versions of the question, "How on earth can you have that for sale on your marketplace for even one minute?"

The answer is this:

1. As I mentioned above, this product was uploaded and activated by the author. No one at DriveThru pre-screened the book.

2. When we were first alerted to the offensive nature of the book, I used administrator privileges to download and skim through a copy of the book. At its core, the book was an adventure supplement where the goal of characters was to stop demonic entities who were perpetrating sexual violence and murder. The rapists were clearly the villains to be stopped, something that I believe many critics of the book could not have known from the book's title and vague description.

Still, other aspects of the book, such as its title and description and some of its content, were written in a way that were not well-considered treatments of the subject of sexual violence. I personally found the book offensive, but as I’ve noted, I am not comfortable letting my viewpoint serve as the gate-keeping standard.


Again, 1) rapists were villains in the book and 2) I chose to accept offensive content over becoming a de facto censor. In doing so, I made the mistake of not suspending the title from sale immediately, pending further internal review and discussion with the publisher.


3. Another factor that weighed on my decision was the fact that, when uploading and activating the title, the author flagged the title as adult content. Books with the adult flag do not show up on our marketplace to visitors. A user must be logged in to a customer account on our site and have changed the default "no" adult filter to "yes" before she can see adult flagged titles anywhere on site. And for the record, "adult" in this context refers to more than just sexual content; it means any kind of content with material that requires adult discernment.

My philosophy has been individual choice, not my choice. My expectation has been that gamers who choose deliberately to see adult titles have the mental faculties to decide if a title they see is appropriate or not.

Therefore, I let the title remain active for sale while I reached out to the publisher to discuss the title.

4. The publisher was on vacation, so we did not catch up with one another by phone until near the end of the weekend. We had a professional dialogue about the book, the type of dialogue where people listen to each other and try to understand where each other is coming from and work toward constructive outcomes. The publisher then discussed the book with the author, and they decided to withdraw the book from sale. In my opinion, having real dialogue and expecting the best, not the worst, in other people leads to better outcomes. Unrelenting anger and the desire to punish divides and polarizes people, as can be seen from some social media discourse on games today.

To the broader issue of the content we will sell on DriveThruRPG going forward, it is time we change the approach we have used for the past fourteen years. This most recent incident has shown me that our previous approach worked only because publishers in the past simply hadn’t  uploaded such offensive content. However, that approach carried us too far in the wrong direction.

It's time for us to have a policy on rejecting offensive content. I understand that many feel this is too long in coming, that our prior non-policy of “censorship is unacceptable" was tantamount to shirking our responsibility to help keep the RPG hobby inclusive. I am solely responsible for the prior policy, not the other staff at OneBookShelf. I accept that criticism and apologize for not being a better steward.

What should our new content policy be?

Some people believe there are bright line rules that, when crossed, make a title something our RPG hobby is better without. As I recently and profoundly failed to explain on Twitter, I do not agree there are such bright line rules, or at least not nearly enough bright line rules to serve as a guide.

In first drafting this blog post, I made a fuller explanation with examples of why I don’t think bright line rules work for deciding what content is offensive or not. I removed all of that because I don’t want my intentions in doing so to be misinterpreted again. Suffice to say that the U.S. Supreme Court could not create bright line rules for what constituted pornography (leading to the famous statement, "I'll know it when I see it."), and similarly I don’t think we can create such rules for offensive content.

I also think the more exacting we make the guidelines, the more fine points we include on content treatment, the more the guideline risks becoming shackles for the rpg art form and the more bad actors will attempt to game the fine points of the policy.

Amazon's policy on offensive content is incredibly short:

“Offensive Content: What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.”

The problem here is that such a statement gives little guidance to publishers and authors, and thus Amazon's rulings on banning books seem rather arbitrary. Publishers who offer content on our marketplaces will understandably say to us, "We can't invest in creating RPG titles only to have DriveThru arbitrarily ban them, so if you're now banning titles for offensive content, give us guidelines for what titles you will and will not ban."

To which, I have to say, "I hear you, but I don't know any better way." A work often has to be considered as a gestalt to know if it is offensive or not.

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. I will tend to err toward including content, even when it challenges readers and deals with sensitive issues, so long as it does so maturely and not gratuitously.

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.

Everyone draws their own line on what is offensive differently, so I understand that any judgment OneBookShelf makes will always have someone who disagrees with it.

A few final topics:

1. 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. We will not constrain those 99.99% by introducing a required step where OneBookShelf staff reviews every title before it goes public just so that we can catch the .01%.

Such a review process would also add a large expense to our operations, which translates eventually to higher prices for customers.

What we will do, though, is code more customer-facing options to allow customers to report potentially offensive content to us. That way, customers can help us identify the offensive .01% of titles that much faster. If a reported title looks questionable, then we will suspend it from sale while we review its content internally, and we will speak with its publisher to determine the fate of the title on our marketplace. Our default will be to suspend titles rather than our prior default of letting titles stay public.

