Yes that is a huge issue, and I am as well surprised it is in the doc.
I am also old enough to remember a few months ago here on D&DB the discussions about how WotC buying D&DB would not impact your home brew in any way. I think I remember people saying "your home brew is yours" and then go on to explain why they would not take your material and/or if they did they would credit you.
I can see WotC position on if people use their product to make $$$, WotC might have a royalty owed to them but the more I have read and talked to people about this the worse it seems to get.
A person said to me "Right now no one looks good at this point...." I will not repeat the rest as this is a family forum.
If you're done with 5e, I'm not gonna stop you. Be done. Sign out of your account and take your leave, enjoy your games in whichever system you decide to try out next. All I'm asking for is a reduction in the constant pointless spite that's happening right now.
Hilarious that the people who invaded the hobby that was kept alive by us older players, who pissed and moaned about "gatekeeping", are now the ones telling those who don't like what is being done to them to pound sand. Gatekeep much? Congratulations, you turned into the very thing you complained about.
If you're done with 5e, I'm not gonna stop you. Be done. Sign out of your account and take your leave, enjoy your games in whichever system you decide to try out next. All I'm asking for is a reduction in the constant pointless spite that's happening right now.
Hilarious that the people who invaded the hobby that was kept alive by us older players, who pissed and moaned about "gatekeeping" are now the ones telling those who don't like what is being done to them to pound sand. Gatekeep much? Congratulations, you turned into the very thing you complained about.
I am not sure "Hilarious that the people who joined the hobby and noticed that a lot of the older players are rude as hell and trying to dictate the 'right' way way to play the game (while apparently not knowing their own game's history) and told people they should not be rude in a manner that harmed the game are now the ones still telling people to not be rude in a manner that harms the game" is as cutting a retort as you seemed to think it was when you typed it out.
There is a level of consistency there--a level of trying to protect the hobby from those who put animosity over playing, who would rather attack others than build something together. There is not a transformation into "the very thing you complained about", but rather an infection of hate in this game that still does not dissipate.
I think if I got a doc like the one presented I would defiantly need more then 7 days to look at all the ins and out as well as see how I could adjust my business plan or if I could to accommodate such changes and if I needed to figure out ways to finance new expenses. But then again maybe the companies in question have this type of money just sitting their not doing anything to begin with.
I am also not a huge fan of ranting on the net but I do think there are times it can be appropriate and necessary. And I can understand people under stress not doing their best or not feeling their best.
I do think that there were potentially a lot of hands, eyes and mouths on the new doc and the fact that they generated the doc in question. I do not know if they thought it was just a start to a bargaining position as stated in places or if was a "take this or just leave" as I have seen and head from some other sources (really drought the last but then again I did not think WotC would release such a doc to begin with).
I do hope good things come of it but I do think for that to happen some pain is going to have to be felt by all sides before thing get better. That is to say people who are being way out there bomb throwers need to calm down a bit and not be so vocally abusive and name call and I do think this is just one of a number of issues WotC has had lately that make it easy for people to try other games and potentially find out they like them just as much as 5e. I unfortunately do think (I hope I am wrong) that losing a number of customers now may be a good thing for WotC in the long run.
Your outlook is overly nihilistic. But just to play along, let's say it's 3.5 million bucks in actual subscriptions or in that ballpack. Does that number matter to WOTC?
You better believe it. All day, every day. That's a reliable, renewable source of significant year over year revenue that is *lost.* Poof. Gone.
It's also not even including the number of those accounts that were, or would have been, buying other products through DNDB.
It matters. Don't believe it? Watch what happens next.
I am confident that number number of dollars lost will be far less that 3.5 million. I would even go so far as to say that I would be shocked if it reached half that amount. What I am trying to do is illustrate how petty in size this uproar is. Even is an absolutely insane and crazy world in which every. single. one. of the people who signed the petition had a master tier subscription (which can't even be true just by the numbers), and every. single. one. of them cancelled, it would amount to a minor inconvenience to WotC. Even in this absolutely bonkers case where everyone who did as little as signing their name saying they didn't like OGL 2.0 was willing to put their money behind their words and cancel their subscription, it still is less than a third of a percent of WotC's net worth.
If anything, a better way of estimating the total loss would be in terms of ratio to people who signed their name compared to all D&D players. With 12 million D&DBeyond accounts, that means that about 0.55% of people signed the form, probably lower given that not all D&D players have a D&DBeyond account. But regardless, that is our number. There is no reason to believe that these people spend more money on D&D than the people who did not sign, so we're probably looking at, at most, a reduction in 0.55% of WotC's sales in all categories including books, subscriptions, etc if everyone boycotts. So again, not a large percentage at all. And you can't claim this time that, "oh, but there's still books and stuff," because this is simply less players=less sales.
