Why didn't Wizards just pull a Steam

They could've just turned DNDBeyond into Steam and allowed creators to sell their content there + add cross-functionality of their content with their website in return for a cut on all sales

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    That presumes that they want to include Valve as another middle-man in this transaction.

    I'm not saying it would be an inherently bad idea. I'm just saying that you need to come up with a reason to explain why the people operating the business end would want to consider doing it.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      OP doesn't mean "put DNDB on steam" they mean "Turn DNDB into a steam-style storefront and host"

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      moron ESL monkey. reading comprehension of a toddler.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Hey. English is a fricking stupid language and you know it.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Europoor cope

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          English is a stupid language but nothing about grammar or ambiguous phrasing confused
          >Wizards of the Coast should treat D&D Beyond like Steam, selling third party content the way Steam is a platform for games
          with
          >Wizards of the Coast should put their D&D Beyond content on Steam
          It was just one moron's moronation.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          No it’s not you fricking monkey

          I mean, it is, it honestly fricking shames me that I have to lower myself to speak this troglodyte tongue instead of proper Christian but like, you’re probably comparing it to your SEABlack person warga warga black tongue of Mordor shit in which case English definitely comes out on top.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >to speak this troglodyte tongue instead of proper Christian
            You can speak Latin?
            I've honestly always been interested in it, but only pick up bits and pieces here and there (I couldn't conjugate a verb to save my life, but I can recognize key words in some sentences and suss out a meaning). How hard it is to actually learn?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              I'm not him but I can answer. Not that hard, honestly. You just need to remember the latin declensions, and know some basic verb conjugation

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >but like
            Inshallah, you will cover your head in shame like the unclean dog you are, you like, valley girl, you clown amongst clowns.
            Go sit in the marketplace with the prostitutes and admonish your mother for not beating such phrases out of you properly.
            You will do all of this lest you lose your heathen tongue to the keen edge of my scimitar.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          English is the master tongue.
          It is the most flexible, most welcoming, most stealing mongel prostitute language of them all.
          All language is essentially a dialect of english, it just doesn't know it yet. English doesn't really adapt, it adapts other languages to its purposes. English has a universal lexicon. All nouns, regardless of origin are perfectly usable English nouns. Foreign verbs likewise have almost zero issue being bastardized and rejiggered to function in English sentences.

          Comprende? Wakaru? Djeggit?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Yes, but it's your fault for learning it!

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Sure is. But that sentence is unambiguous. You give us non native English speakers a bad name.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Dungeon Masters Guild is already a thing.

      lol, lmao even

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Are you one of my players? Because you're fricking illiterate.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Player detected

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      don't you have to have a pretty basic grasp of the english language to play these games

      Hey. English is a fricking stupid language and you know it.

      Ha Ha! Epic Post, Dude! Le Fricking Owned! English is just like, A bunch of letters in a trenchoat! xD Have reddit gold, my bro.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Are you an autist? Coz you sure took that literally

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Hello perma-player.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      CALA A BOCA MACACO

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Because they pulled an IBM already, and going back on that is bad rep

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    That would require looking at DND as a longterm investment and Hasbro/WotC have demonstrated they are only interested in creating a spike in short term profits, likely because they are desperate to increase the value of the company for when they try and get bought by Amazon.
    It's pretty hilarious that their get rich quick plans with MTG and DND have blown up in their face.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This is the key point, honestly. It's to make stock go up right now.
      But it's also worth mentioning:
      The people in charge of WotC have never played a tabletop game. Ever.
      Ever.
      Absolutely ever.

      Not a single person who was responsible for this decision has ever played D&D, much less any TTRPG.
      Not one.

      They bought it because it was popular and are trying to treat it like any other product that they own.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >and every company has demonstrated they are only interested in creating a spike in short term profits
      this is the biggest problem of our time, from videogames to cartoons, to other hobbies, the focus is so much on short term focus that these companies are burning down everything just to thicken up the bottom line in time for the next fiscal quarter

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    But anon, you can't let other people own the products they make and get a share of the money. WOTC should be able to cut out those pesky creators and sell it themselves in the Troons of Trandlemere™ limited edition triple book set for $140

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Don't forget pulling your license for being problematic.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    keep seeing shitabout jotc, what's all this shit about?

