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A d do you think they might give you some sort of discount if you've purchased the huge tome already? ( how they'd know you bought it I hveno idea)

the physical is $74.99 so i would think $99.99

Well, with the hardcover book, it costs them about $5 per book to pay the content creators, and about $60 to get the book created, and distributed. Then you need to add about a $10 markup for retail.

With the digital creation, it costs about $5 to make the content, and about $1 for distribution.

Yeah, $99.99 seems about right, actually. I wouldn't expect it to sell for any less than the actual book in any case.

Given that they are iPad only, I think that $99.99 is about what it will cost ( and that is only if Apple doesn't change their mind about selling them ).

Bede19025 wrote:A d do you think they might give you some sort of discount if you've purchased the huge tome already? ( how they'd know you bought it I hveno idea)

They won't, it's GW, but if they were intended to, one way to do it is include an unique code inside each physical copy that you could just type in to claim the discount, think of it as a CD key for pc game.

The digital rule book will cost the EXACT same as the MSRP for the big rule book. So if the standard rulebook is $80, the digital will be $80. I know this seems odd, but before you guys claim "OMG GW is ripping me off", let me tell you a story about magic the gathering online. For those of you who don't know, MTGO is basically a "pay-to-play" game which is effectively a digital version of MTG. You buy booster packs just like the real game. Now, when this was first announced, a lot of retailers were concerned about MTGO. For physical booster packs, the profit Wizards got from each booster pack was the retail price (I can't remember the specific price, but I'll just assume 4.00 USD before taxes), minus manufacturing, minus shipping, minus retail share. From that, lets assume that this means that for each sold Wizards made 1 USD. Now, with the digital sales, Wizards expenses were greatly reduced, as they no longer had to ship the product or share the profit with retailers, they just had to keep the design teams (both for the CCG and the digital platform) satisfied and pay the upkeep on the servers. This means that at a $4.00 price point, they could easily make at least $3.00 in profit. Now, say that you dropped the price of a digital booster down to 3 USD. They still make more profit than from the physical booster, but now there is an increased incentive for people to buy online boosters instead of physical ones. This concerned retailers, as it could effectively price them out of the MTG market. This also concerned Wizards, because they knew that digital magic would not survive without a strong physical base, so to prevent retailers refusing to stock magic booster packs, they promised to never price digital products below the MSRP. I suspect that GW is doing the same thing, keeping their digital products at MRSP in order to appease both GW store managers and FLGS owners. I also suspect that we will never see a codex and it's digital counterpart released on the same day for the same reasons (Card sets on MTGO are released one month after their physical release to further appease retailers).

Ailaros wrote:Well, with the hardcover book, it costs them about $5 per book to pay the content creators, and about $60 to get the book created, and distributed. Then you need to add about a $10 markup for retail.

With the digital creation, it costs about $5 to make the content, and about $1 for distribution.

Yeah, $99.99 seems about right, actually. I wouldn't expect it to sell for any less than the actual book in any case.

What content are you referring too if I may ask? As far as I know all of their designers are hourly/salary paid?
Curious I am.

@RegalPhantom

Do you work in the publication industry, or perhaps manufacturing?

What annoys me is that that GW didn't announce they'd be releasing a digital version for iPad. Had I known I would have waited for that and not bought the paper version.

RegalPhantom wrote:The digital rule book will cost the EXACT same as the MSRP for the big rule book. So if the standard rulebook is $80, the digital will be $80. I know this seems odd, but before you guys claim "OMG GW is ripping me off", let me tell you a story about magic the gathering online. For those of you who don't know, MTGO is basically a "pay-to-play" game which is effectively a digital version of MTG. You buy booster packs just like the real game. Now, when this was first announced, a lot of retailers were concerned about MTGO. For physical booster packs, the profit Wizards got from each booster pack was the retail price (I can't remember the specific price, but I'll just assume 4.00 USD before taxes), minus manufacturing, minus shipping, minus retail share. From that, lets assume that this means that for each sold Wizards made 1 USD. Now, with the digital sales, Wizards expenses were greatly reduced, as they no longer had to ship the product or share the profit with retailers, they just had to keep the design teams (both for the CCG and the digital platform) satisfied and pay the upkeep on the servers. This means that at a $4.00 price point, they could easily make at least $3.00 in profit. Now, say that you dropped the price of a digital booster down to 3 USD. They still make more profit than from the physical booster, but now there is an increased incentive for people to buy online boosters instead of physical ones. This concerned retailers, as it could effectively price them out of the MTG market. This also concerned Wizards, because they knew that digital magic would not survive without a strong physical base, so to prevent retailers refusing to stock magic booster packs, they promised to never price digital products below the MSRP. I suspect that GW is doing the same thing, keeping their digital products at MRSP in order to appease both GW store managers and FLGS owners. I also suspect that we will never see a codex and it's digital counterpart released on the same day for the same reasons (Card sets on MTGO are released one month after their physical release to further appease retailers).