Regarding the comment about nihilism: I would not say it is nihilistic to be strategic. Nihilism is believing that everything is pointless. I am merely evaluating the situation and realizing that, not matter how much I want OGL 1.0a back, my action is going to get it back any sooner. If they give it back to us, it will be because of high-profile people leaving, not the masses. In light of that, I am not telling anyone not to leave. I am telling people not to falsely advertise this mission as anything that is likely to succeed. I am telling people not to tell other people that if they harm themselves enough they will get OGL 1.0a back, because that is simply destructive. I acknowledge that there are times to act, but also acknowledge that sometimes we are simply outnumbers and outgunned and the best way forward is not brute force which would not only be futile but also extreme harmful. What I don't want is people telling everyone that we are facing and enemy we can defeat when it is obvious that we will loose the battle: doing so would lead to large numbers of losses, and so is not morally acceptable to me. If you want to run into a battle you are likely to loose I'm not going to stop you, but I don't want to to bring others with you if you are telling them you are likely to win.
This is simply not how publicly traded corporations operate. It's definitely not how modest companies grow into billion-dollar juggernauts. DND Beyond is at the cornerstone of every initiative that Hasbro/WOTC have planned for the future. They have a lot more to lose here than a few million bucks over a single year. You really think they're just going to hand-wave what's going on right now as a minor loss? No. They WANT that revenue, and most of all they want all the FUTURE, compounding revenue tied to those accounts. If you don't believe that, I don't know what else to tell you other than to reiterate: watch what they do.
This is simply not how publicly traded corporations operate. It's definitely not how modest companies grow into billion-dollar juggernauts. DND Beyond is at the cornerstone of every initiative that Hasbro/WOTC have planned for the future. They have a lot more to lose here than a few million bucks over a single year. You really think they're just going to hand-wave what's going on right now as a minor loss? No. They WANT that revenue, and most of all they want all the FUTURE, compounding revenue tied to those accounts. If you don't believe that, I don't know what else to tell you other than to reiterate: watch what they do.
Look at history my friend: Have their been major examples of corporations changing their actions to make a tiny fraction of a percent of customers more happy? Has amazon (or the other 95% of corporations for that matter) stopped relying on underpaid workers in developing countries? Have manufacturers switched to more eco friendly means of production? Has companies that rely on big data worked to find equitable solutions to the alignment problem? The answers are no, no, and no. Sure, we get headlines, but they don't show meaningful change. Just like the January 13th announcement: they do what they need to do to seem like they care, but don't fix the problem.
Time after time, we see that companies don't care about a few customers: they care about money. So until the disruption entails significant fractions of their consumer base, they go with whatever gives them the most money the fastest. So for WotC, that's owning our content. And they see this as a way to make money, so 0.55% at most of their consumer base aint going to make change.
Regarding the comment to "watch what they do": I did. After tens of thousands of people, after massive internet upheaval, after massive "protests" on these forums, we get an announcement that they meant well all along and that didn't really change anything. Why will it be different this time? They showed that their response would be to ignore and attempt to make people think they care.
This Open Games License matter did not occur on an executive level but on a management/staff level.
This matter is an internal conflict between Hasbro Incorporated, Wizards of the Coast, and D&D Beyond.
Wizards of the Coast & D&D Beyond was in the process of undergoing reconstruction before all this confusion.
On youTube, there are rumors that a Wizards of the Coast staff employee violated the terms of a Non-Disclosure Agreement to all 3rd Party Partners by instead soliciting and forwarding sensitive corporate information of the Open Games License [draft] to a unknown person(s) not part of the agreement; such as a reporter, to disseminate into the online public engaging into a series of online negative 'review bombings' causing disruption and confusion amongst the D&D community; inciting an angry mob under the anonymity of the internet.
If so, this mysterious 'someone' from Wizards of the Coast or D&D Beyond did not forsee or predict that the online rage mob would commit yet another another violation due to their assistance; the General Terms & Conditions at D&D Beyond Forums threatening a Hasbro executive...by name.
Therefore, revealing the true motivation of why this Open Games License incident occurred in the first place.
This 'someone' at the management/staff level at either Wizards of the Coast or D&D Beyond attempted to sabotage a Hasbro executive's career.
This 'someone' at the management/staff level at Wizards of the Coast or D&D Beyond may be discharged from their position in a very spectacular way; as in "...will never work in this industry again..." kind of way.
It should be interesting how my 'theory' plays out in the next few weeks.
Yes that is a huge issue, and I am as well surprised it is in the doc.
I am also old enough to remember a few months ago here on D&DB the discussions about how WotC buying D&DB would not impact your home brew in any way. I think I remember people saying "your home brew is yours" and then go on to explain why they would not take your material and/or if they did they would credit you.
