I am spending on your virtual products. I have no confidence in your ability to manage the product and I am afraid of your willingness to monetize me more.
To everyone applauding WotC for talking about how they had to protect against NFTs and publishers using D&D IP in unacceptable ways, they didn't need a new OGL to do that! They have always had IP law on their side to sue anyone who uses their IP in a way they don't like. It's smoke and mirrors!
I have studied IP law and have some experience with IP as a practitioner. This statement is only sort of true.
IP law is a mess—despite being some of the oldest law out there (early Trademark law dates to Ancient Rome), it remains a quagmire of rules, circuit splits, and confusion. OGL 1.0 does not address NFTs either as a positive or a negative - which adds another layer to already complicated and messy litigation as to the applicability of OGL 1.0, with the NFT producers trying to use it as a shield. That’s not great for anyone - and certainly not great for Wizards who has clear reasons not to want third parties making NFTs with their property - they don’t want to give a shield (even a potentially flimsy one) to NFT producers.
Eapecially since, as any lawyer who has gone before a judge and discussed the blockchain knows, many judges just don’t understand NFTs or the like, and they get their rulings on those subjects wrong all the time. Clearly spelling out “yeah, you can’t use this for NFTs” gives you something you can show to an older, not technologically savvy judge and say “see, you might not know what an NFT is, but you know that ‘don’t do this’ means ‘don’t do this.’”
"That was why our early drafts of the new OGL included the provisions they did. That draft language was provided to content creators and publishers so their feedback could be considered before anything was finalized."
You have rolled another "1" on the Deception Check.
Seriously? Is this how stupid Hasbro and WOTC thinks their customer base is?
Anyone that had a part in that reply has to go...If HASBRO and WOTC thinks they lost paying customers before that statement an hour ago just belt in for the ride coming...
If their intention all along was to get feedback, why didn't they publicly release the "draft" for comment? Why did they rely on a leak of the "draft" to get public feedback they wanted all along?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Taking the sensationalism out of this, let’s look at what they actually said:
1. They all but confirmed the leaked draft was a real draft, and effectively through their lawyers under the bus by tacitly blaming them for putting forward an extremely strong initial position. From the lawyer perspective, that’s fine and very common among corporate lawyers—they are trained to deal with the other lawyers from other corporations like Kickstarter, who likewise understand “first offer” and “actual intentions” are different (and there’s often off the record jokes about how ridiculous terms are between lawyers, so a lot of animosity dissipation is behind closed doors and never written down). Ultra-aggressive openings are not my general style (though I have used them before), but I also spent half a decade in family law, where the contracts are every bit about emotion as the contents and strong handed tactics could easily backfire. Their attorneys could probably benefit from hiring some folks from non-corporate fields who might have experience with how non-lawyers/non-corporate entities might read offers and legalese.
2. They affirmed that existing 1.0 content will still be covered by 1.0. New content will be covered by 2.0. This makes sense—there are strong legal arguments that 1.0 contracts are perpetual due to Wizards’ past representations, and protecting existing 1.0 rights moving forward is in-line with the expectations of 1.0 content creators. Huge win for 1.0 owners - even if the contract does not say it, promises folks rely on have legal weight (something Wizards is very well versed in, since they shot themselves in the foot with that same equitable doctrine with Magic the Gathering).
3. They are committing to removing the licensing language. They are all but certainly not lying when they say they didn’t intend to actually take folks’ IP - that exact language is standard in many industry contracts (including almost every internet site you use) to prevent malicious lawsuits and provide a shield, not a set of lock picks. However, it is one of those things that lawyers can see the real intent behind, but laypeople do not - and another example of why maybe they need to have a non-corporate lawyer on their staff to ask “um, yeah, so I know what we mean by this, but Joe Six-pack won’t and will get scared.”
4. They are expanding what is covered by OGL 2.0 to include more things that 1.0 included. That also makes a lot of sense - their initial stated plan was to have different contracts to cover those other expressions, which they probably realised was a bit dumb when they realised small-time actors also made content, not just big companies like Role20 which are easy to contract with.
