WotC shuts down a fan Magic draft simulator

[RangerWickett]

Magic Draft Sim (Magic Draft Simulator) was the best place online to practice drafting Magic. It generated random packs, simulated the picks of other players, and let you fiddle with possible deck builds. It was a great tool to improve your drafting skills. Of course, it probably caused people to buy slightly fewer packs, because they could practice drafting for free instead of having to actually draft to improve their technique.

Wizards of the Coast has apparently told the site to shut down. This annoys me, mostly because WotC has dropped the ball. If they had their own draft simulator that was anywhere near as good as this one, people would be less upset. Heck, I'd probably pay a couple bucks a month for the privilege of doing test drafts, so I've got an idea what I'm going to do at any actual draft I'm paying to play.

I understand their rationale, and I do not begrudge them protecting their IP. I just think they should have had something to show to the public to prevent anger. Hell, just get the creator of Magic Draft Sim to sign a document making him a licensee of WotC IP, then pay him the exact amount equal to his licensing fee. Just don't take something people like and get rid of it.

 

[Janx]

This is probably a matter of the company is too big to know what all its parts need or are doing.

Had this been Microsoft, they would have bought the company to get the feature into their stable.

WotC lawyers apparently aren't thinking that way. Instead, they see a violation, and shut down the site. Rather than contacting other departments to see if they want to aquire it.

I have a friend who runs a chunk of Hasbro's web IT department. I bet he has no clue this tool existed. I also bet it would be harder than heck organizationally to get to the WotC web IT department and WotC aquisitions department for them to get approval and buy it. Why build tools when you can buy fan-made tools for probably less.

 

[3catcircus]

WotC lawyers apparently aren't thinking

You could've stopped at this and been just as correct...

This is the same reason why we don't have the ability to purchase pdfs of any edition of D&D.

 

[Starman]

This is the same reason why we don't have the ability to purchase pdfs of any edition of D&D.

Dude, pirates!

They're lurking everywhere just waiting for pdfs to pop up so they can start their pirating!

 

[Fast Learner]

bookfire1238
bookfire1238 has no status.
Registered User

Reported

 

[Lwaxy]

Did the site use pictures of the cards?

 

[RangerWickett]

Yes they did, but so does every card selling site out there.

 

[Lwaxy]

Our draft and sealed deck generator for STCCG only uses card title and text and we were fine. We had been told if we would use pictures it would be a copyright infringement.

You do not need pictures to run a draft simulator. I'm sure if they'd go text only, there would be no problem.