I can see WotC position on if people use their product to make $$$, WotC might have a royalty owed to them but the more I have read and talked to people about this the worse it seems to get.
A person said to me "Right now no one looks good at this point...." I will not repeat the rest as this is a family forum.
Whoever you are talking to doesn’t know what they are talking about. None of the OGL change AT ALL will affect ANYTHING not made for profit and simply home brew and given out for free.
This is what is ticking me off about the outrage at the moment, it’s largely based on assumptions and misunderstandings
Yes that is a huge issue, and I am as well surprised it is in the doc.
I am also old enough to remember a few months ago here on D&DB the discussions about how WotC buying D&DB would not impact your home brew in any way. I think I remember people saying "your home brew is yours" and then go on to explain why they would not take your material and/or if they did they would credit you.
I can see WotC position on if people use their product to make $$$, WotC might have a royalty owed to them but the more I have read and talked to people about this the worse it seems to get.
A person said to me "Right now no one looks good at this point...." I will not repeat the rest as this is a family forum.
Whoever you are talking to doesn’t know what they are talking about. None of the OGL change AT ALL will affect ANYTHING not made for profit and simply home brew and given out for free.
This is what is ticking me off about the outrage at the moment, it’s largely based on assumptions and misunderstandings
Gosh, can't you present a more constructive argument? I've heard the outrage you speak of is outrage about a legal OGL 2.0 90 page fu from WoTC, contract attached, and not so much an assumption or misunderstanding. Was I wrong? imho, so I've heard.
Look at history my friend: Have their been major examples of corporations changing their actions to make a tiny fraction of a percent of customers more happy?
Again, your nihilism rears it's head. There are such examples, but they're not worth mentioning here because I don't care about going off onto a tangent. What matters is that this isn't a tiny fraction of a percent of customers who are unhappy, Flayer. It's the vast majority who are following this issue. DND Beyond is just the most readily available barometer. Again... WOTC isn't just losing a few million dollars' worth of a single fiscal year's subscriptions. They are losing reliable, year to year revenue streams. More than that, they are also losing all the future additional products those customers would have purchased through their accounts, which flies in the face of the exact efforts they are making to monetize their fanbase. They have also damaged their relationships with their 3rd-party counterparts possibly beyond repair, while at the same time creating the very situation they hoped to prevent: losing market share to those counterparts.
We don't know what the financial impact of all this would be yet. Any number you or I can think of would just be a guess. But Hasbro/WOTC aren't Amazon. They aren't Coke. Not yet. Their C-suite isn't just going to ignore these issues. They can't, because all these issues have compounding effects that constitute not just financial damage, but damage to the brand.
Maybe you think different, but to me, that useless corporate statement they put out on Thursday tells me that they are in utter panic mode. What they want, more than anything, is for this to smooth over and for people to forget that this all happened so that they can go back to their original plan.
Only, like I said in a previous post, this particular customer base isn't going to forget this particular slight. WOTC now has to be very careful because the customers are in a mood, those same customers aren't getting over it, and things can get a lot, lot worse from here.
If that didn't matter to WOTC, they would have proceeded as planned already.
Some people want no OGL 2.0, and just straight revert to 1.0a
Some people want to see an apology from management with the retraction
Some people want to see people fired
Some people will never play 5e and want to watch WotC burn
People who want 5 probably weren't subscribers to begin with, and honestly that rhetoric is unhelpful. If there's nothing WotC can do to bring you back, what motivation do they have to change at all? And if WotC is unwilling to change, this isn't a boycott - it's just a mob dancing around a fire.
As for the rest of us, we need to get on the same page. If we want WotC to change, we have to be both open to the idea that a change might bring us back and have the same demand so WotC know what they have to do.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription January 12th 2023 because of "OGL" 1.1 - Resubscribed 28th of Jan, now the SRD is in CC-BY-4.0
I have seen people on Facebook say the objective is to kill WotC. I have seen them say you can't play D&D ever again unless you want WotC to succeed because even if you don't buy anything ever again WotC wins because their game is being played and talked about. I have seen people being called stupid and on the side of evil if they don't switch to Pathfinder RIGHT NOW! So yes, for a part of the fanbase the objective very much is to burn WotC to the ground and D&D with it. All the while, they completely forget that the entire mess was BECAUSE OF THE THIRD PARTY CREATORS OF 5E! The actual players of D&D were only going to be affected once third party creators close their doors due to not being able to pay revenue and other unfair requests. Well guess what, those 3rd party creators won't have to pay revenue, but if we listen to the folks with torches and pitchforks THEY WON'T SELL A DAMN THING ANYWAY! ORC is months or years away, it took Paizo a year and a half to publish Pathfinder and all they did was slap some paint on 3.5. A new system by a dozen companies will take at least that long to create, so 3PP folk are out of a job if D&D goes under (it won't, but many really want it to).
