Wizards are doing something that very few corporations do, listening to the consumer and working to make up for the mistake with real action. Yes they made a big mistake, but, unless someone is a shareholder they have no right to demand anyone is sacked, mainly because they don't know who it was that came up with the initial idea and then got it signed off on. people also don't know what internal actions are going to take place over this. Assuming this was all an idea from a C suite level shows a simplistic view of how organisations like this operate. This idea will have been signed off at a C suite level, probably, but it would have come from lower down the chain and been presented to the C suite as not a big deal it won't cause any issues. If you think a C suite employee was making the 1.1 OGL, or coming up with the wording of it.
I agree up to this point. While Wizards is correcting course, I still don't think it was because of consumers. It did this the morning after a hedge fund went on a public tirade about the executives of the company. This is Alta Fox, they own 2.5% of Hasbro, or about $200,000,000 in shares of the company. They also were the ones last year trying to put some people on the board after the misdirection Hasbro took under Cocks with MTG. If you look into the likes, it's not just D&D fans either, there are other investment companies who were liking this.
The timing, in my opinion, suggest that it was the fact that the investors were looking at the CEO and other executives directly responsible for the decision that got them to reverse course, not our responses. Now to be fair, the hedge fund itself was looking at the community, and Conner Haley is an avid player of MTG and D&D from what I've gathered looking into it. So we could say this is one very "invested" fan throwing his weight around, and not for the first time. But considering how other investment funds, the WSJ, and Motley Fool are reacting, they are not alone.
This is why I'm giving it time. Consumers may be satisfied, but this is the second time the current leadership at Hasbro and Wizards damaged brands and IP in terms of value. The investors should not take that lying down and it doesn't look like they will. Sating them with layoffs isn't going to work in the long run either.
This forum is one of the unfriendliest, reactionary hellholes I've ever encountered, and I remember the sort of catastrophically awful forum communities we had in the 90s.
Nah, the late 1990's was way worse. Back then it wasn't illegal to pretend to be another person - or find out their real name and prank them at work IRL, or their spouse or whatever.
All that's illegal now but man, before it became illegal and before forums got savvy to that stuff discussion forums in the 1990's were 1,000 times worse than this. This is pretty tame and polite by comparison.
If you want to hire a lawyer to argue every word of every clause, go ahead.
We won.
Demanding that actual humans lose their job, lose their ability to provide for their families, is not just stupid, it's cruel. It's vengeance.
We, the D&D community, should be better than that. This is a GAME. You don't get to exact vengeance over a GAME. You don't get to take food off a child's plate over a GAME. You don't get to evict families from their homes over a GAME. You don't get blood! That's not who we are!
It's over. We won. Let's all just get back to playing a game.
If you want to hire a lawyer to argue every word of every clause, go ahead.
We won.
Demanding that actual humans lose their job, lose their ability to provide for their families, is not just stupid, it's cruel. It's vengeance.
We, the D&D community, should be better than that. This is a GAME. You don't get to exact vengeance over a GAME. You don't get to take food off a child's plate over a GAME. You don't get to evict families from their homes over a GAME. You don't get blood! That's not who we are!
It's over. We won. Let's all just get back to playing a game.
It's not about vengeance, it's about accountability. If I made decisions that cost my company hundreds of thousands of dollars and irreparably damaged our brand and public image I'd 110% lose my job - and I would deserve to. Why should WOTC executives be able to make such decisions and then just carry on performing jobs they are clearly not suited for? All that does is keep the community in fear that something like this can happen again at any time. That's not even in WOTC's best interest. Nobody's talking about mass firings of low-level employees. It's the leadership that needs to change. The kind of people who throw around our yearly salaries as pocket change. None of them will struggle to provide for their families if they lose their jobs over this, and if they do, that's their own poor financial management - which just goes to further prove they shouldn't have been in those positions in the first place.
It's not about vengeance, it's about accountability. If I made decisions that cost my company hundreds of thousands of dollars and irreparably damaged our brand and public image I'd 110% lose my job - and I would deserve to. Why should WOTC executives be able to make such decisions and then just carry on performing jobs they are clearly not suited for?