Cool story, I learned something about MTGO. Thank you for that.
However, as far as GW is concerned, I would be surprised if they took that kind of standpoint. The MSRP is less for the Space Marine Codex than it is for the Digital version, and the same is true of the Necron Codex. All for "updates" that are currently free

Adam LongWalker wrote:
@RegalPhantom

Do you work in the publication industry, or perhaps manufacturing?

No, I'm an engineering student soon to graduate. I have no in-depth knowledge of the publication industry, or the specific details manufacturing industry supporting CCGs. When I was referencing prices relating to Magic, I was using extremely rough estimates. My examples were probably highly inaccurate, probably in undervaluing numerous expenses for both the distribution of physical and digital product (Wizards profit per booster is probably less than what I stated). However, I stand by my economic statements. Particularly when dealing with international markets, the cost of manufacturing and shipping a box of Magic boosters to a retailer, who then take their share of the final sale, on a pure cost/pack analysis, will be less than the cost per digital booster pack produced. I have a feeling that this would actually make for an interesting economic case study should any econ or commerce majors be reading this thread.

Amanax wrote:
Cool story, I learned something about MTGO. Thank you for that.
However, as far as GW is concerned, I would be surprised if they took that kind of standpoint. The MSRP is less for the Space Marine Codex than it is for the Digital version, and the same is true of the Necron Codex. All for "updates" that are currently free

I'm not sure what the prices are in the states for the physical and digital codexes, but using Canadian pricing, if I were to order both codexes from Games Workshop directly, the Space Marine codex would cost $49.50 and the Necron would cost $39.50. For the iTunes version, it is $49.99 and $39.99, and although it is technically a difference of 49 cents, statistically speaking it's negligible (the price difference is about 0.012% for the Necron codex, and less for the Space Marine codex).

I'd also like to note that I'm not making an statement as to whether or not GW is ripping the customers off with their digital product, or with their print product, or just in general (there are several sides to the argument, and one I would not wish to get involved with). However, I was merely trying to offer a theory (one that will likely hold) as to what the future price of digital GW books would be, and why they would be at that price, using a somewhat comparable product. While I could have used another tabletop game instead of a CCG (in which not only the rules but the instruments of play can be digitalized, thus cutting stores off completely should digital prices undercut physical ones), the only example I can think of is War Room for Warmahordes, but the comparison there is even worse, since having the War Room Faction deck for an army does not remove the desire that one may have to get the factions army book, and vice versa.

EDIT: Screwed up the multi-quotes, then took 3 edits until I was able to fix it properly.

Ailaros wrote:Well, with the hardcover book, it costs them about $5 per book to pay the content creators, and about $60 to get the book created, and distributed.

Wait... what?

LunaHound wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Well, with the hardcover book, it costs them about $5 per book to pay the content creators, and about $60 to get the book created, and distributed.

Wait... what?

The $5 per book is probably about right, when you consider the number of books sold. I'm pulling numbers out of thin air here, but it still helps explain the point. Lets say that it takes 3 GW employees an amount of time equivalent to one fully dedicated salary year to complete the new rulebook. If those employees make about $70,000 per year, it costs GW about $210,000 to produce the content for the 40k rulebook. Now, lets say that GW expects to sell... 100,000 copies of both physical and digital copies of the new rulebook, excluding special limited run editions (such as the gamers and collectors edition) and the copies included in the starter set. These are excluded solely to simplify the math. Using these estimates, it would cost GW about $2.10 per book for the creative content alone (including rules, images, and fluff). Basically, the cost of producing the creative content is independent on the number of books sold, and when you scale up the production output high enough, the cost per unit drops drastically.