You seem to think that a company like Green Ronin or Kobold Press, or MCDM, or... (you get the idea) can ONLY create 5e products. Are you daft? They can create for any of the plethora of systems that are already out there. They created for 5e because 5e had the largest player base. That made it the biggest market. If D&D or WotC dried up and blew away in the wind, there would simply be a lot of new products for other games. So we are arguing for Darwin. Let WotC show that they are smart enough to adapt to the environment or let WotC shrivel up and die so someone or something more able to live in this environment can thrive.
Personally, I don't care wither way. D&D was convenient because so many people had seen it, knew someone that played, or actually knew the system. Want to gather a game group? It's very easy to find D&D players. But let's be honest, the system would never be called elegant. It started as a kit bash of miniature war game rules to add weird special units like wizards. It grew to become a survival horror style game with deep dungeons of total darkness with numerous traps and monsters where only those clever and greedy enough to plunder its treasures could thrive. Then it morphed into a story telling system with fiction like Dragonlance and rules trying to adapt to the new approach. Then they tried to reinvent it as a video game type system of wargaming with 4e. That wasn't as popular, so they course corrected to be more of a light-ish weight story telling system with 5e. After all of that, why do we still have 3-18 attributes? Why can you buy a pole as equipment? Because they keep trying to be at least somewhat compatible with what came before. The pole was for finding traps way back when it was survival horror. All of this is because D&D was built in layers and is trying to be backward compatible.
So, D&D isn't necessarily the cleanest of most elegant system. It has relics all scattered through it from those old iterations. So why has it been so popular? Because there is so much material and exposure (due to the third party community) that most people who might be interested in playing have some familiarity. But it's not because D&D is essential or the best or somehow a basis for all other RPGs. And once D&D is not seen as safe to produce for, some other system will receive all of those benefits, perhaps supplanting D&D. It will all work out for the user community, whether WotC learns and changes their approach, or if they burn to the ground.
Not a single RPG out there has a fraction of the D&D playerbase. Not a single RPG will allow 3PP to survive till ORC comes other than D&D. The raging fans are throwing 3PP under the bus.
You're not wrong about the current player-base counts. I don't dispute that at all. But I think you have things backwards. The entire reason the original OGL was created was to save D and D. D and D was becoming irrelevant. Third parties were producing for other games and the player-base was rapidly shrinking. So WotC came up with the OGL to try to lure in thrid parties to help save D and D by creating more content and therefore luring in more players. Now your argument is that we should allow WotC to change the terms so those third parties are unprofitable, because that will save their companies? Think this through. None of them make 25% profit above all of their expenses. So taking 25% of gross means they operate at a loss unless they wildly increase pricing, which loses them sales and they become wildly unprofitable... Hmmmm, that's sort of damned if they do and damned if they don't, isn't it? I wonder if that was the point? I bet WotC can answer that question as long as they are not asked to tell the truth.
And those third parties? I bet they can tell you that unprofitable at 25% royalties for D and D is worse than selling for a different game system(or several) without the 25% loss of gross.
Dude, literally every creator and company attached to this "movement" has moved on. No one trusts WoTC. It's over. It didn't fall apart, it moved on.
See ya
Unless you happen to be a time traveller, you don’t actually know what will happen next. D&D is still the biggest game in town—and the only one with true name recognition beyond the TTRPG die hards. Sure, there are some other companies making a quick buck off this situation - and their doing so is probably putting more pressure on Wizards than players are. But, when the dust settles and a more palatable version is released, they’re going to have to decide if they want a slice of a petite four or from an actual cake—and we won’t know how they’ll decide until that comes to pass.
Dude, literally every creator and company attached to this "movement" has moved on. No one trusts WoTC. It's over. It didn't fall apart, it moved on.
See ya
Cool. Bye, I guess. But this isn't an airport - you didn't need to announce your departure.
But fwiw I don't trust google, and I use their search. I don't trust Samsung, but I use their phone. I don't trust the hundreds of suppliers that built this laptop. This isn't a romantic relationship, I don't have to trust the corporation I buy things from. But I do demand that they provide what I want, and what I want is a system underpinned by OGL 1.0a.
We've already established that your opinion doesn't even remotely matter: Since nothing will bring you back there's no point trying to pander to you. Meanwhile, I'm (for the moment) still here. They might keep me around if they pander to me. It would be great if those people not already out the door could get on one page, so WotC know what exactly they need to do to keep us as customers.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription January 12th 2023 because of "OGL" 1.1 - Resubscribed 28th of Jan, now the SRD is in CC-BY-4.0
Dude, literally every creator and company attached to this "movement" has moved on. No one trusts WoTC. It's over. It didn't fall apart, it moved on.