Overall, this is clearly a step in the right direction and one which should at least tie folks over until we see the next round of terms.
And, to those who don’t trust Wizards, trust not in them, but trust in the greed you believe they have. They would not have put out a false information about what they will include in 2.0 because their greed would not let them—you can win back money by fixing errors; but corporations know that the quickest way to lose paying customers forever is to promise change and follow that up with a contradictory offer. Now that this document exists, corporate greed is your unlikely ally forcing Wizards to be held to these representations.
Agree with this summary. The two things you didn't cover were the complete removal of the royalty and their silence on the unilateral change with notice clause. The former surprised me (but I could see them adding it back later if major third parties continue to make bank.) The latter is concerning if they leave it at 30 days, that really needs to be extended a lot more (6 months at an absolute minimum, maybe even a year or more.)
If this reaches any of the Wizards execs. We are not impressed. We are not appeased. I personally will not be renewing my subscription to DnD Beyond and I imagine many others feel the same. Own that you chose to burn the community and fans for your own greed. You want our money? You see us as an obstacle between you and that money? Earn our money.
If it pans out? Step in the right direction, especially as it seems like they're going to leave anything published under OGL 1.0 alone. That was always one of the biggest sticking points, if not the biggest one - yanking the rug out from under people and Darth Vadering them on deals they built their livelihoods around.
A number of people keep pointing to this and saying "See? we did it, they are going to leave 1.0a products alone!"
No, that's not exactly true. Anything that was already published under 1.0a before the next OGL drops will be allowed to continue to exist and be sold.
HOWEVER... NO ONE will be allowed to make anything new under 1.0a. Anything you make after the new OGL drops will have to be done under the NEW OGL only.
So if we don't like the terms of the final new OGL, and want to make something for an older edition of D&D? NOPE can't do it.
In it's current form THIS IS NOT A WIN.
Yes it is. It's not Total Victory of the sort they make shounen anime about, because Caerwyn was partially correct in his thread - there are legitimate reasons to want to amend the OGL to better reflect the modern climate. The problem is that Hasbrozards overreached like they were doing it with a backhoe and started granting themselves rights and privileges they did not need in an attempt to head off future lawsuits at the pass. It's actually a very common defensive-lawyering tactic - claim every right you possibly can whether you intend to use that right or not just so you have a legal leg to stand on when someone comes at you. It's crappy lawyering, but a lot of companies don't care.
Wizards has a right to take steps to deal with new Ernest Gygax situations, and I say this as somebody who's always hated the company. Everybody has a right to tell NFT people to go pound sand. As I stated, IF the promises in this particular statement pan out and are supported by the eventual document release? Then it is indeed a victory over what we all now know was the original intended terms. Hasbrozards is giving up a lot of their anticompetitive measures, which also means they're turning things like Kickstarter projects back on.
We've claimed ground. Continuing to be spiteful is only going to hurt everybody involved. By all means - and this is for everyone, not October specifically - by all means, withhold judgment until the actual document releases and we see if they put their lawyers where their mouth is. But if they do follow through, then keep in mind that they DID listen top the community uproar. If they didn't go far enough for you then that's your decision to make, but they did listen. That's more than I anticipated they'd do, and it bears keeping in mind.
Any attempt at revoking, de-authorization, or de-legitimizing 1.0a WILL NOT be accepted. The ONLY acceptable change is a 1.0b where the only two changes are adding irrevocable to the perpetual and a paragraph in section 9 stating there is no de-authorization method for versions put out.
The thing I like about this response, they are using diversity and harm reduction as their shield for what they did. In reality, its really about preventing harmful D&D content from being released - You rolled a 1 on Deception. Hmm... DMs Guild and RPG Drivethru takes care of that. Oh someone wants a Kickstarter well that takes care of that. Oh someone wants to do a private release that reaches 200 people who all wanted that content in the first place,. really that is your shield D&D? It's just such a low IQ shield to use to defend their behavior, your customers will see through it, at least the ones that roll 2d6 and add the results together will. Just update the OGL and list specific objectionable content and state lawsuits will take place when that is crossed and remove D&D's ability to cancel whatever content they want for whatever reason - list out objectionable content and be done with it.