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They already do a version of this with GMs guild. That isn't what 1.1 is about. It isn't about making some money off of people using the ogl, it's about using the ogl as a weapon to crush those they wrong consider competitors

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Why didn't Wizards just pull a Steam
    they cheaped out on their software engineers and didnt make a good VTT with compelling reasons to publish content there

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They obviously didn't think. At all.
    The israelite execs haven't been using their frontal lobe for a good while now.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >in return for a cut on all sales
    You realize that trying to do this would have gained the EXACT same reaction as they're getting now, right?
    The idea that anyone should have to pay one cent to the company that owns the content these third parties are coasting off of is what's provoking this mouth-foaming outrage.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Should you have to pay money to the Tolkien estate every time you use something tangentially related to something he came up with?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        If you're selling your own novel about an adventure in the Shire or Moria or whatever then I expect they'd request a cut, yeah.
        If you don't want to do that, make up your own goddamn setting.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          And they had best be paying up a share of that to the Wagner estate.
          This line of thinking is fricking moronic and if you honestly subscribed to it you would be bleeding money to the estates of every famous dead writer in all of history because there are no original stories.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Not really, since you are basically paying money for them to host and distribute your product all of that in a centralized place like steam.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Pretty sure it's the theft people are more worked up about.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >we own D&D
        >you made a product explicitly for D&D
        >you expect us not to own this somehow
        Do you think Disney would be cool with your homemade Mickey Mouse cartoon that you were selling for profit, anon?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >you made a product explicitly for D&D
          >you expect us not to own this somehow
          They legally don't, that's the OGL.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >we own D&D
            >you made a product for D&D
            What part of this A-to-B relationship are you not understanding?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              The part where they printed an open gaming license that explicitly stated that wasn't the case.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So it was just them being cool about it. They have the right to change their minds.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And that's why people are pissed.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                They don't have the right. They made contracts with others using OGL, retroactively changing those contracts is a breach of them.
                The only reason they are even attempting this shit is not because they have the law by their side, but that they can just draw out the court cases and drown them in money while the other party bleeds out cash.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Because DND and by proxy nobody can OWN rules for a game. words with friends/wordle is just scrabble with different mechanics, you spell words.

              Creating content for a game, as long as you are not copying word for word exact things from the original works, or using notable characters, places, or areas, you can modify that criteria and use them.
              So Critical Role can use the Raven Queen in their game, but call her the Matron of Ravens, and describe them just the same, but not exactly the way she is written in DND books. They make it their work in the end.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          this midwit using the company that literally writes US copyright law as an analogy is a perfect example of why it's your moral duty as both artist and consumer to steal everything you possibly can

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          It's more like making a cartoon and Disney wanting a cut because they popularlized cartoons.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >we own D&D
          >you made a product for D&D
          What part of this A-to-B relationship are you not understanding?

          >we own Windows
          >you made a product explicitly for Windows
          >you expect us not to own this somehow
          moron

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          You cannot own rules and procedures anon. You can only own IP and expressions of rules and procedures. If anyone made a product that is compatible with DnD, they own it, full stop. That product just cannot contain a reproduction of the rules, word by word, or any IP WotC owns.

          And before you ask, why the OGL is a thing? It grants permission to reproduce the SRD and is a failsafe to tell others "hey, we won't try and sue you if you make a supplement for DnD". And if you wonder why that was even a thing, suing others for making DnD-compatible supplements was what TSR was doing, which brought them to bankruptcy.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Anon, if I make a game for the Switch should Nintendo own that game?

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Anon, and the rest of you anons; all of you need to understand something.

    Business is not about making sense. Business is not about making money.

    Business is about one thing and one thing only.

    Control.

    Control is all that matters in business. Once you understand this, all business decisions make perfect sense. Decision are not made on pleasing the customer and giving them what they want.

