WTH is this paywall discussion?

Why is anyone complaining about the possibility to "paywall" a guide?
Firstly, 99.9% of guides will still be free and probably 99.9% of ppl wont buy them anyway.
Secondly, if someone puts work into a guide and wants to sell it - it's up to them, as it is up to us if we buy it or not. Free will (market), you know!?

More importantly, the line of thought "why would you pay for a guide when you can get them for free?" doesn't even make sense. Why pay for anything you could get for free too? Like music, films, art, corn, whatever.
It's up to the creator of anything... create and share it for free OR charge for it, that simple.

And on top, it's not like the free guides are of a quality you could charge money for anyway imo, like bruh, often just the bare minimum you would expect from a guide to not call it trolling.
The "NOTES" feature exists for ages now in PoB and is barely used to an useful extend, for example.

Streamers complaining about it is like street musicians being mad about ppl in the music industry getting paid for their work, while performing on the streets for money in the first place too...

Really strange hill to stand on but you do you.

Gonna be funny when people buy builds, drop them in a public drive for free then refund the payment.

Popcorn stonks are looking good.

"

JODYHiGHR0LLER#6171 wrote:

Really strange hill to stand on but you do you.

Gonna be funny when people buy builds, drop them in a public drive for free then refund the payment.

Popcorn stonks are looking good.

What? You do know that your argument doesn't make sense, no!?
It's like thinking musicians should release their music for free because it will get pirated anyway.
If your logic would hold up... you wouldn't find anything for pay online...

who cares. if content creators put up a pay wall they will just start losing their viewers its as simple as that. these people are already making far too much money on twitch for just playing video games. if they get greedy they will regret it pretty quick. but then again people seem to be throwing their money around like its nothing these days for things they could get for free.

"

Druidenjoyer#0031 wrote:

who cares. if content creators put up a pay wall they will just start losing their viewers its as simple as that. these people are already making far too much money on twitch for just playing video games. if they get greedy they will regret it pretty quick. but then again people seem to be throwing their money around like its nothing these days for things they could get for free.

Somehow taking big money for a sponsorships, even for PoE, is totally fine, but paywalling guides is not.
Don't they know they could just promote the thing for free?
It's the entitlement of these streamers that bothers me.
They already make a living of something that's just a hobby for most ppl and get mad when someone else tries to profit from it too, but in another way.

Not everybody can be successful as a streamer and make a living out of it for many reason, but if someone is good at making something, in this case builds, why don't let them monetize on it!? And if a guide is shit... ppl won't use it anyway, even if it's free.

I think most would agree people are allowed to try and monetize their work how they choose (excluding obvious predatory stuff which this is nowhere near). They aren't offering in game assets, its just a currated collection of info which is something that can be valued.

But I also think most would agree this is a dumb idea for making money. Every buyer also buys the ability to undercut all future sales of said guide. The build maker could copyright their work, but that just protects the specific expression of the info, the mechanics detailed within it are not protected.

Imo, it also contributes to the dumb notion that these types of games are too complex and 'profesional' help should be sought out. which just seems lame to me.


*The only 'complaints' I've heard from streamers were criticisms that pay walling build guides is not a good way to build an online pressence/following. But i dont watch everything.

people just wanna get involved in drama, more so now while we wait for patch notes and league start.

If every single big creator paywalled guides then it would be a problem, but that won't happen so its whatever

Just walk past these pokemon scalpers.

"

Direfell#7544 wrote:

But I also think most would agree this is a dumb idea for making money. Every buyer also buys the ability to undercut all future sales of said guide. The build maker could copyright their work, but that just protects the specific expression of the info, the mechanics detailed within it are not protected.

Yes, I think the same. Build guides are probably not a good way to make money.

On the other hand, it could be that in rare cases a paid guide becomes actually popular (in a positive way) because the actual work put into it (the quality) sets a new high. Like I said, I don't think most guides are actually good, but that's from someone who doesn't use them anyway.
It's not like everyone is Pohx.

What I mean is, if a new player can choose between our normal "for free" guides where you just have "the items you need", the "skill list" and a "tree to follow" OR a "paid guide" where you have everything above AND in-depth explanations for literally everything important via notes or "manual" or whatever which actually teaches them the stuff they need to know, so they can understand it when they follow the guide and what not... I think it could have a place.

I think we, the core PoE community with more hours in this game then some have in all their games combined since birth, often forget how overwhelming and complex all the stuff is we look at and think "Yep. Cool. A spreadsheet. Let me try this ingame".

"

JakkerONAIR#4902 wrote:

"

JODYHiGHR0LLER#6171 wrote:

Really strange hill to stand on but you do you.

Gonna be funny when people buy builds, drop them in a public drive for free then refund the payment.

Popcorn stonks are looking good.

What? You do know that your argument doesn't make sense, no!?
It's like thinking musicians should release their music for free because it will get pirated anyway.
If your logic would hold up... you wouldn't find anything for pay online...

Fallacy Olympics gold medal.
If my grandmother had wings she would have been a bird.