The $60 per book production cost is probably on the high side, but it isn't unreasonable. Considering costs of materials, paper, equipment maintenance, labour, shipping, and retail costs (in the case of a GW owned store, its the cost of running the store. In the case of an independent store, its the cost created by the potential loss of income from having a GW store or online sale at MRSP, basically the difference between MRSP and factory sale). Considering economy of scale and the fact it would probably cost me close to $50 to run down to staples and print off 100 colour pages, a total cost of $60 might not be so far fetched.

RegalPhantom wrote:The digital rule book will cost the EXACT same as the MSRP for the big rule book. So if the standard rulebook is $80, the digital will be $80. I know this seems odd, but before you guys claim "OMG GW is ripping me off", let me tell you a story about magic the gathering online. For those of you who don't know, MTGO is basically a "pay-to-play" game which is effectively a digital version of MTG. You buy booster packs just like the real game. Now, when this was first announced, a lot of retailers were concerned about MTGO. For physical booster packs, the profit Wizards got from each booster pack was the retail price (I can't remember the specific price, but I'll just assume 4.00 USD before taxes), minus manufacturing, minus shipping, minus retail share. From that, lets assume that this means that for each sold Wizards made 1 USD. Now, with the digital sales, Wizards expenses were greatly reduced, as they no longer had to ship the product or share the profit with retailers, they just had to keep the design teams (both for the CCG and the digital platform) satisfied and pay the upkeep on the servers. This means that at a $4.00 price point, they could easily make at least $3.00 in profit. Now, say that you dropped the price of a digital booster down to 3 USD. They still make more profit than from the physical booster, but now there is an increased incentive for people to buy online boosters instead of physical ones. This concerned retailers, as it could effectively price them out of the MTG market. This also concerned Wizards, because they knew that digital magic would not survive without a strong physical base, so to prevent retailers refusing to stock magic booster packs, they promised to never price digital products below the MSRP. I suspect that GW is doing the same thing, keeping their digital products at MRSP in order to appease both GW store managers and FLGS owners. I also suspect that we will never see a codex and it's digital counterpart released on the same day for the same reasons (Card sets on MTGO are released one month after their physical release to further appease retailers).

Correct me if I'm wrong but i thought that MTGO cards could be "given up" for the actual cards themselves.

If that is true than it would be a far better deal than having to pay for a GW product twice.

@ RegalPhantom

Oh I understand you post, and I was serious. I learned something new, and rather enjoyed your post because of that fact. All I was stating was that it is more over here for the digital copy, so expecting them to be the same price for their next release, isn't optimistic. For you, it would seem that it is in fact the same price, which was something I forgot to account for. For us in the US, the Space Marine codex is 41.95 I believe. Only a few dollars cheaper, but when the digital copy is as you stated, it is a more expensive copy of the same thing, with free updates added into it.

I just asked a few people.

Dunhill head of design department Asia HQ:
"Depends on whether you can find print company with tailored machines they'll charge you same price even if your printed area is a bit smaller. So your book designer have to maximize space before print. On high quality glossy and color pages even at 500 pages hardcover, and bulk rate it shouldn't go over $12

Evergreen Group Taipei HQ ( damn it Dakka the thing I do for you... I hate asking my step sister... ):
Shipping per book... shouldn't cost more than $3, way cheaper if group freights are used.

San Yang Air Transport. Co Taipei HQ:
Air transport is way more expensive than marine. But if it must be done by air, do it by per freight to save money.

Either way RegalPhantom, I'll be generous and say with everything added together ( with your estimate ) a Hard Cover book should never cost GW more than $20.