    To do that would cede control.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      D&D's stranglehold on the TTRPG community is a result of the OGL.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Steam controls 90% of digital video game distribution. It allowed them to turn from a game studio to a game publisher in 20 years.
      Being a system & content distributor makes them more money AND gives them more control.
      It's even more baffling they didn't do this given Hasbro's CEO has a gaming industry background.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Wasn't there a line in their about only using "their" virtual tabletop system? Sounds like a case of greedy people pushing too far.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    because instead of trying to do the smart thing and increase the brand as a whole through sharing the success in a centralized format where they get some cut off the top, and the creator can succeed also and make something out of it, creating a long standing relationship which helps both parties. They chose to take steps to stranglehold any and all competition, making a one way transactional license with the authority to terminate anyone who signed it for any reason or no reason of all at their complete discretion.
    And when someone actually does create the former, I hope they are smart, and manage to succeed all the way to the bank. Like i hear Alchemy is jumping on the migration from DND beyond, watched a vid from Nerd Immersion that seemed similar to what I thought would be a good thought for it.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Wizards has two relatively powerfull IP in MTG and DnD that they cant properly promote and monetize since both those IP rest on the notion that they contain have a versimilitude of ''world'' so to speak, each one being represented by different art direction and artist.

      So while the games of DnD and MTG as products are very present in the cultural sphere its very hard for them to properly capitalize on that. This is on top of how WOTC are phenomenally incompetent at managing said IP. I mean when was the last time you saw a cosplay of a dnd character? Mincs perhaps?. Same with MTG, do you see much cosplay of MTG character in convention appart perhaps from Chandra?

      So the only option for them IS to litteraly stranglehold the competition because they cannot compete for squat. Frick even Pathfinder's Golarion is more recognisable since Paizo made the wise choice of having a couple staple characters for each classes and STICK to them. And Wayne Reynolds style, while I hate it, does give the Pathfinder IP a very recognisable style.

      The last time DnD had something similar was during Dragonlace time where they had a couple of very good artist on their payroll and very consistent art direction across most of their product.

      They dont have any option.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >They dont have any option.
        You just outlined an option which was don't be shit.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Were talking about WOTC anon

          In fact the ''Stream'' idea would have beyond excellent since they could also have had made their popular IP such as Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Magic etc some kind of shared world and allow writers to use their setting as backdrop for their books, and then publish them.

          They also could have a section for gaming material where creators could sell their stuff (tough that would require some more logistic so i dont know.)

          You could have an OSR section

          But yeah they could have used the DnD brand to create a centralised mecca of everything Tabletop rpg related.

          But they wont first because ''not be shit'' is not in the horizon of possibilities for WOTC, but also because they now have spent every pennies out of their sympathy capital.

          This is what wokism does to a corporation.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            That is true, considering the quality of peripheral media they've been trying to/have released they're pretty fricked overall.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >This is what wokism does to a corporation.

            What on Earth does this have to do with wokism?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              There's a section dedicated "muh -isms and -phobias must be cancelled REEEEEE" in the new OGl, and they even flat out tried to use that as their excuse to fall back on with their shitty response.
              So besides corporate greed, wokism has everything to do with it.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                That was clearly a distraction, though. They put that in so that when people complained, they could say it was because they were racist. Wizards 100% doesn't give a shit about anything "woke".

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Wizards says otherwise... They cut ties with Terese Nielson because of things she was following on social media...
                Or when the face of the viking set was the black chick from Ravnica...
                How about when they banned 7 really old cards because of they were deemed "problematic"
                Invoke Prejudice
                Cleanse
                Stone-Throwing Devils
                Pradesh Gypsies
                Jihad
                Imprison
                Crusade

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >They put that in so that when people complained, they could say it was because they were racist.
                But that's exactly how woke operates.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                No anon you simmering idiot that's how corpo "woke" works, it has nothing to do with actually woke shit, it's intended to appeal to liberals not progressives

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Wizards 100% doesn't give a shit about anything "woke".
                then why do they print non binary plainswalkers?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Wizards does, Hasbro doesn't, and it looks like new OGL is a result of Hasbro.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I'm a dev who has developed tools for people to create other stuff with. This stuff takes some skill, but it's not rocket science.