That's a matter for the company and their managers, not something to be decided by a howling mob.
We got more than we wanted. What's nice is now we can see who actually cared about 3rd party folk, and who just wanted blood.
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
It's not about vengeance, it's about accountability. If I made decisions that cost my company hundreds of thousands of dollars and irreparably damaged our brand and public image I'd 110% lose my job - and I would deserve to. Why should WOTC executives be able to make such decisions and then just carry on performing jobs they are clearly not suited for?
That's a matter for the company and their managers, not something to be decided by a howling mob.
We got more than we wanted. What's nice is now we can see who actually cared about 3rd party folk, and who just wanted blood.
I think this is pretty accurate. There's a fine line between "this is what we want" and "someone has to pay for making us say that"
In a business sense, I do agree that those who put forth this idea and caused this whole crapstorm should be punished, but its not really my call to make. There's plenty of investor calls, board meetings and all that fun capitalist bureaucracy that can handle that if they feel the need to.
Our job is to vote with our dollar and make our voices heard. We did that, and they responded in a way that's not perfectly ideal, but acceptable. As of now, the best thing we can do is remain vigilante.
These things take time. If the C-suite people behind this get punished then we won't directly hear about it if they have an option to keep it quiet due to how damaging it is to the company's reputation.
Yes, if it were up to me (and I had accurate information as to who was responsible for this mess up) I'd have them pack their stuff and leave the company with as much dignity as I could afford them (remember the human). But it ain't up to me. It's up to the board and the shareholders ultimately, and I believe they'll want to punish those who risked the brand independently of "our" wishes, but again, that will take time and we are unlikely to hear about it.
So yeah, I'm for returning to some semblance of normalcy as I'm more or less satisfied for now.
If you want to hire a lawyer to argue every word of every clause, go ahead.
We won.
Demanding that actual humans lose their job, lose their ability to provide for their families, is not just stupid, it's cruel. It's vengeance.
We, the D&D community, should be better than that. This is a GAME. You don't get to exact vengeance over a GAME. You don't get to take food off a child's plate over a GAME. You don't get to evict families from their homes over a GAME. You don't get blood! That's not who we are!
It's over. We won. Let's all just get back to playing a game.
It's not about vengeance, it's about accountability. If I made decisions that cost my company hundreds of thousands of dollars and irreparably damaged our brand and public image I'd 110% lose my job - and I would deserve to. Why should WOTC executives be able to make such decisions and then just carry on performing jobs they are clearly not suited for? All that does is keep the community in fear that something like this can happen again at any time. That's not even in WOTC's best interest. Nobody's talking about mass firings of low-level employees. It's the leadership that needs to change. The kind of people who throw around our yearly salaries as pocket change. None of them will struggle to provide for their families if they lose their jobs over this, and if they do, that's their own poor financial management - which just goes to further prove they shouldn't have been in those positions in the first place.
You are assuming that a senior manager or director sat down and came up with this, I imagine that is mikes from the truth. Someone in a Department would have been working on this idea, that person may not be earning a great salary, they may also not be involved in any way shape or form with playing DnD, or have any idea of the community. They might have been in the legal department, they would probably have then seen that idea run past marketing, sales or other department heads and, eventually, it would have reached to the level It needed to to be signed off, but by that point the person signing it off (possibly C suite), will have assumed all the due diligence and research has been carried out.
So saying you want dismissal at C level probably doesn’t actually get rid of the cause of the issue.
Many have spent literallyweeks insisting that the careers and the wellbeings of independents hired by smaller publishers should have been subject to the whims of self-righteous mobs who believe pointing their fingers at others magically absolves they themselves of whatever the sin may be. Some of us pushed back against how utterly lacking in any room for nuance, impartiality, and empathy that would be. And we won.
But now we are being asked to think of those poor filthy rich executives at Wizards of the Coast?
Talk about hypocrisy.