The $60 mentioned... maybe the loyal fans will believe it. -_-

I just have trouble getting behind the prices of Games Workshop products especially for the new digital releases. The overall quality of Games Workshop’s printed products is inferior when compared to other niche hobby products. The books Games Workshop produces are still mostly black and white which in 2012 the sprinkling of color pages are as much of a feature as are computers with built in sound cards or trucks with power windows. The content layout has been split to pad the page count with each unit having both a fluff entry and a game play entry. The fluff itself has rapidly become cringe worthy and continuous source of contention among fans. As well as the wording of rules regularly contain serious grammatical errors which are left to the wolves with the excuse of “beer and pretzel” game.

To make a contrasting point within this niche hobby industry there is a company called Paizo. Who produces the Pathfinder RPG line that sells equal to or greater than, to the more venerable Dungeons & Dragons series. The hardback books that Paizo publish are of some of the best quality I have seen in any facet of the hobby industry. The art and page layout is fantastic not to mention the writing is superb the sense of both, setting story fluff and technical writing for rules. Their hardback books whose page count ranges from 300-400 pages of actual content (not 100 pages devoted to a model gallery or the same rehashed fluff) and fall into the price range of $40-$50 dollars. On top of that if you subscribe to the monthly product releases you get a free PDF copy of the monthly product(s) that is also updated free of charge when a FAQ or an errata, is published. Even then a standalone PDF of any of their soft or hard, back products is cheaper than a physical copy. Finally Paizo releases a free open source version of the major books on the website that is presented in a barebones fashion much like the starter edition Warhammer Fantasy/40k rulebooks.

Paizo is not a singular instance of good rule distribution. Catalyst Game Labs who is the current producer of BattleTech game follows the same pattern of $40-$50 dollar quality hardback books that have the optional supplement of less expensive PDF versions.

Games Workshop is presenting their customers with a drastically overpriced and now platform locked, product. Par for course is not much of a revelation.

I have to go with ntin on this. Look at the 6ed BRB, perhaps 2/5ths of it is actual rules and the rest is fluff, and their charging $80 for it ( even the various Codexes are at come close to 1/3 fluff ) - sure the binding is of decent quality and the built in book mark is handy ( but not needed ).

How much cheaper would the BRB be if they didn't include all the fluff? Sure some people think that fluff makes the game, and that's fine, but in truth GW adds so much of it to the BRB, just to bulk it up in order to make people think that they are getting allot of stuff, in order to justify the price tag.

Personally, I could do with more rule clarification and less fluff - it can't be coincidence that GW stopped making use of an e-mail box dedicated to clarify rules, while the amount of fluff in the various rule books increases.

I would expect this to cost less than a BRB.

I mean you no longer have printing or logistical costs to produce each book.
That means they CAN drop the price. Though I doubt they will.

Looking at the music industry going digital everything gets cheaper because its less cost to make mp3 files.

I mean its a very nice hardback book and I'm sure it costs a fair bit to make but I also have no faith in GW to pass any savings on to us.
I expect at very best it will be about 10 quid less than a physical book.
Also wouldn't be surprised if they boost the price because postage bumps the price of a BRB above normal price anyway. I will also be upset if this is a price increase ploy instead of perhaps letting more people who won't pay all that postage on an already super pricey book, get into the hobby.

I agree with the Paizo comment. There's absolutely no way the GW rulebook should cost more then their rulebooks for Pathfinder.

Of course I don't care about an electronic copy as I don't have a friggin' IPad to view it. A PDF would be another thing entirely, but will never happen.

Even a PDF would be be stupidly expensive because it's GW though and they treat everything as if they exist in a vacuum. My buddy just bought the PDF of the new Savage Worlds RPG Hell on Earth Reloaded rulebook, and it was 209 full color pages for 10 freaking dollars. The hardcover is going to be in limited numbers at Gencon and then later at full numbers for 25 dollars.

They're gonna price it absurdly and lose out on more money than the ridiculous price will net. Most people are still going to buy the starter rulebook. Nothin new with GW.

Talk about an abusive lover.

How much would be book be without the fluff? Probably not THAT much cheaper, honestly. The number of pages is just one tiny cog in a huge system of taking someone's thoughts and turning it into something you read in your hands.

In fact, I'd bet that the number of pages isn't even the biggest cost for producing the book itself. Yes, color ink isn't free, but I bet that the production costs of a publishing company are probably just as low as the content creation costs for GW.