            WIth how eager WotC is, they should have made the API for their VTT publically accessible. They need to create a framework for expressing D&D's rules anyway to have anything resembling an usable web interface.
            Just allow people to use that tool to create their own content and monetize it. You already need to do half the work anyway, you get to profit from third party creators and hobbyists, and you get your lock-in because the content is built for your platform.
            And most shocking of all, there would actually be some innovation in the hobby because people can hand the tedium of crunch-heavy design to a computer.

            But that would require giving a shit and actually working for your money. Can't have that antiquated mindset in 2023!

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >WIth how eager WotC is
              *With how eager WotC is to turn D&D into a video game

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You literally saw MTG cosplayers at every major event before WotC nuked live events for Arena events.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >MTG cosplayers

          Were they like dressed up as cards?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            As characters on the cards, yes.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >autist pretending like MTG doesn't have lore and characters
            we know you're very smart, anon

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Yes, but decks

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              I like it but I'm terrified what that dress cost

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Most of it looks to be basic lands, I doubt it cost more than 10 bucks for the cards it is made out of. More likely it was probably just draft chaff they or somebody they knew had laying around.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >ywn have her discard her cards for you
              Damn

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >They chose to take steps to stranglehold any and all competition, making a one way transactional license with the authority to terminate anyone who signed it for any reason or no reason of all at their complete discretion.
      The funniest part about this is that if they made D&D Beyond: Steam then they WOULD have this power, because like steam most people would just host their content on Beyond out of convenience. Especially with their VTT coming up.
      People would have entire set up campaigns they'd be hosting on Beyond.

      The more I think about it the more I'm cringing from what an absolute blunder this whole thing. The could have swept the market even harder than they already are without making anyone angry.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        These people are not in it for the long term, they're here to pump the stock price up and then try to sell the company to someone like Amazon.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          By and large Hasbro doesn't own much of Hasbro. 86.24% of the company is owned by Institutional investors, about 7% is owned by insiders.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They don't want longterm good profits. They want money RIGHT THE FRICK NOW HURRY UP AND MAKE THAT FRICKING PAYPIGGY APP AND REVOKE THE OGL NOW NOW NOW NOW is why.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    how old are you? seriously
    sometimes I feel too old for this board

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      15

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        NTA, but holy mother of frick, I feel old. You're literally half my age...

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    There are so many smarter things that Wizards could have done than what they did.

    And yet they didn't.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yo. Anyone remember back when Wizards literally said people could ignore updates to the OGL if they didn't like the new version?

    reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/10c48de/wizards_knew_this_would_happen_back_in_2004/

    Looks like all the wayback machine got nuked.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20230114234140/https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20%2Foglfaq%2F20040123f0

    All the copies of it are gone. Anybody grab a spare before it disappeared?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >All the copies of it are gone. Anybody grab a spare before it disappeared?
      It's still up:
      https://web.archive.org/web/20040307094152/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/oglfaq/20040123f

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://archive.is/RweDk

      Reminder to not use the wayback machine, it is compromised. Always promote the other alternatives so that if one folds the proof is not lost.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    qrd please. whats all this bruhaha about wizards and d&d?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      tl;dr
      wizards put out a document 20 years ago that said, as long as you don't use wizard's trademarked/copyrighted monsters/names/etc, you can use the rules for the system in whatever for free. Fast forward to now wizards is saying that actually no, they can update that liscense to make it so now everyone has to pay them a tithe, AND wizards can steal all your shit and doesn't need to compensate you AND they can delete your fan shit if its racist/sexist/homophobic This clause was 100% put in so that dumb twittards would defend this blatant greed as "DONT YOU WANNA FIGHT FASCISM?" didn't work and most egregious of all IMO, if YOUR work gets sued, wizards can step in and take the case for you, without your consent, and then charge you the fricking bill afterwards. Essentially meaning that if you get sued by someone who wants to settle for like 50 bucks, wizards can go "Oh no, actually, we're going to fight this case with our massive legal team that costs $50,000 Per hour and deliberately run out the clock to make sure that your bill ends up in the millions.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Wizards release OGL 20 years ago
        >literally say in FAQ they can't revoke it
        >Pathfinder is made and they don't revoke it (because they can't)
        >20 years of 3pp d20-derivatives and splats are made
        >Hasbro buys Wizards
        >Hasbro loses big because of Star Woke and Transformers hasn't had a good movie or series in a decade
        >Hasbro tells WOTC to make more money
        >WOTC fails to squeeze MTG players
        >WOTC then decides to revoke old OGL and create a new OGL with crazy terms like royalties and a perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, irrevocable right to use your content if you make with the new OGL
        >new OGL leaks
        >3pps start and DDB unsub movement in response
        >WOTC gets BTFO and hides behind smoke and mirrors
        >now CNBC is reporting on it