The OGL was set up for competitors to use to release content that increased sales of D&D in the first place, the creator of the OGL has stated that. This modern reinterpretation didn't go over well with the community and now no one trusts WotC for future content. I haven't used any content from D&D in the past three years due to well dry, curated, lowest common denominator content put out to appeal to 10 year olds. D&D still gets money for the rare rules update that is of worth but their world building and modules for the last 3 years are bad. If D&D removes 3rd party, well now I have to start converting 3rd party content to 5E for it to be useful or continue to use the older edition D&D content that the DM'sguild tells me I'm a bad person for buying from D&D's perspective so I feel bad buying it there and don't. I really would like to give D&D money for when they put out good content, but the OGL change is making it less likely that will be the case. This is almost like the reverse Fry from Futurama where D&D is telling me "Hurry and and take your money back".
"That was why our early drafts of the new OGL included the provisions they did. That draft language was provided to content creators and publishers so their feedback could be considered before anything was finalized."
You have rolled another "1" on the Deception Check.
Seriously? Is this how stupid Hasbro and WOTC thinks their customer base is?
Anyone that had a part in that reply has to go...If HASBRO and WOTC thinks they lost paying customers before that statement an hour ago just belt in for the ride coming...
If their intention all along was to get feedback, why didn't they publicly release the "draft" for comment? Why did they rely on a leak of the "draft" to get public feedback they wanted all along?
Easy answer - the public is sensationalist and prone to bad legal analysis that ultimately proves counter productive. You start by negotiating with the adults in the room - the bigger entities like Critical Role, Kickstarter, etc. They are the ones who will be impacted most by the changes and they are the ones most likely to lawyer up, have helpful discussions, and who can actually help reach mutually agreeable terms.
Releasing an early draft to the public means you had to negotiate against yourself to get something palatable to the general public - which both is bad negotiation and produces a worse version than if you negotiated with a third party that has a stake in the outcome and who can provide a prospective you would have missed if you were trying to anticipate concerns, rather than ask for them.
Taking the sensationalism out of this, let’s look at what they actually said:
3. They are committing to removing the licensing language. They are all but certainly not lying when they say they didn’t intend to actually take folks’ IP - that exact language is standard in many industry contracts (including almost every internet site you use) to prevent malicious lawsuits and provide a shield, not a set of lock picks. However, it is one of those things that lawyers can see the real intent behind, but laypeople do not - and another example of why maybe they need to have a non-corporate lawyer on their staff to ask “um, yeah, so I know what we mean by this, but Joe Six-pack won’t and will get scared.”
1. Me using a website to facilitate my creativity is a lot different than someone writing and creating content to sell to other parties. A 3rd party company is in the business of writing stories/adventures for the entertainment of others, to sell as digital or printed media outside of any privately owned distribution network. The website is acting as a medium and hosting platform, so its justified that they get a piece of the pie. Kobolt press (as an example) making a PDF or a printed book all on their own is not in any way beholden to anyone else to distribute that material.
WotC/Hasbro has notoriously been providing content recently that is not as well received as the 3rd party creators. Knowing that, you're telling me that when given access to a wealth of free story content that they can sell at will, they won't take advantage of that? Especially a company that has behaved as Hasbro has in the past? They may not copy something word for word, but you can bet that they would mine that stuff for ideas, characters and other creative elements. Hell, Transformers (one of their best IP's) is a rough copy and paste (albeit, under licensing agreements) from a previous work in Japan. Imagine if they were given the opportunity to do that, but not pay a dime for the ideas?
The idea that because language like this appears in normal contracts somehow legitimizes it is absurd. Yes, business take as much as they can get in contracts like this...but no other business worth their salt just blindly signs the first draft of an agreement without exceptions, back and forth negotiations and changes. Its our understanding that those back and forth talks were not offered to the signees, and in fact they were give a time limit of one week to assemble their legal staff to review. That is not cool.
Furthermore, the offeror taking dual ownership of the IP isn't the easiest way to protect themselves from malicious lawsuits. There are other clauses that accomplish this, without the connotation that their current statement has. It wasn't an accident that they phrased it the way they did.