No some of us are saying that maybe, how the internal process in a company works, is not down to the beating mob. We don’t know who or how this idea got as far as it did without anyone internally calling out the potential, or if someone did and was not heard. Wizards made the change, unless your a share holder then no you don’t get to Insist on your pound of flesh because that is not how companies could ever operate.
These things take time. If the C-suite people behind this get punished then we won't directly hear about it if they have an option to keep it quiet due to how damaging it is to the company's reputation.
Yes, if it were up to me (and I had accurate information as to who was responsible for this mess up) I'd have them pack their stuff and leave the company with as much dignity as I could afford them (remember the human). But it ain't up to me. It's up to the board and the shareholders ultimately, and I believe they'll want to punish those who risked the brand independently of "our" wishes, but again, that will take time and we are unlikely to hear about it.
So yeah, I'm for returning to some semblance of normalcy as I'm more or less satisfied for now.
I lean more and more to there being a breakdown in internal process here as opposed to an individual making the mistake. The OGL and the plans for it must have passed multiple desks and been seen by multiple eyes, all of whom should have been able to call out issues if they were spotted or considered. Possibly the company got into group think, no one calling out the obvious, or possibly there where talented people who could see the problems and either didn’t speak up, or where not heard.
In that situation firing people rarely solves the underlying problems, so my hope is not that people get fired, but that Wizards carry out an internal review and take and apply the learnings from that. We won’t know if they have or have not followed that process (5 why’s would be a perfect thing here). Unless it is called out by shareholders at the next shareholder meeting.
Many have spent literallyweeks insisting that the careers and the wellbeings of independents hired by smaller publishers should have been subject to the whims of self-righteous mobs who believe pointing their fingers at others magically absolves they themselves of whatever the sin may be. Some of us pushed back against how utterly lacking in any room for nuance, impartiality, and empathy that would be. And we won.
But now we are being asked to think of those poor filthy rich executives at Wizards of the Coast?
Talk about hypocrisy.
No some of us are saying that maybe, how the internal process in a company works, is not down to the beating mob. We don’t know who or how this idea got as far as it did without anyone internally calling out the potential, or if someone did and was not heard. Wizards made the change, unless your a share holder then no you don’t get to Insist on your pound of flesh because that is not how companies could ever operate.
The same logic could be afforded to any company that implements policies that are a detriment to the environment. Or to anything, for that matter. Because we don't know who was personally responsible and aren't shareholders ourselves we're supposed to just shrug and move on? Listen to yourself, please.
The main point stands: People asked us to not care about the careers and the wellbeings of others. They were demanding pounds of flesh. From anyone who succumbed to the whims of self-righteous mobs, whether or not it was even deserved.
Now they get to beseech us?
Yes, because we're not morally bankrupt. While it's satisfying making an example out of some C-suite, that's ultimately a pointless witch hunt. Someone will just be "taking the fall" and merrily move along.
And morally, it's disgusting to play judge and jury when you have no idea of what's actually going on aside from a gut feeling and some "he said, she said". It goes against what I value in a law-abiding society. If you want to mess with that, I'll be your enemy even if I'm defending a garbage top level executive.
I don't understand the people who tell us to shut up and stop asking for someone at Hasbro/WotC to be fire, or who say that isn't our "right".
There is nothing that obligates us to stay silent on this. We are allowed to have an opinion on whether or not someone should be fired, and to express that opinion. We have been asking that Chris Cao and/or Cynthia Williams be held accountable within WotC for the decisions made, because they are the ones either responsible for the making the decision, or are none-the-less responsible for putting the decision into practice.
Chris Cao was hired from Microsoft specifically because of his work on video games and digital platforms. Cynthia Williams was also hired from Microsoft. They almost certainly don't understand the community, and they also almost certainly don't care. They were hired to make profit for shareholders, nothing else. They don't care how they do it, just that it gets done.
I am within my rights to express the opinion that WotC/Hasbro management should hold them accountable, or that they should lose their jobs. Hasbro/WotC doesn't have to listen to me (and obviously won't) and if they were fired, believe me, they are already rich enough that they aren't going to go hungry, and they'll end up with a new job in a matter of months.
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?
