WotC stated they aren't selling so this was most likely a Chinese financial company pushing stock prices for profit it my not financial expert opinion.
Actually it appears to have been a bit more farcical (yet at the same time, morbidly interesting) than that. It appears that a Chinese AI-driven news aggregator may have been to blame, picking up a speculative video from the Roll For Combat youtube channel as news.
1) Two weeks ago, Stephen makes a short speculative video (this one) along the lines of "Hasbro isn't doing so well, what if they had to sell D&D and who would buy it? I think Larian would be a good candidate since they clearly love D&D, but their pockets aren't deep enough to buy D&D outright, so they might need to convince their key stakeholder Tencent since they own 30% of Larian, and their pockets are definitely deep enough for such a valuable IP."
2) A Chinese language news aggregator called Snow Leopard, which appears to be AI-driven, was scraping the western web for content around this time. Something about RFC's video gets it on their radar - perhaps the speculative mention of Tencent - in combination with the language/keywords he uses throughout the video which makes him appear as a legitimate news source to their scraper.
3) Snow Leopard's AI publishes the article, and then it gets picked up by another Chinese language aggregator called Panda Daily. From there it quickly goes viral because slow news cycle.
4) As mentioned - slow news cycle, so the discussion around this continues to swirl until WotC feels the need to issue an official statement today. And here we are.
(Of course, it's also possible that either Stephen is uncommonly prophetic, or that someone at Hasbro saw his initial video and in less than a week opened talks with TenCent which then leaked. And of course, this whole kerfuffle might convince some suit at Hasbro to explore this as an option apropos of nothing. Stranger things have happened. But my money is on the timeline above.)
Actually it appears to have been a bit more farcical (yet at the same time, morbidly interesting) than that. It appears that a Chinese AI-driven news aggregator may have been to blame, picking up a speculative video from the Roll For Combat youtube channel as news.
Thus once again showing that real AI is nothing like our imagination. We think of AI as being a threat because it's smart, when really it's a threat because it's amazingly fast at being stupid.
Actually it appears to have been a bit more farcical (yet at the same time, morbidly interesting) than that. It appears that a Chinese AI-driven news aggregator may have been to blame, picking up a speculative video from the Roll For Combat youtube channel as news.
Thus once again showing that real AI is nothing like our imagination. We think of AI as being a threat because it's smart, when really it's a threat because it's amazingly fast at being stupid.
And humans are easily fooled by anything they want to believe.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
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Actually it appears to have been a bit more farcical (yet at the same time, morbidly interesting) than that. It appears that a Chinese AI-driven news aggregator may have been to blame, picking up a speculative video from the Roll For Combat youtube channel as news.
Per Stephen Glicker and his guest, here's the proposed timeline:
1) Two weeks ago, Stephen makes a short speculative video (this one) along the lines of "Hasbro isn't doing so well, what if they had to sell D&D and who would buy it? I think Larian would be a good candidate since they clearly love D&D, but their pockets aren't deep enough to buy D&D outright, so they might need to convince their key stakeholder Tencent since they own 30% of Larian, and their pockets are definitely deep enough for such a valuable IP."
2) A Chinese language news aggregator called Snow Leopard, which appears to be AI-driven, was scraping the western web for content around this time. Something about RFC's video gets it on their radar - perhaps the speculative mention of Tencent - in combination with the language/keywords he uses throughout the video which makes him appear as a legitimate news source to their scraper.
3) Snow Leopard's AI publishes the article, and then it gets picked up by another Chinese language aggregator called Panda Daily. From there it quickly goes viral because slow news cycle.
4) As mentioned - slow news cycle, so the discussion around this continues to swirl until WotC feels the need to issue an official statement today. And here we are.
(Of course, it's also possible that either Stephen is uncommonly prophetic, or that someone at Hasbro saw his initial video and in less than a week opened talks with TenCent which then leaked. And of course, this whole kerfuffle might convince some suit at Hasbro to explore this as an option apropos of nothing. Stranger things have happened. But my money is on the timeline above.)
Thus once again showing that real AI is nothing like our imagination. We think of AI as being a threat because it's smart, when really it's a threat because it's amazingly fast at being stupid.
And humans are easily fooled by anything they want to believe.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.