At the company where I work, when we see language in a contract that we don't like, we question it. When the writer of the contract says, "Well, that's not what that means, it really means this other thing" we say "Great! Then there will be no problem to take it out or change it to be more clear." The majority of the time, it turns out that they offeror did in fact mean it to do exactly what it says.
To everyone applauding WotC for talking about how they had to protect against NFTs and publishers using D&D IP in unacceptable ways, they didn't need a new OGL to do that! They have always had IP law on their side to sue anyone who uses their IP in a way they don't like. It's smoke and mirrors!
This isn't as clear-cut as you think; IP isn't just Product Identity. A more strongly worded/specific license is to their benefit.
Ah yes a "news" post that just tries to gaslight people, it isn't over until they drop this new OGL Crap and realize that the original one needs to remain
Weirdly, as I’m reading this thread, I just now realized I’m more interested in what the ogl says than in how 1D&D turns out. And I don’t even use 3pp, really. I just want to be able to trust the company, at least as much as one can trust a company.
F*** off WotC. The ENTIRE community knows your a piece of crap. Your stewardship has ended, at your own hand no less. Do you think you can regain trust after pulling something like this? Do you think we will just forget and move on? We all have seen the internal leaks, we know you see us as nothing more than a wallet that you think is rightfully yours. This gaslighting and trying to spin stuff in your favor is not going to work. You deserve to burn. All your 3rd party content creators are jumping ship, your players are jumping ship. ORC is coming. Enjoy.
Interesting, it appears that the draft was correct and that Wizards is now changing its plans. Now, corporations such as Pathfinder will not be affected by this because they published under a previous listen. It also appears that several other clauses people disliked were removed.
All in all, the group that urged people to wait before deciding whether to keep playing the game seems to have been right. Well the draft may have been accurate, Wizards of the Coast has listened to their fans and been transparent. I don't see how anyone could fault them for that. When the article says the "drafts you’ve seen were attempting to" get feedback, it really makes it feel like they intentionally leaked the doc. But anyways... I digress.
The most important part of this though is that Wizards of the Coast is listening. They are hearing our feedback and using it to build a better game, one that we can all be proud of.
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BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
This laughable excuse of a corpo-bs statement is really the ******* iceing on the cake. Do people really fall for this, or are there just some few people in marketing consulting firms taking advantage stupid CEOs doing the worst shit possible?
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WOTC, I am not happy with you.
I am spending on your virtual products. I have no confidence in your ability to manage the product and I am afraid of your willingness to monetize me more.
I have studied IP law and have some experience with IP as a practitioner. This statement is only sort of true.
IP law is a mess—despite being some of the oldest law out there (early Trademark law dates to Ancient Rome), it remains a quagmire of rules, circuit splits, and confusion. OGL 1.0 does not address NFTs either as a positive or a negative - which adds another layer to already complicated and messy litigation as to the applicability of OGL 1.0, with the NFT producers trying to use it as a shield. That’s not great for anyone - and certainly not great for Wizards who has clear reasons not to want third parties making NFTs with their property - they don’t want to give a shield (even a potentially flimsy one) to NFT producers.
Eapecially since, as any lawyer who has gone before a judge and discussed the blockchain knows, many judges just don’t understand NFTs or the like, and they get their rulings on those subjects wrong all the time. Clearly spelling out “yeah, you can’t use this for NFTs” gives you something you can show to an older, not technologically savvy judge and say “see, you might not know what an NFT is, but you know that ‘don’t do this’ means ‘don’t do this.’”
Ill hold my breath before I believe this ,,
Id still hold on re-upping any Subs till its substantiated 100% that this is how its going to be going forwards.
Huh? That PR statement was a dumpster fire. I'd fire that PR team LOL.
If their intention all along was to get feedback, why didn't they publicly release the "draft" for comment? Why did they rely on a leak of the "draft" to get public feedback they wanted all along?