See ya
Unless you happen to be a time traveller, you don’t actually know what will happen next. D&D is still the biggest game in town—and the only one with true name recognition beyond the TTRPG die hards. Sure, there are some other companies making a quick buck off this situation - and their doing so is probably putting more pressure on Wizards than players are. But, when the dust settles and a more palatable version is released, they’re going to have to decide if they want a slice of a petite four or from an actual cake—and we won’t know how they’ll decide until that comes to pass.
I'm talking about Piaso, Kobald Press, Mage Hand, everyone on every platform, let alone all the publishing crowd.
Nobody listens to people defending a company that seems to have lied and gaslight its community in its most recent statement.
I am not sure how you looked at a post that literally is advising folks on how best to attack Wizards in the most effective manner and decided “yeah, that’s what defending a company looks like.”
Frankly, as far as corporate apologies go, this was a good one - it addressed the concerns, promised action items, and specifically said sorry. That - particularly actual action items requested by players - is better than the usual corporate nonsense response.
Are you being serious? This was a GOOD corporate apology? They lied about what they did. They lied about their intent. They characterized it all as a misunderstanding and implied that those demanding a walk back were over-reacting. Then they announced that some things will be different (but reading what they said and OGL 1.1 showed no changes in that area. They also announced that they were listening and proceeded to ignore the biggest single issue: 30 days notice to make any change WotC feels like on a whim. Then they ended it by trying to make a trite 'we all win' statement to claim no one made them do anything and this was all part of the plan.
NOTHING in their response truly addressed the situation and they made it clear they are going to keep trying to get the onerous portions of this quietly worked into reality. I find it exceedingly strange that everyone defending them thinks that people who tried to secretly make the change, then claimed it was only a draft, and have never once stopped the lies and deceit should be trusted because of one vague statement that contained even more lies and gaslighting. Wake the heck up.
Frankly, as far as corporate apologies go, this was a good one - it addressed the concerns, promised action items, and specifically said sorry. That - particularly actual action items requested by players - is better than the usual corporate nonsense response.
Unfortunately, that same apology was also rife with half-truths, bald-faced lies, and CEO-speak. It was essentially meaningless.
It was decidedly not meaningless. Action items promised by a corporation in response to a PR disaster have weight - you can always win back the adults who were justifiably angry but not vitriolic by promising change and delivering thereon, but you will lose them forever if you backstab them.
And that’s the irony of the “this promise means nothing” crowd—they both believe Hasbro is a greedy, profit driven company, and believe that Hasbro will do the one thing that would utterly destroy profits. Corporate greed is your ally right now - it is the force that takes their words and gives them weight and meaning.
Naivete isn't our friend. Let them put their money where their mouth is and produce the fixed OGL. THEN I will trust them. But I fully expect, based on the lies and gaslighting in your supposedly perfect response, that the new OGL will potentially meet the vague statements of the response without actually resolving the issues. For example, they were careful to say they would exempt products that were already brought to market. But the wording was VERY specific. Anything that hasn't hit the market before the OGL, whether it's for 5e or One, wiill have the new rules. They are already trying to weasel this into a win in spite of the backlash.
Are you being serious? This was a GOOD corporate apology? They lied about what they did. They lied about their intent. They characterized it all as a misunderstanding and implied that those demanding a walk back were over-reacting.
I mean... yeah. I'm way closer to the 'stay and let WotC improve' crowd, but if that 'apology' is all they've got, I'll be gone too.
When I was a kid, my Mum would say to me, "Sorry means you regret it and won't do it again". Sorry doesn't mean, 'lie about it and then just keep on doing what you were doing'.
The boycott has their attention, and that drivel was their panic response. Now they need to decide if they're going to come to the table and negotiate. I know that it's not their plan, but if they keep losing subs they might. Those of us who want to keep using DND Beyond need to have our demands straight when they get here.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription January 12th 2023 because of "OGL" 1.1 - Resubscribed 28th of Jan, now the SRD is in CC-BY-4.0
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Yes that is a huge issue, and I am as well surprised it is in the doc.
I am also old enough to remember a few months ago here on D&DB the discussions about how WotC buying D&DB would not impact your home brew in any way. I think I remember people saying "your home brew is yours" and then go on to explain why they would not take your material and/or if they did they would credit you.
I can see WotC position on if people use their product to make $$$, WotC might have a royalty owed to them but the more I have read and talked to people about this the worse it seems to get.
A person said to me "Right now no one looks good at this point...." I will not repeat the rest as this is a family forum.
Hilarious that the people who invaded the hobby that was kept alive by us older players, who pissed and moaned about "gatekeeping", are now the ones telling those who don't like what is being done to them to pound sand. Gatekeep much? Congratulations, you turned into the very thing you complained about.