To be clear, we need to code, test, and deploy this new reporting feature. It is not live now.

2. 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. Where we find offensive content on site, even if we have permitted it in the past under our prior policy, we will remove it. We are no longer a wide-open marketplace, and some publishers may need to find a different place to sell some of their content (or all of it, if they decide to leave DriveThru entirely).

3. I doubt the industry will see the “Tournament of Rapists” title again, but if the publisher decides to make changes to the product and wishes to sell it on DriveThru again, it will then be subject to this new offensive content policy.

4. We will be reviewing the use of our adult flag, including what content we expect to carry that flag and how we communicate the use of that flag to publishers and customers.

I appreciate all of our customers and publishers who were patient while we sorted these issues out and who gave us the benefit of the doubt as human beings trying to do the best thing. Like everyone, we sometimes make mistakes along the way.

Steve Wieck
CEO
OneBookShelf / DriveThruRPG

I don't really see too much of a problem there, to be honest. He's right: 99.9% of the RPG products there are not worrisome and will never see a ban, including Arrows of Indra.

I think they do have a right to scrutinize products as they are a business. I don't think SWJs are the only ones offended by the title Tournament of Rapists and it should be scrutinized. It looks like clicking the "I'm Offended!!" button does not suspend the title automatically. It only flags it to be reviewed quickly and they can decide if they want to suspend it while they scrutinize it in detail.

"If a reported title looks questionable, then we will suspend it from sale while we review its content internally, and we will speak with its publisher to determine the fate of the title on our marketplace."

This is not saying "one click and you're gone". This looks like someone at OBS still has to manually suspend the title pending review. This leave open the possibility that the title will be glanced at and the complaint deemed frivolous on its face. "If a reported title looks questionable,".

It seems the reactionaries are out in force again, just now on the other side of the pendulum swing.

To put it another way, tone matters. RPGPundit's manifesto comes across as more of a ranting screed than reasoned debate about how much creative freedom is or is not currently threatened on OBS, and what might be done about the situation.

Come at me like that and even if I would be inclined to agree with you I am more likely to shut you out.

Of course I realize it is Pundit being Pundit.

Quote from: Endless Flight;853588I think they do have a right to scrutinize products as they are a business. I don't think SWJs are the only ones offended by the title Tournament of Rapists and it should be scrutinized. It looks like clicking the "I'm Offended!!" button does not suspend the title automatically. It only flags it to be reviewed quickly and they can decide if they want to suspend it while they scrutinize it in detail.

See, I don't care if it was only SJWs who were offended, or if it was 90% of the world. My feeling on it is that, if someone is offended by something, it falls to the offended party to figure out how to deal with that for themselves. NOT for everybody else.

Quote from: soviet;853575I'm also not sure how you can try to claim the moral high ground on the one hand, and advocate a scorched earth attempt to sabotage DTRPG's entire operation (including all publishers who don't join with you) on the other hand.

It's called MAD. In the original iteration, the threat of a massive retaliatory strike (which both sides possessed) was intended to stop the other side from launching a first strike. It was the in-place method used by the United States and the Soviet Union* to avoid a nuclear exchange by making the consequences so terrible that neither side would launch. It worked, in that no one launched. But a "moral highground" played no part in the strategy. It was all realpolitik.

Obviously a major component of Pundit's plan is to try to make the cost for OBS pulling any game in the future so prohibitively high, that Steve Weick will decide he wants all those games on his online shelves, i.e. Mr. Weick will decide that none of the game** are questionable. And if the threat is credible it gives OBS and Mr. Weick clear economic reasons not to pull any games, which he can than use to explain to those that want to have games pulled "Hey I'm with you in spirit, but I have to do what is best for the company."

Just as with MAD, this is not really a moral high ground strategy it is an attempt to create a nuclear publishing option.

Quote from: DavetheLost;853593Of course I realize it is Pundit being Pundit.

Exactly. No one who is at all familiar with Pundit should be very surprised that he created a version of Cold War nuclear deterrence.


* Again, it's really odd that someone named soviet seems so lacking in historical context of communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular.

"What counts as offensive content?  We'll know it when we see it."

How very progressive.

I just heard back from Steve on the clarification. His response indicated:

-He cannot say yet where the line will be drawn because he isn't the only one making decisions about these things. Edit: he also stated that he thinks the line will be defined as the first batch of reported products are handled. Basically precedents will be set by which titles they end up deeming an issue.

-On issues of content, like human sacrifice for example, he says there is a spectrum where some treatments will be better than others. If the game rewards you with XP for raping and sacrificing virgins for example, that may be an issue, at the other end where you have selfless self sacrifice to the god it would not be an issue.

-He does think there is difference between RPGs and movies, because there is the "I" element of people playing their character. Sidebars that discuss the issues raised by edgy content might be a good idea. Seems to be concerned if the games veer into encouraging PCs to do certain things.

I should emphasize this was a quick response given while he is away for the weekend, and I am paraphrasing.