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Agree with this summary. The two things you didn't cover were the complete removal of the royalty and their silence on the unilateral change with notice clause. The former surprised me (but I could see them adding it back later if major third parties continue to make bank.) The latter is concerning if they leave it at 30 days, that really needs to be extended a lot more (6 months at an absolute minimum, maybe even a year or more.)
If this reaches any of the Wizards execs. We are not impressed. We are not appeased. I personally will not be renewing my subscription to DnD Beyond and I imagine many others feel the same. Own that you chose to burn the community and fans for your own greed. You want our money? You see us as an obstacle between you and that money? Earn our money.
Yes it is. It's not Total Victory of the sort they make shounen anime about, because Caerwyn was partially correct in his thread - there are legitimate reasons to want to amend the OGL to better reflect the modern climate. The problem is that Hasbrozards overreached like they were doing it with a backhoe and started granting themselves rights and privileges they did not need in an attempt to head off future lawsuits at the pass. It's actually a very common defensive-lawyering tactic - claim every right you possibly can whether you intend to use that right or not just so you have a legal leg to stand on when someone comes at you. It's crappy lawyering, but a lot of companies don't care.
Wizards has a right to take steps to deal with new Ernest Gygax situations, and I say this as somebody who's always hated the company. Everybody has a right to tell NFT people to go pound sand. As I stated, IF the promises in this particular statement pan out and are supported by the eventual document release? Then it is indeed a victory over what we all now know was the original intended terms. Hasbrozards is giving up a lot of their anticompetitive measures, which also means they're turning things like Kickstarter projects back on.
We've claimed ground. Continuing to be spiteful is only going to hurt everybody involved. By all means - and this is for everyone, not October specifically - by all means, withhold judgment until the actual document releases and we see if they put their lawyers where their mouth is. But if they do follow through, then keep in mind that they DID listen top the community uproar. If they didn't go far enough for you then that's your decision to make, but they did listen. That's more than I anticipated they'd do, and it bears keeping in mind.
Please do not contact or message me.
Your LIES will not work.
Any attempt at revoking, de-authorization, or de-legitimizing 1.0a WILL NOT be accepted. The ONLY acceptable change is a 1.0b where the only two changes are adding irrevocable to the perpetual and a paragraph in section 9 stating there is no de-authorization method for versions put out.
You can then make your 2.0 whatever trash then.
You will not get my support of money.
The thing I like about this response, they are using diversity and harm reduction as their shield for what they did. In reality, its really about preventing harmful D&D content from being released - You rolled a 1 on Deception. Hmm... DMs Guild and RPG Drivethru takes care of that. Oh someone wants a Kickstarter well that takes care of that. Oh someone wants to do a private release that reaches 200 people who all wanted that content in the first place,. really that is your shield D&D? It's just such a low IQ shield to use to defend their behavior, your customers will see through it, at least the ones that roll 2d6 and add the results together will. Just update the OGL and list specific objectionable content and state lawsuits will take place when that is crossed and remove D&D's ability to cancel whatever content they want for whatever reason - list out objectionable content and be done with it.
The OGL was set up for competitors to use to release content that increased sales of D&D in the first place, the creator of the OGL has stated that. This modern reinterpretation didn't go over well with the community and now no one trusts WotC for future content. I haven't used any content from D&D in the past three years due to well dry, curated, lowest common denominator content put out to appeal to 10 year olds. D&D still gets money for the rare rules update that is of worth but their world building and modules for the last 3 years are bad. If D&D removes 3rd party, well now I have to start converting 3rd party content to 5E for it to be useful or continue to use the older edition D&D content that the DM'sguild tells me I'm a bad person for buying from D&D's perspective so I feel bad buying it there and don't. I really would like to give D&D money for when they put out good content, but the OGL change is making it less likely that will be the case. This is almost like the reverse Fry from Futurama where D&D is telling me "Hurry and and take your money back".
Easy answer - the public is sensationalist and prone to bad legal analysis that ultimately proves counter productive. You start by negotiating with the adults in the room - the bigger entities like Critical Role, Kickstarter, etc. They are the ones who will be impacted most by the changes and they are the ones most likely to lawyer up, have helpful discussions, and who can actually help reach mutually agreeable terms.