        >hasbro needs money, badly
        >WotC only really profitable part of company
        >Hasbro demands more money
        >magic gets screwed, see the magic threads or watch vids on 30th anniversary
        >D&D is planned to become a full videogame
        >spend millions on aquiring D&D Beyond and developers
        >hire bunch of developers and microsoft execs

        >tabletop has been using D&D stuff under the Open Games Licence for twenty years
        >while maybe not legally necessary, it's a best practice for D&D-like games
        >WotC creates new licence to forcibly replace the old one with

        And that licence is utterly draconian bullshit that is probably illegal on several layers:
        >retroactively forces itself onto any old OGL content
        >demands exorbitant royalties that make another paizo impossible
        >removes D&D from any other VTT
        >gives WotC complete control over any content made by it
        >forces reporting for any 3rd party content
        >forces you to cover WotC's legal bills if something *similar to* your content is involved in a dispute
        >can be revoked at will
        >WotC gets to keep your shit even after removing you
        >terms can be changed at any time by WotC and you agree to whatever they do
        >added dose of cringe corporate fluff for flavour

        The response of the community/industry was that anyone that wasn't already under NDA publicly shat on wizards, mainstream new media shat on wizards(LinusTechTips, Ars Technica, Asmongold and more), so many people unsubscribed from Beyond that the servers crashed and wizards hid the unsub button, and Paizo got so many people on their store that the webpage crashed, even before they started a 25% sale.

        thanks for the esplanation

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Wizards release OGL 20 years ago
      >literally say in FAQ they can't revoke it
      >Pathfinder is made and they don't revoke it (because they can't)
      >20 years of 3pp d20-derivatives and splats are made
      >Hasbro buys Wizards
      >Hasbro loses big because of Star Woke and Transformers hasn't had a good movie or series in a decade
      >Hasbro tells WOTC to make more money
      >WOTC fails to squeeze MTG players
      >WOTC then decides to revoke old OGL and create a new OGL with crazy terms like royalties and a perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, irrevocable right to use your content if you make with the new OGL
      >new OGL leaks
      >3pps start and DDB unsub movement in response
      >WOTC gets BTFO and hides behind smoke and mirrors
      >now CNBC is reporting on it

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >hasbro needs money, badly
      >WotC only really profitable part of company
      >Hasbro demands more money
      >magic gets screwed, see the magic threads or watch vids on 30th anniversary
      >D&D is planned to become a full videogame
      >spend millions on aquiring D&D Beyond and developers
      >hire bunch of developers and microsoft execs

      >tabletop has been using D&D stuff under the Open Games Licence for twenty years
      >while maybe not legally necessary, it's a best practice for D&D-like games
      >WotC creates new licence to forcibly replace the old one with

      And that licence is utterly draconian bullshit that is probably illegal on several layers:
      >retroactively forces itself onto any old OGL content
      >demands exorbitant royalties that make another paizo impossible
      >removes D&D from any other VTT
      >gives WotC complete control over any content made by it
      >forces reporting for any 3rd party content
      >forces you to cover WotC's legal bills if something *similar to* your content is involved in a dispute
      >can be revoked at will
      >WotC gets to keep your shit even after removing you
      >terms can be changed at any time by WotC and you agree to whatever they do
      >added dose of cringe corporate fluff for flavour