I am not sure "Hilarious that the people who joined the hobby and noticed that a lot of the older players are rude as hell and trying to dictate the 'right' way way to play the game (while apparently not knowing their own game's history) and told people they should not be rude in a manner that harmed the game are now the ones still telling people to not be rude in a manner that harms the game" is as cutting a retort as you seemed to think it was when you typed it out.
There is a level of consistency there--a level of trying to protect the hobby from those who put animosity over playing, who would rather attack others than build something together. There is not a transformation into "the very thing you complained about", but rather an infection of hate in this game that still does not dissipate.
I think if I got a doc like the one presented I would defiantly need more then 7 days to look at all the ins and out as well as see how I could adjust my business plan or if I could to accommodate such changes and if I needed to figure out ways to finance new expenses. But then again maybe the companies in question have this type of money just sitting their not doing anything to begin with.
I am also not a huge fan of ranting on the net but I do think there are times it can be appropriate and necessary. And I can understand people under stress not doing their best or not feeling their best.
I do think that there were potentially a lot of hands, eyes and mouths on the new doc and the fact that they generated the doc in question. I do not know if they thought it was just a start to a bargaining position as stated in places or if was a "take this or just leave" as I have seen and head from some other sources (really drought the last but then again I did not think WotC would release such a doc to begin with).
I do hope good things come of it but I do think for that to happen some pain is going to have to be felt by all sides before thing get better. That is to say people who are being way out there bomb throwers need to calm down a bit and not be so vocally abusive and name call and I do think this is just one of a number of issues WotC has had lately that make it easy for people to try other games and potentially find out they like them just as much as 5e. I unfortunately do think (I hope I am wrong) that losing a number of customers now may be a good thing for WotC in the long run.
I am confident that number number of dollars lost will be far less that 3.5 million. I would even go so far as to say that I would be shocked if it reached half that amount. What I am trying to do is illustrate how petty in size this uproar is. Even is an absolutely insane and crazy world in which every. single. one. of the people who signed the petition had a master tier subscription (which can't even be true just by the numbers), and every. single. one. of them cancelled, it would amount to a minor inconvenience to WotC. Even in this absolutely bonkers case where everyone who did as little as signing their name saying they didn't like OGL 2.0 was willing to put their money behind their words and cancel their subscription, it still is less than a third of a percent of WotC's net worth.
If anything, a better way of estimating the total loss would be in terms of ratio to people who signed their name compared to all D&D players. With 12 million D&DBeyond accounts, that means that about 0.55% of people signed the form, probably lower given that not all D&D players have a D&DBeyond account. But regardless, that is our number. There is no reason to believe that these people spend more money on D&D than the people who did not sign, so we're probably looking at, at most, a reduction in 0.55% of WotC's sales in all categories including books, subscriptions, etc if everyone boycotts. So again, not a large percentage at all. And you can't claim this time that, "oh, but there's still books and stuff," because this is simply less players=less sales.
Regarding the comment about nihilism: I would not say it is nihilistic to be strategic. Nihilism is believing that everything is pointless. I am merely evaluating the situation and realizing that, not matter how much I want OGL 1.0a back, my action is going to get it back any sooner. If they give it back to us, it will be because of high-profile people leaving, not the masses. In light of that, I am not telling anyone not to leave. I am telling people not to falsely advertise this mission as anything that is likely to succeed. I am telling people not to tell other people that if they harm themselves enough they will get OGL 1.0a back, because that is simply destructive. I acknowledge that there are times to act, but also acknowledge that sometimes we are simply outnumbers and outgunned and the best way forward is not brute force which would not only be futile but also extreme harmful. What I don't want is people telling everyone that we are facing and enemy we can defeat when it is obvious that we will loose the battle: doing so would lead to large numbers of losses, and so is not morally acceptable to me. If you want to run into a battle you are likely to loose I'm not going to stop you, but I don't want to to bring others with you if you are telling them you are likely to win.
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
This is simply not how publicly traded corporations operate. It's definitely not how modest companies grow into billion-dollar juggernauts. DND Beyond is at the cornerstone of every initiative that Hasbro/WOTC have planned for the future. They have a lot more to lose here than a few million bucks over a single year. You really think they're just going to hand-wave what's going on right now as a minor loss? No. They WANT that revenue, and most of all they want all the FUTURE, compounding revenue tied to those accounts. If you don't believe that, I don't know what else to tell you other than to reiterate: watch what they do.
Look at history my friend: Have their been major examples of corporations changing their actions to make a tiny fraction of a percent of customers more happy? Has amazon (or the other 95% of corporations for that matter) stopped relying on underpaid workers in developing countries? Have manufacturers switched to more eco friendly means of production? Has companies that rely on big data worked to find equitable solutions to the alignment problem? The answers are no, no, and no. Sure, we get headlines, but they don't show meaningful change. Just like the January 13th announcement: they do what they need to do to seem like they care, but don't fix the problem.