Releasing an early draft to the public means you had to negotiate against yourself to get something palatable to the general public - which both is bad negotiation and produces a worse version than if you negotiated with a third party that has a stake in the outcome and who can provide a prospective you would have missed if you were trying to anticipate concerns, rather than ask for them.
1. Me using a website to facilitate my creativity is a lot different than someone writing and creating content to sell to other parties. A 3rd party company is in the business of writing stories/adventures for the entertainment of others, to sell as digital or printed media outside of any privately owned distribution network. The website is acting as a medium and hosting platform, so its justified that they get a piece of the pie. Kobolt press (as an example) making a PDF or a printed book all on their own is not in any way beholden to anyone else to distribute that material.
WotC/Hasbro has notoriously been providing content recently that is not as well received as the 3rd party creators. Knowing that, you're telling me that when given access to a wealth of free story content that they can sell at will, they won't take advantage of that? Especially a company that has behaved as Hasbro has in the past? They may not copy something word for word, but you can bet that they would mine that stuff for ideas, characters and other creative elements. Hell, Transformers (one of their best IP's) is a rough copy and paste (albeit, under licensing agreements) from a previous work in Japan. Imagine if they were given the opportunity to do that, but not pay a dime for the ideas?
The idea that because language like this appears in normal contracts somehow legitimizes it is absurd. Yes, business take as much as they can get in contracts like this...but no other business worth their salt just blindly signs the first draft of an agreement without exceptions, back and forth negotiations and changes. Its our understanding that those back and forth talks were not offered to the signees, and in fact they were give a time limit of one week to assemble their legal staff to review. That is not cool.
Furthermore, the offeror taking dual ownership of the IP isn't the easiest way to protect themselves from malicious lawsuits. There are other clauses that accomplish this, without the connotation that their current statement has. It wasn't an accident that they phrased it the way they did.
At the company where I work, when we see language in a contract that we don't like, we question it. When the writer of the contract says, "Well, that's not what that means, it really means this other thing" we say "Great! Then there will be no problem to take it out or change it to be more clear."
The majority of the time, it turns out that they offeror did in fact mean it to do exactly what it says.
"Meanwhile, people are going to say that I lost your dog. They're only half-right. I lost your dog, and so did you."
This isn't as clear-cut as you think; IP isn't just Product Identity. A more strongly worded/specific license is to their benefit.
Not convinced, especially after the dishonesty and gaslighting. My subscription will stay canceled.
Ah yes a "news" post that just tries to gaslight people, it isn't over until they drop this new OGL Crap and realize that the original one needs to remain
Weirdly, as I’m reading this thread, I just now realized I’m more interested in what the ogl says than in how 1D&D turns out. And I don’t even use 3pp, really. I just want to be able to trust the company, at least as much as one can trust a company.
F*** off WotC. The ENTIRE community knows your a piece of crap. Your stewardship has ended, at your own hand no less. Do you think you can regain trust after pulling something like this? Do you think we will just forget and move on? We all have seen the internal leaks, we know you see us as nothing more than a wallet that you think is rightfully yours. This gaslighting and trying to spin stuff in your favor is not going to work. You deserve to burn. All your 3rd party content creators are jumping ship, your players are jumping ship. ORC is coming. Enjoy.
Interesting, it appears that the draft was correct and that Wizards is now changing its plans. Now, corporations such as Pathfinder will not be affected by this because they published under a previous listen. It also appears that several other clauses people disliked were removed.
All in all, the group that urged people to wait before deciding whether to keep playing the game seems to have been right. Well the draft may have been accurate, Wizards of the Coast has listened to their fans and been transparent. I don't see how anyone could fault them for that. When the article says the "drafts you’ve seen were attempting to" get feedback, it really makes it feel like they intentionally leaked the doc. But anyways... I digress.
The most important part of this though is that Wizards of the Coast is listening. They are hearing our feedback and using it to build a better game, one that we can all be proud of.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.This laughable excuse of a corpo-bs statement is really the ******* iceing on the cake. Do people really fall for this, or are there just some few people in marketing consulting firms taking advantage stupid CEOs doing the worst shit possible?