      The response of the community/industry was that anyone that wasn't already under NDA publicly shat on wizards, mainstream new media shat on wizards(LinusTechTips, Ars Technica, Asmongold and more), so many people unsubscribed from Beyond that the servers crashed and wizards hid the unsub button, and Paizo got so many people on their store that the webpage crashed, even before they started a 25% sale.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Fricking Critikal and Yong Yea are reporting on it. And I'm pretty sure both of those reported on the fricking MTG 30th anniversary fiasco too.
        Like a friggin month ago.
        This is really bad optics too, to a LOT of people now, wizards of the coast is "The company that tried to charge 1000 dollars for sixty illegal random trading cards and then tried to literally steal half of the RPG industry". This shit is going to hurt them NOW and hurt them down the line. Now people who'd be potentially interested in magic will think "Oh wait, that's the game that charged a grand for a bunch of random cards you can't use where most were crap" and if they wanna play D&D they'll think "Oh wait, that's the game where the owners tried to force a draconian policy on anyone making fan content for the game"

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          It's basically the same shit that happened to Blizzard a while ago. You loose customers through the outrage, but while a lot of them would have back eventually, they are pissed of enough to look at your nearest competitor and that will really eat your market share.
          But the real damage is in the long term via talent aquisition. Both companies were underpaying because they were passion jobs, but that doesn't fly anymore. Potential candidates have been hit with the cold hard reality that the thing they love is owned by an uncaring corporation. And anyone else will weigh up the material benefits of the job with having to fight against management and risking molestation/being seen as a molester respectively. That's gonna be expensive.
          And WotC has heavily invested into going digital. Software development has massive, massive skill gaps, hiring naive juniors just doesn#t cut it there.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            The issue with D&D in particular is that the next biggest competitor is... Literally just D&D but with a few changes. It's not like WoW where any other MMO is a quite different experience and you'll have to relearn a lot, with D&D to pathfinder, you have like 50-75% of the games rules being essentially IDENTICAL
            Paizo is also objectively winning on the vidya department too.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >And that licence is utterly draconian bullshit that is probably illegal on several layers:

        The irony is that the original OGL was probably illegal too, but no one much cared since it was basically Wizards pinky-promising that they wouldn't sue people.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        demands more money
        hasbro never managing to capitalize properly on the horse show to make billions for years on end will never not be amusing

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Why didn't Wizards do X much smarter business move?
    Because the people in charge don't actually understand the economic or social model of RPGs, or the history of the OGL, or basically anything about the product they're in charge of, they're mindless bean counters who can't see anything that doesn't appear on the balance sheet.

    Even a scumbag psycho butthole wanting to prevent a Path5er would have just de-authorized 1.0a and put out 1.0b that's similar terms but only includes the 6e SRD.

    Or created a 1.1 that has the "we can change this with thirty days warning" clause but also is bundled with all the extra spells, backgrounds, monsters, etc that aren't in the 1.0a, and when you signed it you agreed not to use 1.0a going forward, and then at some point changed the terms to force 3pp to give them royalties/free terminations/etc as a boiling-the-frog game.

    But the people in charge don't understand the industry even slightly so they just went with the moronic draconian measures right out the gate and fricked themselves.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I'm glad they did. This has been very fun to watch over the past few weeks.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Oh, yeah, it's good for sure. "Good always wins because evil is stupid."

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This is what they want with the OGL changes and their big push for One D&D.

    And just like 4E its going to probably nearly kill D&D as a brand because the only way to make a digital version of D&D remotely enticing is to make the mechanics of the game so bloated that only a computer can do the simulations without it breaking due to annoying to track combat math

    The problem is we already saw how this is going to play out with 4E, where imagination is stifled and mechanics are king, and thus no one wants to fricking play it when they could just go play a MMORPG

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >the only way to make a digital version of D&D remotely enticing is to make the mechanics of the game so bloated that only a computer can do the simulations without it breaking due to annoying to track combat math
      Even then, I'd rather keep an excel sheet open instead of paying to play offline online.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >And just like 4E its going to probably nearly kill D&D as a brand
      According to Mearls 4e outsold 3.5, and the only time Pathfinder ever outsold 4e was when 4e stopped making content for an entire year, and even then it was an uphill struggle that ended as soon as 4e put out another book.