Time after time, we see that companies don't care about a few customers: they care about money. So until the disruption entails significant fractions of their consumer base, they go with whatever gives them the most money the fastest. So for WotC, that's owning our content. And they see this as a way to make money, so 0.55% at most of their consumer base aint going to make change.
Regarding the comment to "watch what they do": I did. After tens of thousands of people, after massive internet upheaval, after massive "protests" on these forums, we get an announcement that they meant well all along and that didn't really change anything. Why will it be different this time? They showed that their response would be to ignore and attempt to make people think they care.
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
A theory.
This Open Games License matter did not occur on an executive level but on a management/staff level.
This matter is an internal conflict between Hasbro Incorporated, Wizards of the Coast, and D&D Beyond.
Wizards of the Coast & D&D Beyond was in the process of undergoing reconstruction before all this confusion.
On youTube, there are rumors that a Wizards of the Coast staff employee violated the terms of a Non-Disclosure Agreement to all 3rd Party Partners by instead soliciting and forwarding sensitive corporate information of the Open Games License [draft] to a unknown person(s) not part of the agreement; such as a reporter, to disseminate into the online public engaging into a series of online negative 'review bombings' causing disruption and confusion amongst the D&D community; inciting an angry mob under the anonymity of the internet.
If so, this mysterious 'someone' from Wizards of the Coast or D&D Beyond did not forsee or predict that the online rage mob would commit yet another another violation due to their assistance; the General Terms & Conditions at D&D Beyond Forums threatening a Hasbro executive...by name.
Therefore, revealing the true motivation of why this Open Games License incident occurred in the first place.
This 'someone' at the management/staff level at either Wizards of the Coast or D&D Beyond attempted to sabotage a Hasbro executive's career.
This 'someone' at the management/staff level at Wizards of the Coast or D&D Beyond may be discharged from their position in a very spectacular way; as in "...will never work in this industry again..." kind of way.
It should be interesting how my 'theory' plays out in the next few weeks.
Whoever you are talking to doesn’t know what they are talking about. None of the OGL change AT ALL will affect ANYTHING not made for profit and simply home brew and given out for free.
This is what is ticking me off about the outrage at the moment, it’s largely based on assumptions and misunderstandings
Gosh, can't you present a more constructive argument? I've heard the outrage you speak of is outrage about a legal OGL 2.0 90 page fu from WoTC, contract attached, and not so much an assumption or misunderstanding. Was I wrong? imho, so I've heard.
Again, your nihilism rears it's head. There are such examples, but they're not worth mentioning here because I don't care about going off onto a tangent. What matters is that this isn't a tiny fraction of a percent of customers who are unhappy, Flayer. It's the vast majority who are following this issue. DND Beyond is just the most readily available barometer. Again... WOTC isn't just losing a few million dollars' worth of a single fiscal year's subscriptions. They are losing reliable, year to year revenue streams. More than that, they are also losing all the future additional products those customers would have purchased through their accounts, which flies in the face of the exact efforts they are making to monetize their fanbase. They have also damaged their relationships with their 3rd-party counterparts possibly beyond repair, while at the same time creating the very situation they hoped to prevent: losing market share to those counterparts.
We don't know what the financial impact of all this would be yet. Any number you or I can think of would just be a guess. But Hasbro/WOTC aren't Amazon. They aren't Coke. Not yet. Their C-suite isn't just going to ignore these issues. They can't, because all these issues have compounding effects that constitute not just financial damage, but damage to the brand.
Maybe you think different, but to me, that useless corporate statement they put out on Thursday tells me that they are in utter panic mode. What they want, more than anything, is for this to smooth over and for people to forget that this all happened so that they can go back to their original plan.
Only, like I said in a previous post, this particular customer base isn't going to forget this particular slight. WOTC now has to be very careful because the customers are in a mood, those same customers aren't getting over it, and things can get a lot, lot worse from here.
If that didn't matter to WOTC, they would have proceeded as planned already.
This is where movements fall apart.
Some people want a better OGL 2.0
Some people want no OGL 2.0, and just straight revert to 1.0a
Some people want to see an apology from management with the retraction
Some people want to see people fired
Some people will never play 5e and want to watch WotC burn
People who want 5 probably weren't subscribers to begin with, and honestly that rhetoric is unhelpful. If there's nothing WotC can do to bring you back, what motivation do they have to change at all? And if WotC is unwilling to change, this isn't a boycott - it's just a mob dancing around a fire.