It's not about vengeance, it's about accountability. If I made decisions that cost my company hundreds of thousands of dollars and irreparably damaged our brand and public image I'd 110% lose my job - and I would deserve to. Why should WOTC executives be able to make such decisions and then just carry on performing jobs they are clearly not suited for?
That's a matter for the company and their managers, not something to be decided by a howling mob.
We got more than we wanted. What's nice is now we can see who actually cared about 3rd party folk, and who just wanted blood.
1. Please don't refer to us as a "howling mob." We are being perfectly civil and rational. Nobody "wants blood", but we want to make sure that the game and community that we just protected won't be threatened like this ever again, and a changeup in the leadership would send a clear message about that. Disparaging those who have a different opinion than you is not only insulting, but not at all productive to the discourse we are trying to have here.
2. It is a matter for the company to decide, but company's generally take actions according to what their customers/the market demands (although this assumes informed and competent management). They can choose to leave these people in charge, and members of the community can choose to find other systems to play and not give another cent to WOTC. If they value their leadership more than their profits, that's their decision to make.
3. Someone mentioned that these decisions were likely not made by the head honchos that have been specifically called out by name here, but by lower level employees who passed their ideas upward. There is a strong possibility that this is the case. But, as a manager/boss, if you sign off on an employee's idea, you accept the responsibility for it. You can get some of the credit for approving it if things go well, and if they don't... you're the one to blame. That's the risk of being in a position like that. The thing is, even if this were the case changing the leadership would still protect the community, provided the new leadership knows better than to follow through with such schemes in the future.
Many have spent literallyweeks insisting that the careers and the wellbeings of independents hired by smaller publishers should have been subject to the whims of self-righteous mobs who believe pointing their fingers at others magically absolves they themselves of whatever the sin may be. Some of us pushed back against how utterly lacking in any room for nuance, impartiality, and empathy that would be. And we won.
But now we are being asked to think of those poor filthy rich executives at Wizards of the Coast?
Talk about hypocrisy.
No some of us are saying that maybe, how the internal process in a company works, is not down to the beating mob. We don’t know who or how this idea got as far as it did without anyone internally calling out the potential, or if someone did and was not heard. Wizards made the change, unless your a share holder then no you don’t get to Insist on your pound of flesh because that is not how companies could ever operate.
The same logic could be afforded to any company that implements policies that are a detriment to the environment. Or to anything, for that matter. Because we don't know who was personally responsible and aren't shareholders ourselves we're supposed to just shrug and move on? Listen to yourself, please.
The main point stands: People asked us to not care about the careers and the wellbeings of others. They were demanding pounds of flesh. From anyone who succumbed to the whims of self-righteous mobs, whether or not it was even deserved.
Now they get to beseech us?
Companies inact policies like that and have done in the past and the public have not gone after the CEO in the same way some on this forum are.
At the end of the day let’s keep a bit of perspective here, no one died, Wizards made a mistake and I don’t feel the mistake was trying to update the OGL. There was an error in communication and process. Instead of involving the community from day 1 (and by this I mean 3rd party creators, not normal DMs or players), spending real time explaining what they saw as the issues and working with 3rd party creators collectively on an improved OGL to take into account the technology of the 2020’s and beyond, they went out and did it backwards presenting an OGL which was unfit for the rest of the 3rd party creators.
Now yes that caused a big issue in terms of the community, but, in the grand scheme of things in 6 months time I will be interested to see how many players and DMs actually go elsewhere permanently.
In business I have had several great managers at all levels who have very much lived by the idea that you will make mistakes and get things wrong. But in a good business you don’t knee jerk get rid of people, you look to see that the lesson has been learnt and applied.
Staff at either Wizards or Hasbro made a mistake, regardless of the root cause they have publicly acknowledged it and gone above and beyond what many were asking for to fix it. The company held its hands up and rectified the issue. Now let’s wait and see if there is any real long term impact, or if in 3-6 months time DnD beyond numbers have returned to normal and sales are back where they should be.