      There's enough problems with 4e that you don't have to invent new ones or regurgitate old memes.

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    That's called DMsguild

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Why didn't Wizards just pull a Steam
    Because that would require forward thinking.
    Corporations aren't about forward thinking, they are about PROFIT -NOW-

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Mostly because there's a wide gulf between the two. Only thing they could do is take relatively large name DMs Guild things, maybe hash out some shit with Kobold Press, Legendary Games and Onyx Path to put their stuff on Beyond, but that's about it, all it really is is an online way to get their books (in some cases a half a year after it was sold in stores ala Monsters of the Multiverse). The current thing of you can buy the book or the parts you want and/or the whole book (found out that you get some of the whole price discounted when you do that) is a holdover from way back when DNDBeyond was basically a big name fan app.

    I think gays forgot that DDB has only been owned by WotC for like 7 months.

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Same reason Netflix, nor Hulu, nor any current streaming service doesn't essentially do the same fricking thing: they want all of the money NOW NOW NOW and if they don't GET

    ALLLLLLLL

    OF

    THE

    MONEY

    Then they are a failure of a company and their investors will leave them for some other fricking investment "opportunity" where they'll pump money in for a few months until THAT company doesn't get

    ALLLLLLLL

    OF

    THE

    MONEY

    Either.

    In short: doing that would take effort and time. Being greedy scumfricks doesn't.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      It's slash and burn investment technique. Unless your company is literally too big to fail, they WILL run your company into the ground no matter how big it is to get an extra .0000000001 cent in stock value today instead of waiting for the 60 grand in dividends they'll get every three months for the next year.
      And honestly the bar for "Too big to fail" is starting to look like an impossible value considering that there's a chance these people may have led fricking DISNEY into a crisis over the next few years. Thanks Iger. You should've never repalced Eisner.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Rumor has it that Disney was hot extremely hard in the FTX collapse. Which is why they ousted Chapek and brought Iger back. It's definitely "big if true" territory, but I could see it.

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's what they're trying to do but everyone flipped out over nothing.

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Because steam is the way it is purely because Gaben has a philosophy around consumer friendliness. He's a libertarian who believes the winningest method is to provide the consumer with the best value for the time and money and since Valve is a market leader he can tell the publishers and devs to get bent and pay the extra cash so that consumers continue to use steam.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Plus it's two entirely different things.
      Each book for DNDBeyond would have to be programmed in by the DNDBeyond team, and they can be fricking incompetent.
      It's why back when it was still Wikia and independent, You had IIRC a full Unearthed Arcana release mere weeks before the next one came out for what would eventually become Fizban's dragonborn and the MotM Kobolds.
      Plus Wizards has only owned it since May 22, 2022, so they're still having to work with a half decade of spaghetti code that they can't shut down.

  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    That would hardly be any better.
    Frick Steam.
    One Steam is more than enough.

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    the comparison to Valve Steam service seems, how would I say, ironic. I've been looking for parallels to this and one I am thinking of is when Valve tried charging for mods of games. Bad actors immediately started uploading mods claiming them as their own while ordering others to take theirs down. In essence I think this is what DnD gays are afraid of, aside from the blatant corporate crash grab by secretly extending their license to gain more money and control over the IP.

    Another example could be like Disney buying Star Wars. Amongst other things, Disney disavowing the expanded universe that fans and other companies have been extending for ~40 years caused a great deal of rage for people devoting their lives to these stories, not to mention the shear lack of creative ambition to adopt at least all the good ideas and best sellers from the expanded universe to make new movies tacitly based on them. No instead Disney flat out ditched the expanded universe simply because THEY didn't want to pay the royalties. Now star wars fans are locked out of content they themselves spent years adding to and refining.

    Then one more example would be like Star Trek, where people wanted to make fan films and recreated to original series and Paramount was like "not uh".

    The fact that WotC tried to pull this on people who are intense rule gays and like to read makes this even more kek worthy.

  27. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    That would require effort and money spent, is my guess. Just charging other products for existing is free.

  28. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Being greedy doesnt necessarily mean you´re also smart about it.

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