For example, only 2% of the price of corn actually makes it into the cost of the food that you buy. Put another way, if the price of corn doubled, the price of a box of corn flakes would only rise 2%. We live in a world with such an advanced economy, that very little of the value of a product comes from the material (or, in a funny way, even the product) itself. Most of the value added comes from all the human hands it has to pass though.

How much would be book be without the fluff? Probably not THAT much cheaper, honestly. The number of pages is just one tiny cog in a huge system of taking someone's thoughts and turning it into something you read in your hands.

The problem is that if the wages of the thinktank at HQ is the reason GW is "forced" to sell their hardcover rules for so much more per-unit than comparable books put out my others in the gaming field, they have even worse business sense than I previously thought.

Especially with digital copies, because the book already exists in a digital version to send to the printer. I can;t imagine it's complicated programming to make it into a sellable digital copy.

AegisGrimm wrote:The problem is that if the wages of the thinktank at HQ is the reason GW is "forced" to sell their hardcover rules for so much more per-unit than comparable books put out my others in the gaming field, they have even worse business sense than I previously thought.

Different companies, different needs, different strategies.

I think it would be less useful to compare GW's 200-page hardbound rulebook and compare it to the 100-page rulebook of an up-and-coming, small, private company that is DESPERATE for market share, and is willing to operate on a loss for months on end if that's what it takes to establish their brand. I think it would make more sense to compare the price of GW's books to other large, established publishers that dont' face a significant amount of competition - college textbooks. When Campbell's biology (9th edition) costs $225 from the campus book store, spending $75 for practically the same thing doesn't seem quite so bad.

Yes, textbook prices are artificially inflated by federal student loans, while 40k isn't, but still...

if you live in the us thanks to dmca... you can just use a page scanner, pdf save your pages and the txt and its perfectly legal .. why pay for the book twice, if anybody has a problem with it let em know the law is on your side as you personally made a digital copy of physical goods as a back up and are not distributing o, selling, or otherwise redistributing the data only using for personal use with no profit gained ... the more you know *cue rainbow*

G00fySmiley wrote:if you live in the us thanks to dmca... you can just use a page scanner, pdf save your pages and the txt and its perfectly legal .. why pay for the book twice, if anybody has a problem with it let em know the law is on your side as you personally made a digital copy of physical goods as a back up and are not distributing o, selling, or otherwise redistributing the data only using for personal use with no profit gained ... the more you know *cue rainbow*

Where does the Digital Millennium Copyright Act say anything about that?

There are very, very, few ways that you can copy (in any format or medium) a work that has a copyright on it, none of it is "personal use." That is a fallacy that people have made up to justify making copies of content. You know what fair use is?

quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.

That's it. There's no "personal use" anywhere that I've ever seen in copyright law. There's plenty of stuff that says you can't make digital copies of work for any use whatsoever.

Shrike325 wrote:

G00fySmiley wrote:if you live in the us thanks to dmca... you can just use a page scanner, pdf save your pages and the txt and its perfectly legal .. why pay for the book twice, if anybody has a problem with it let em know the law is on your side as you personally made a digital copy of physical goods as a back up and are not distributing o, selling, or otherwise redistributing the data only using for personal use with no profit gained ... the more you know *cue rainbow*

Where does the Digital Millennium Copyright Act say anything about that?

There are very, very, few ways that you can copy (in any format or medium) a work that has a copyright on it, none of it is "personal use." That is a fallacy that people have made up to justify making copies of content. You know what fair use is?

quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.

That's it. There's no "personal use" anywhere that I've ever seen in copyright law. There's plenty of stuff that says you can't make digital copies of work for any use whatsoever.

There is such a thing as fair use in copyright law in the US. You can't photocopy a whole book though, but you can photocopy parts of a book you own for educational reasons or for quoting. passages for documentation. However none of that applies to this. You *might* be able to get away with photo copying some reference charts, lawyers would have to hash that out. Fair use allows for 5% of a book to be photocopied. A far as I am aware DMCA tries to get rid of fair use and makes it more restrictive, not less.