Many have spent literallyweeks insisting that the careers and the wellbeings of independents hired by smaller publishers should have been subject to the whims of self-righteous mobs who believe pointing their fingers at others magically absolves they themselves of whatever the sin may be. Some of us pushed back against how utterly lacking in any room for nuance, impartiality, and empathy that would be. And we won.
But now we are being asked to think of those poor filthy rich executives at Wizards of the Coast?
Talk about hypocrisy.
No some of us are saying that maybe, how the internal process in a company works, is not down to the beating mob. We don’t know who or how this idea got as far as it did without anyone internally calling out the potential, or if someone did and was not heard. Wizards made the change, unless your a share holder then no you don’t get to Insist on your pound of flesh because that is not how companies could ever operate.
The same logic could be afforded to any company that implements policies that are a detriment to the environment. Or to anything, for that matter. Because we don't know who was personally responsible and aren't shareholders ourselves we're supposed to just shrug and move on? Listen to yourself, please.
The main point stands: People asked us to not care about the careers and the wellbeings of others. They were demanding pounds of flesh. From anyone who succumbed to the whims of self-righteous mobs, whether or not it was even deserved.
Now they get to beseech us?
Yes, because we're not morally bankrupt. While it's satisfying making an example out of some C-suite, that's ultimately a pointless witch hunt. Someone will just be "taking the fall" and merrily move along.
And morally, it's disgusting to play judge and jury when you have no idea of what's actually going on aside from a gut feeling and some "he said, she said". It goes against what I value in a law-abiding society. If you want to mess with that, I'll be your enemy even if I'm defending a garbage top level executive.
How does it go against the principles of "a law-abiding society" for a company to let go of those whose decisions cost them plenty of goodwill and, with it, plenty of gold? That's smart business.
Witch-hunts? Are you forgetting that much of the pushback against the OGL was because of a clause that would have encouraged precisely that? I'm sorry but I have no sympathy for those who would seek to destroy others based on hearsay, misrepresentation, or oversimplification. I've spent my whole life having to put up with the sanctimonious and the "divinely-appointed" and I ain't about to give a toss if they are thrown from their towers.
The law was not broken, and, we can’t say that the long term impact will be monumental. Wizards will, I imagine, take the long view and wait to see how things look at year end before firing anyone at a C suite level.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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I agree up to this point. While Wizards is correcting course, I still don't think it was because of consumers. It did this the morning after a hedge fund went on a public tirade about the executives of the company. This is Alta Fox, they own 2.5% of Hasbro, or about $200,000,000 in shares of the company. They also were the ones last year trying to put some people on the board after the misdirection Hasbro took under Cocks with MTG. If you look into the likes, it's not just D&D fans either, there are other investment companies who were liking this.
The timing, in my opinion, suggest that it was the fact that the investors were looking at the CEO and other executives directly responsible for the decision that got them to reverse course, not our responses. Now to be fair, the hedge fund itself was looking at the community, and Conner Haley is an avid player of MTG and D&D from what I've gathered looking into it. So we could say this is one very "invested" fan throwing his weight around, and not for the first time. But considering how other investment funds, the WSJ, and Motley Fool are reacting, they are not alone.
This is why I'm giving it time. Consumers may be satisfied, but this is the second time the current leadership at Hasbro and Wizards damaged brands and IP in terms of value. The investors should not take that lying down and it doesn't look like they will. Sating them with layoffs isn't going to work in the long run either.
Nah, the late 1990's was way worse. Back then it wasn't illegal to pretend to be another person - or find out their real name and prank them at work IRL, or their spouse or whatever.
All that's illegal now but man, before it became illegal and before forums got savvy to that stuff discussion forums in the 1990's were 1,000 times worse than this. This is pretty tame and polite by comparison.
Stop.
It's over.
Stop responding with more hate. You won. You got what you wanted. You don't get a pound of flesh, though.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
You don't get to have a pound of flesh. Drop it.
If you want to hire a lawyer to argue every word of every clause, go ahead.
We won.
Demanding that actual humans lose their job, lose their ability to provide for their families, is not just stupid, it's cruel. It's vengeance.
