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You are an acolyte in the service of the Emperor’s Inquisition. You stand in the front line of a great and secret war where your duty if to hunt out the foul stench of heresy, the vile alien, and the twisted influence of Chaos. You will tread where others fear, venturing to distant planets, ancient space hulks, and the unsavoury depths of the hive cities.

Now, you have a new tool to assist you in your sacred mission. The Dark Heresy core rulebook is now available for sale via download, in pdf format, through drivethrurpg.com and rpgnow.com!

Dark Heresy is a roleplaying game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, a setting in the grim darkness of the far future. Players take on the roles of Acolytes serving the Inquisition, rooting out heresy and corruption from within the galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man.

Thirty bucks for a PDF is a lot though..

If it's a searchable PDF, that's a big deal.

I'm scared to click on the link from beelzebabs. Sounds like spam?

For some reason, I had not hard of dark heresy (or at least didn't know what it was)... time for a google search...

I don't see why most people would do this when they can get it from Rapidshare or any other torrent site as a PDF.

Sure, it'd be of a lower quality, but you'd still be getting it in a digital format.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I don't see why most people would do this when they can get it from Rapidshare or any other torrent site as a PDF.

Some people prefer to buy legal copies...

H.B.M.C. wrote:If it's a searchable PDF, that's a big deal.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I don't see why most people would do this when they can get it from Rapidshare or any other torrent site as a PDF.

Sure, it'd be of a lower quality, but you'd still be getting it in a digital format.

The main reason being what HBMC stated above. If you type in "autogun" for example in the handy PDF search button, it gives you every instance that word shows up in the document.

It is a rather big deal. Makes reading so much easier.

If the PDF is simply a scanned copy, then the words are rasterized and thus unsearchable. Readable yes, but not very handy, and illegal.

Yeah, it's illegal and low-quality, but some people (not myself though) are willing to put up with that for ease-of-access.

Some people don't mind supporting content that makes them happy.

I seem to recall someone mentioning it's legal to have a copy of something you own. I suppose the depends on where you come from... but if you own a hard copy sometimes it's good to have a digital one as a backup anyways.

Look, I have electronic versions of virtually every 40K Codex. I also own virtually ever 40K Codex. I like having both because being able to just pull up a Codex on your PC is very easy and convenient.

It's the same thing with BattleTech, except in their case I've bought the PDF's because they are searchable text PDF's rather than just a stack of photo-scans of text.

A Dark Heresy PDF is a great idea, as it is (or should be) searchable. Makes things so much easier and faster. GW really should be doing this.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Yeah, it's illegal and low-quality, but some people (not myself though) are willing to put up with that for ease-of-access.

Sure, sure... These people, they're 'friends' of yours?

Anyway, especially given what's going on these days, please don't imply that people should try to get things for free that they shouldn't... OK?

Hellfury wrote:
The main reason being what HBMC stated above. If you type in "autogun" for example in the handy PDF search button, it gives you every instance that word shows up in the document.

It is a rather big deal. Makes reading so much easier.

If the PDF is simply a scanned copy, then the words are rasterized and thus unsearchable. Readable yes, but not very handy, and illegal.

This is true...but really instead of uploading a scanned copy of the PDF...they'll just upload the actual digital copy. Or am I misunderstanding what they are offering for download?

anticitizen013 wrote:I seem to recall someone mentioning it's legal to have a copy of something you own. I suppose the depends on where you come from... but if you own a hard copy sometimes it's good to have a digital one as a backup anyways.

I've also heard it is legal to download, but not to upload/make it available. So I don't know anymore.

LiberatedObject wrote:I've also heard it is legal to download, but not to upload/make it available. So I don't know anymore.

That's possibly related more to the fact that they generally won't go after people who are downloading... it's more productive to go after the people making the material available in the first place. But of course, the rules are different in different countries.


Here in Oz, it's legal to have a digital 'back up' version of any book that you own. You're also allowed to make digital copies of your digital music & video tracks, CDs and Videocassetes (but not DVDs) so long as the copy is in a different format to the original.

Really?

I did not know that...

Same as in Canada and I THINK the US but I don't know for sure since I'm not from there (not that I'd know or care anyways). Having said that, I have PDFs of all my codecies as well and in some cases prefer them. It's quite nice to be able to jump between pages easily while I'm making army lists and such. Especially the rulebooks since flipping around a monstrosity like that is rather annoying.

Hellfury wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:If it's a searchable PDF, that's a big deal.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I don't see why most people would do this when they can get it from Rapidshare or any other torrent site as a PDF.

Sure, it'd be of a lower quality, but you'd still be getting it in a digital format.

The main reason being what HBMC stated above. If you type in "autogun" for example in the handy PDF search button, it gives you every instance that word shows up in the document.

It is a rather big deal. Makes reading so much easier.

If the PDF is simply a scanned copy, then the words are rasterized and thus unsearchable. Readable yes, but not very handy, and illegal.

I can search my torrented copy just fine (and yes i own the book)

Text search?

Alpharius wrote:

Cheese Elemental wrote:Yeah, it's illegal and low-quality, but some people (not myself though) are willing to put up with that for ease-of-access.

Sure, sure... These people, they're 'friends' of yours?

Anyway, especially given what's going on these days, please don't imply that people should try to get things for free that they shouldn't... OK?

Hey man, I'm not implying anything. Just pointing out a fact.

OCR is a pretty good tech now, although I've seen it be a bit iffy on scans that aren't perfect. I'd assume most bootlegs have had OCR run on them to allow text search. PDF files made from the origional source documents are still a lot better looking and generally faster to scroll and search.

A lot of the (legal) PDF files available from online retailers like Wargames Vault are similar in quality to the 'scans' as they essentially are scans. From what I understand, the company makes a lot of older books available by taking a good-condition copy of the book, removing the binding, and scanning it in a high-speed automated scanner. This is done with the publisher's blessing, of course. The scan has OCR applied, so there is text search, and some books might have some cleanup done if there's any issues. Wargames vault has a pretty good setup in that they do allow redownloading purchased books, so updated books can be made available at no cost.

Newer books are sourced from the original page layout files, essentially a print/export option from the page layout application used. For older books, these files may not be available, at least on a cost-effective basis, as you'd need an older system that has the right fonts, images etc to make a 'clean' PDF.

Moving on to the ethical issues, from my POV publishers really should make affordable PDFs available. The reality is the unauthorized scans will be available no matter what, and chasing them down isn't likely to really get anywhere. I feel it's much better to offer a PDF option and try to encourage customers to support stuff they like than take actions that are customer unfriendly.

On the other hand, there is a huge 'entitlement' among some customers that I feel is wrong as well. Books, games, music, etc. are not essential to life. They are optional things we acquire to make ourselves happier. We, as customers, need to compromise that companies that do make the effort should be rewarded.