Working in the field, on the receiving end, I can tell you that the practical implementation of DMCA is to threaten people into silence. No more and no less. It is never used for anything else.

But that's another discussion. On topic, just because GW can, doesn't mean GW will. In fact, all evidence shows what GW will do is price it equally or higher than the physical books.

RegalPhantom wrote:The digital rule book will cost the EXACT same as the MSRP for the big rule book. So if the standard rulebook is $80, the digital will be $80. I know this seems odd, but before you guys claim "OMG GW is ripping me off", let me tell you a story about magic the gathering online. For those of you who don't know, MTGO is basically a "pay-to-play" game which is effectively a digital version of MTG. You buy booster packs just like the real game. Now, when this was first announced, a lot of retailers were concerned about MTGO. For physical booster packs, the profit Wizards got from each booster pack was the retail price (I can't remember the specific price, but I'll just assume 4.00 USD before taxes), minus manufacturing, minus shipping, minus retail share. From that, lets assume that this means that for each sold Wizards made 1 USD. Now, with the digital sales, Wizards expenses were greatly reduced, as they no longer had to ship the product or share the profit with retailers, they just had to keep the design teams (both for the CCG and the digital platform) satisfied and pay the upkeep on the servers. This means that at a $4.00 price point, they could easily make at least $3.00 in profit. Now, say that you dropped the price of a digital booster down to 3 USD. They still make more profit than from the physical booster, but now there is an increased incentive for people to buy online boosters instead of physical ones. This concerned retailers, as it could effectively price them out of the MTG market. This also concerned Wizards, because they knew that digital magic would not survive without a strong physical base, so to prevent retailers refusing to stock magic booster packs, they promised to never price digital products below the MSRP. I suspect that GW is doing the same thing, keeping their digital products at MRSP in order to appease both GW store managers and FLGS owners. I also suspect that we will never see a codex and it's digital counterpart released on the same day for the same reasons (Card sets on MTGO are released one month after their physical release to further appease retailers).

I think you bring a good point about threatening the position of the retailers for the MTGO case.

But I have to disagree with the codex part, people who do not own an iPad would still have to go and buy a physical copy unless they are willing to fork over an extra $500 for the infrastructure for using the eCodex.

In the MTGO case you are literally replacing the game not the rule set.

It might decrease the sales of codex of retail stores a bit if they reduce the price of eCodices, but most retailers probably don't make their money by selling codex, it is probably only a fraction of what their revenue is.

And if it is set at the same price, the reason behind buying a digital over a solid copy is really hard to justify.

Look at kindle and other eBooks, the popularity is high for them. Why? It's because they are normally much cheaper than the solid copy and that's why people opt to buy it instead. Plus the kindle's price is more acceptable than buying a new iPad.

Shrike325 wrote:

G00fySmiley wrote:if you live in the us thanks to dmca... you can just use a page scanner, pdf save your pages and the txt and its perfectly legal .. why pay for the book twice, if anybody has a problem with it let em know the law is on your side as you personally made a digital copy of physical goods as a back up and are not distributing o, selling, or otherwise redistributing the data only using for personal use with no profit gained ... the more you know *cue rainbow*

Where does the Digital Millennium Copyright Act say anything about that?

There are very, very, few ways that you can copy (in any format or medium) a work that has a copyright on it, none of it is "personal use." That is a fallacy that people have made up to justify making copies of content. You know what fair use is?

quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.

That's it. There's no "personal use" anywhere that I've ever seen in copyright law. There's plenty of stuff that says you can't make digital copies of work for any use whatsoever.

As long as you aren't selling it, using it for public viewings, etc., you are free to copy it in anyway you want for your personal use just like you can copy your own cds to have one in the car and one at home. That battle was waged when VHS recorders hit the markets and it's why CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, Copy Machines, Tivos, etc. are legal. The DMCA gets abused that way because when most websites are sent a DMCA letter they fold so as to avoid legal fees, but if they were to challenge it they'd find that, as Purifier said, it is largely intimidation. Just as you are free to mold and replicate from GW models you purchased all day long as long as you aren't selling them and you personally are using them, aka personal use, despite GW having a no replication policy. In the US anyhow.