We, the D&D community, should be better than that. This is a GAME. You don't get to exact vengeance over a GAME. You don't get to take food off a child's plate over a GAME. You don't get to evict families from their homes over a GAME. You don't get blood! That's not who we are!
It's over. We won. Let's all just get back to playing a game.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
They'll get fired with $10mil severance packages only after they run out of workers to layoff.
I can't wait for the next investor announcement where the CEO says; "We got great traction on social media this quarter... moving on"
It's not about vengeance, it's about accountability. If I made decisions that cost my company hundreds of thousands of dollars and irreparably damaged our brand and public image I'd 110% lose my job - and I would deserve to. Why should WOTC executives be able to make such decisions and then just carry on performing jobs they are clearly not suited for? All that does is keep the community in fear that something like this can happen again at any time. That's not even in WOTC's best interest. Nobody's talking about mass firings of low-level employees. It's the leadership that needs to change. The kind of people who throw around our yearly salaries as pocket change. None of them will struggle to provide for their families if they lose their jobs over this, and if they do, that's their own poor financial management - which just goes to further prove they shouldn't have been in those positions in the first place.
That's a matter for the company and their managers, not something to be decided by a howling mob.
We got more than we wanted. What's nice is now we can see who actually cared about 3rd party folk, and who just wanted blood.
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
It's in creative commons. It's more open now.
If you'd like help understanding what the original issue was and why the OGL is irrelevant now, I'd be happy to help.
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 think this is pretty accurate. There's a fine line between "this is what we want" and "someone has to pay for making us say that"
In a business sense, I do agree that those who put forth this idea and caused this whole crapstorm should be punished, but its not really my call to make. There's plenty of investor calls, board meetings and all that fun capitalist bureaucracy that can handle that if they feel the need to.
Our job is to vote with our dollar and make our voices heard. We did that, and they responded in a way that's not perfectly ideal, but acceptable. As of now, the best thing we can do is remain vigilante.
These things take time. If the C-suite people behind this get punished then we won't directly hear about it if they have an option to keep it quiet due to how damaging it is to the company's reputation.
Yes, if it were up to me (and I had accurate information as to who was responsible for this mess up) I'd have them pack their stuff and leave the company with as much dignity as I could afford them (remember the human). But it ain't up to me. It's up to the board and the shareholders ultimately, and I believe they'll want to punish those who risked the brand independently of "our" wishes, but again, that will take time and we are unlikely to hear about it.
So yeah, I'm for returning to some semblance of normalcy as I'm more or less satisfied for now.
You are assuming that a senior manager or director sat down and came up with this, I imagine that is mikes from the truth. Someone in a Department would have been working on this idea, that person may not be earning a great salary, they may also not be involved in any way shape or form with playing DnD, or have any idea of the community. They might have been in the legal department, they would probably have then seen that idea run past marketing, sales or other department heads and, eventually, it would have reached to the level It needed to to be signed off, but by that point the person signing it off (possibly C suite), will have assumed all the due diligence and research has been carried out.
So saying you want dismissal at C level probably doesn’t actually get rid of the cause of the issue.
No some of us are saying that maybe, how the internal process in a company works, is not down to the beating mob. We don’t know who or how this idea got as far as it did without anyone internally calling out the potential, or if someone did and was not heard. Wizards made the change, unless your a share holder then no you don’t get to Insist on your pound of flesh because that is not how companies could ever operate.
I lean more and more to there being a breakdown in internal process here as opposed to an individual making the mistake. The OGL and the plans for it must have passed multiple desks and been seen by multiple eyes, all of whom should have been able to call out issues if they were spotted or considered. Possibly the company got into group think, no one calling out the obvious, or possibly there where talented people who could see the problems and either didn’t speak up, or where not heard.
In that situation firing people rarely solves the underlying problems, so my hope is not that people get fired, but that Wizards carry out an internal review and take and apply the learnings from that. We won’t know if they have or have not followed that process (5 why’s would be a perfect thing here). Unless it is called out by shareholders at the next shareholder meeting.