As for the rest of us, we need to get on the same page. If we want WotC to change, we have to be both open to the idea that a change might bring us back and have the same demand so WotC know what they have to do.
I Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription January 12th 2023 because of "OGL" 1.1 - Resubscribed 28th of Jan, now the SRD is in CC-BY-4.0
Dude, literally every creator and company attached to this "movement" has moved on. No one trusts WoTC. It's over. It didn't fall apart, it moved on.
See ya
You're not wrong about the current player-base counts. I don't dispute that at all. But I think you have things backwards. The entire reason the original OGL was created was to save D and D. D and D was becoming irrelevant. Third parties were producing for other games and the player-base was rapidly shrinking. So WotC came up with the OGL to try to lure in thrid parties to help save D and D by creating more content and therefore luring in more players. Now your argument is that we should allow WotC to change the terms so those third parties are unprofitable, because that will save their companies? Think this through. None of them make 25% profit above all of their expenses. So taking 25% of gross means they operate at a loss unless they wildly increase pricing, which loses them sales and they become wildly unprofitable... Hmmmm, that's sort of damned if they do and damned if they don't, isn't it? I wonder if that was the point? I bet WotC can answer that question as long as they are not asked to tell the truth.
And those third parties? I bet they can tell you that unprofitable at 25% royalties for D and D is worse than selling for a different game system(or several) without the 25% loss of gross.
Unless you happen to be a time traveller, you don’t actually know what will happen next. D&D is still the biggest game in town—and the only one with true name recognition beyond the TTRPG die hards. Sure, there are some other companies making a quick buck off this situation - and their doing so is probably putting more pressure on Wizards than players are. But, when the dust settles and a more palatable version is released, they’re going to have to decide if they want a slice of a petite four or from an actual cake—and we won’t know how they’ll decide until that comes to pass.
Cool. Bye, I guess. But this isn't an airport - you didn't need to announce your departure.
But fwiw I don't trust google, and I use their search. I don't trust Samsung, but I use their phone. I don't trust the hundreds of suppliers that built this laptop. This isn't a romantic relationship, I don't have to trust the corporation I buy things from. But I do demand that they provide what I want, and what I want is a system underpinned by OGL 1.0a.
We've already established that your opinion doesn't even remotely matter: Since nothing will bring you back there's no point trying to pander to you. Meanwhile, I'm (for the moment) still here. They might keep me around if they pander to me. It would be great if those people not already out the door could get on one page, so WotC know what exactly they need to do to keep us as customers.
I Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription January 12th 2023 because of "OGL" 1.1 - Resubscribed 28th of Jan, now the SRD is in CC-BY-4.0
I'm talking about Piaso, Kobald Press, Mage Hand, everyone on every platform, let alone all the publishing crowd.
Or did you miss all their press announcements?
Are you being serious? This was a GOOD corporate apology? They lied about what they did. They lied about their intent. They characterized it all as a misunderstanding and implied that those demanding a walk back were over-reacting. Then they announced that some things will be different (but reading what they said and OGL 1.1 showed no changes in that area. They also announced that they were listening and proceeded to ignore the biggest single issue: 30 days notice to make any change WotC feels like on a whim. Then they ended it by trying to make a trite 'we all win' statement to claim no one made them do anything and this was all part of the plan.
NOTHING in their response truly addressed the situation and they made it clear they are going to keep trying to get the onerous portions of this quietly worked into reality. I find it exceedingly strange that everyone defending them thinks that people who tried to secretly make the change, then claimed it was only a draft, and have never once stopped the lies and deceit should be trusted because of one vague statement that contained even more lies and gaslighting. Wake the heck up.
Naivete isn't our friend. Let them put their money where their mouth is and produce the fixed OGL. THEN I will trust them. But I fully expect, based on the lies and gaslighting in your supposedly perfect response, that the new OGL will potentially meet the vague statements of the response without actually resolving the issues. For example, they were careful to say they would exempt products that were already brought to market. But the wording was VERY specific. Anything that hasn't hit the market before the OGL, whether it's for 5e or One, wiill have the new rules. They are already trying to weasel this into a win in spite of the backlash.
I mean... yeah. I'm way closer to the 'stay and let WotC improve' crowd, but if that 'apology' is all they've got, I'll be gone too.
When I was a kid, my Mum would say to me, "Sorry means you regret it and won't do it again". Sorry doesn't mean, 'lie about it and then just keep on doing what you were doing'.
The boycott has their attention, and that drivel was their panic response. Now they need to decide if they're going to come to the table and negotiate. I know that it's not their plan, but if they keep losing subs they might. Those of us who want to keep using DND Beyond need to have our demands straight when they get here.
I Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription January 12th 2023 because of "OGL" 1.1 - Resubscribed 28th of Jan, now the SRD is in CC-BY-4.0