I want to make this completely clear if I bought the book before and have the PDF I now have to buy the new version to get the updated PDF? So you’re not updating PDFs now?
We do update PDFs for free (we recently did it with the Great Rift), if we are basically just reskinning the book to the latest format and doing a few tweaks. I mean... of course we would update them for free.
However, if a book is being completely re-written and having massive amounts of new art... well, that is a new book. We simply cannot update it for free, or we would be working for nothing. Which would not be great.
That said, we make efforts to ensure that you do not
need the latest update books. You can still use the original 2e Core Rulebook in your games with little to no conversions, and it will still work with the latest adventures and sourcebooks. This is the advantage of Traveller and its 'modular' mini-games - you can run each component independently (number goes in, number comes out) but the actual handling of the rules within each can be different and still remain compatible.
At the end of the day, the alternative would be a whole new edition every few years... which is exactly what we are trying to avoid. This way the odd book here and there gets updated (it may only be one or two every year, but we do not have a set 'target' for that), and the previous versions retain a very high degree of compatibility. This is better, surely?
Finally, the VHB is 9 years old. That is a good run, surely?
I’ll also point out that High Guard 2022 is almost twice the size of the original High Guard but you gave us the updated PDF free that time
Umm, that High Guard was 224 pages. The current one is 288. Bigger but nowhere near twice the size. And much of the text stayed the same - the update was for formatting and a few needed rules tweaks. Not a big re-write.