Yes, because we're not morally bankrupt. While it's satisfying making an example out of some C-suite, that's ultimately a pointless witch hunt. Someone will just be "taking the fall" and merrily move along.
And morally, it's disgusting to play judge and jury when you have no idea of what's actually going on aside from a gut feeling and some "he said, she said". It goes against what I value in a law-abiding society. If you want to mess with that, I'll be your enemy even if I'm defending a garbage top level executive.
I don't understand the people who tell us to shut up and stop asking for someone at Hasbro/WotC to be fire, or who say that isn't our "right".
There is nothing that obligates us to stay silent on this. We are allowed to have an opinion on whether or not someone should be fired, and to express that opinion. We have been asking that Chris Cao and/or Cynthia Williams be held accountable within WotC for the decisions made, because they are the ones either responsible for the making the decision, or are none-the-less responsible for putting the decision into practice.
Chris Cao was hired from Microsoft specifically because of his work on video games and digital platforms. Cynthia Williams was also hired from Microsoft. They almost certainly don't understand the community, and they also almost certainly don't care. They were hired to make profit for shareholders, nothing else. They don't care how they do it, just that it gets done.
I am within my rights to express the opinion that WotC/Hasbro management should hold them accountable, or that they should lose their jobs. Hasbro/WotC doesn't have to listen to me (and obviously won't) and if they were fired, believe me, they are already rich enough that they aren't going to go hungry, and they'll end up with a new job in a matter of months.
"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?
I completely agree they should both be cleaning out their desks because the damage they have done to this brand and our community is just too bad.
1. Please don't refer to us as a "howling mob." We are being perfectly civil and rational. Nobody "wants blood", but we want to make sure that the game and community that we just protected won't be threatened like this ever again, and a changeup in the leadership would send a clear message about that. Disparaging those who have a different opinion than you is not only insulting, but not at all productive to the discourse we are trying to have here.
2. It is a matter for the company to decide, but company's generally take actions according to what their customers/the market demands (although this assumes informed and competent management). They can choose to leave these people in charge, and members of the community can choose to find other systems to play and not give another cent to WOTC. If they value their leadership more than their profits, that's their decision to make.
3. Someone mentioned that these decisions were likely not made by the head honchos that have been specifically called out by name here, but by lower level employees who passed their ideas upward. There is a strong possibility that this is the case. But, as a manager/boss, if you sign off on an employee's idea, you accept the responsibility for it. You can get some of the credit for approving it if things go well, and if they don't... you're the one to blame. That's the risk of being in a position like that. The thing is, even if this were the case changing the leadership would still protect the community, provided the new leadership knows better than to follow through with such schemes in the future.
Have you read CC-BY-4.0?
Companies inact policies like that and have done in the past and the public have not gone after the CEO in the same way some on this forum are.
At the end of the day let’s keep a bit of perspective here, no one died, Wizards made a mistake and I don’t feel the mistake was trying to update the OGL. There was an error in communication and process. Instead of involving the community from day 1 (and by this I mean 3rd party creators, not normal DMs or players), spending real time explaining what they saw as the issues and working with 3rd party creators collectively on an improved OGL to take into account the technology of the 2020’s and beyond, they went out and did it backwards presenting an OGL which was unfit for the rest of the 3rd party creators.
Now yes that caused a big issue in terms of the community, but, in the grand scheme of things in 6 months time I will be interested to see how many players and DMs actually go elsewhere permanently.
In business I have had several great managers at all levels who have very much lived by the idea that you will make mistakes and get things wrong. But in a good business you don’t knee jerk get rid of people, you look to see that the lesson has been learnt and applied.
Staff at either Wizards or Hasbro made a mistake, regardless of the root cause they have publicly acknowledged it and gone above and beyond what many were asking for to fix it. The company held its hands up and rectified the issue. Now let’s wait and see if there is any real long term impact, or if in 3-6 months time DnD beyond numbers have returned to normal and sales are back where they should be.
The law was not broken, and, we can’t say that the long term impact will be monumental. Wizards will, I imagine, take the long view and wait to see how things look at year end before firing anyone at a C suite level.