Can I tell you why I respect DrivethruRPG?
Years ago I created a game called Tokyo Brain Pop. It was a psychic schoolgirl rpg. About fighting demons and having best friends and blowing up heads with your mind. A pretty harmless PG rated game. I released it as a PDF on my site as well as Drivethru and a few other sites. I also ran a small pre-order for a print version. I think the pre-order generated about $400. So not a big project at all.
Just after the pre-order ended I received a cease and desist letter from a lawfirm representing a company. I can't name them for legal reasons. Their claim was the name of our game violated their clients copyright. Their client was a robot themed educational website with a vaguely similar name. They thought people would confuse our game for their site. So they demanded that we stop publishing, remove our product and website from the internet and pay them damages of $10k.
Obviously this was bullshit. I sent them a letter explaining that I was a small hobbyist, that I didn't think there was any issue and that I'd be happy to include a disclaimer on my site stating that my game wasn't associated with their thing at all.
They wouldn't have it. I got a flurry of letters and legal documents, including a threat to sue for damages. I wasn't sure what to do. Luckily a friend pointed me to an attorney that did free work for artists. The attorney looked over the documents and came to a few conclusions.
1. The whole thing was bullshit. The lawfirm was almost certainly just scouring the internet looking for people to harass in order to bill hours to their client.
2. The lawfirm didn't understand that i made a ttrpg. They thought I was making a video game. The attorney assumed that was why they thought they could get so much money from me.
3. The company did not in fact have a copyright on their name. Even if they did, the attorney felt the names were so wildly different that we would probably win any lawsuit.
4. But... defending a lawsuit like this is expensive and time consuming. It would be very difficult for us.
The attorney offered to send a strongly wordde letter covering the above points. With the hopes of scaring them off.
The lawfirm didn't sue me. Thank God. But they ruined me. They sent cease and desist letters to everyone i dealt with. My site host. My distributors. My social media. My printers. The stores that sokd my games. At the time I was making a modest living off my games. I had 5 games in print, and selling them was how I paid my bills. That all went away. I lost my website. Online stores took my pdfs down and canceled my accounts. My Facebook and Twitter accounts were locked. My printer canceled my orders. 2 of my 3 distributors canceled contracts and sent back all copies of my games.
I tried to make new accounts. Find new printers. Find new stores. The lawfirm was thorough. For months every time I sat up a new account or signed up with a new distributor, they'd immediately receive a cease and desist letter and I'd be shut down.
When I tried to contact these businesses and explain what happened, they told me that they couldn't do business with me anymore. They wouldn't listen. They didn't care.
Except DrivethruRPG. Drivethru got the letter and told them to fuck off. Told them that they recognized it was an empty threat, and wouldn't comply even if it wasn't. They did this without ever hearing from me. It was their automatic response. They then contacted me to let me know what waas happening and made sure I knew that they'd continue carrying my games.
The lawfirm drove me out of business. I couldn't pay my bills. I couldnt even sell the books I had in stock. I eventually had to give up and stop making games. It was years before I came back to game dedign. It was awful and demoralizing. I lost the one thing I had built myself.
But DrivethruRPG stuck with me (Indie Press Revolution too). I didn't even have a website or social media presence, and none of my games were in pri t or available in stores, but you could buy the PDFs from Drivethru. Even after multiple cease and desist letters and threats.
Eventually the lawfirm gave up. My game Tokyo Brainpop is still on sale at DrivethruRPG.
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