Warning for Hasbro Shareholders
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
- If you have shares in Hasbro, and you haven't heard about the huge mistake Hasbro's subsidiary Wizards of the Coast is about to make with their Dungeons & Dragons product line, you need to watch this video. It's not too late to stop your stock from plummeting.
#OGL1.1 #onednd #openDnD #dnd5e
#dnd #ttrpg #osr
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Dungeons & Dragons is a hobby franchise. Current Wizards of the Coast leadership is not treating D&D as a hobby franchise. Current WotC leadership do not understand their products, their customers, the business model of D&D before the OGL, or the business model of D&D after the OGL. They are not competent at marketing.
It's that simple.
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I would agree. And I would gather this woman running it would agree with you. I think they have had it being a hobby and she was not brought in to run a hobby.
Microtransaction skinner box hellscapes only work on normies and soccer fans.
Sounds like as if the current leadership becoming from a marketin school where teacher said ”don’t be the best, be the ONLY ONE”…
Lol look what they did with Magic the Gathering. For the 30th Anniversary they sold 4 little booster packs for $1k, and not even real cards. They were ugly nothing like the originals Proxy cards with different backs. They were insane to think that would fly, and now not even a month later they destroy DnD after destroying their money maker MTG, which makes up over 70% of Hasbro's income. Absolutely destroyed it. Now they burn DnD. I mean a blind deaf uninterested 5 year old could make better decisions
Kobold Press announced they are leaving the WOTC OGL Reservation and going their own way
Good call, hope the get into the OSR or OSR like products
They are going the PF way, instead of 3.5e they'll do it with 5e.
KGTOW. 😄
Or they are setting up a negotiation to be bought by Hasbro. Hasbro will offer up lawsuits as theirs. Either way, Hasbro will have the upper hand.
@@paulvalentine4157 Kobold Press has literally announced operation black flag, a plan that entails the creation of their own system.
One D & D to rule them all
One D & D to find them
One D & D to grab it all
And in the darkness bind them.
A larger than average proportion of people in the TTRPG hobby are creatives who don’t take kindly to being forced into a predatory and authoritarian relationship with their publishers. This is a collaborative hobby fundamentally at odds with the monetary extraction mechanisms that have been tried and failed over and over.
True - I think that is why they want to move away from being a hobby and move toward being a brand.
And a lot of the people who aren't creatives are people who admire and might dream of someday being creatives...
Now bear in mind that our society is based on doing this to all aspects of life
Being able to call their product "compatible with D&D" will never be worth the hoops they want 3PP to jump through.
So they'll just be less direct about their compatibility ("compatible with the world's most populat roleplaying system")
There are some historical points you glossed over that might further hammer the point down.
1. D&D originally began as a third-party supplement for the miniature wargame Chainmail.
2. A large portion of the roleplaying aspects on D&D were developed by Dave Arneson in his setting and separate game Blackmoore which was added to Gygax's Chainmail supplement. Arneson was part of TSR for a year but his setting and much of his IP was part of D&D. When he left TSR developed AD&D they refused Arneson his royalties he sued several times until Gygax agreed to give Arneson 2.9% royalties until TSR went under in the 90s.
3. When Wizard of Coast acquired all of TSR's IPs, they actually had to pay Arneson off for a "undisclosed amount" to acquire the rest of the D&D IP. Enough for him to live comfortably for the rest of his life.
Hasbro's current leadership blindness to the big chunks of change they had to shell out to keep their IP together is absolutely hilarious. If they go forward they WILL get sued by third party developers including (probably) people like Matt Mercer.
that's all true. I just didn't have time to get into those types of details.
To the stockholders:
In other words, the next two years will be a great time to short Hasbro's stock.
💰🐷💰
They're going to make a lot of money with MTG up until stores start to close.
Wotc is not interested in publishing books. The decision makers are former Microsoft and want to create a digital online subscription marketplace, dnd as a service and life style brand. The new ogl is to ensure no one can out compete them online and to allow them to appropriate content for their online service. Dndbeyond will sell your homebrew on their marketplace with no compensation to the creator.
Pass the dice over and shut the door in the face of WotC.
@@Yobotistan because 3pp abused the original OGL via copywritten content or just selling DnD themed content for rival stuff
@@TheChoujinVirus "Abused?" They were using it for its intended purpose. That's what an Open License is for -- to create a standard baseline for an industry to build on.
@@Yobotistan Maybe because 1% of a $30B business at high gross margin more than $150M with book gross margins.
@@Yobotistan It is because 5E was basically 99% homebrew, WOTC barely made or done anything with the edition that somebody else didn't do better and or faster. D&D always had some decent video games. Yet for the past few years they been cancelling like 4-7 projects. So D&D overall wasn't making any real money. Yet people that made content with or from the IP made a lot of it. Thus the reason why Hasbro was 20-25% cut from what people makes. Which is an insane amount this is BEFORE taxes. Which sounds kinda illegal. Basically Hasbro/WOTC are mad people do better than them and overall don't care about profits.
dont forget. this isnt just an attack on people making 5e content.
this is also a direct attack on every single DnD spinoff as well as those making new things or reprinting old adnd, 2e 3e, 3.5e and even 1e content. literally everything from pathfinder to lamentations of the flame princess. Im in that b/x spinoff camp myself with ACKs as my preferred system.
Theoretically yes, but the OSR aren't their real targets. What they really want is to stop the 5e people from creating their own 'pathfinder'.
See they tried being sue happy and went bankrupt. Then they tried being more restrictive and lost customer base. Now they’re doing both at the same time and expecting it to go well.
The C-suite aren't exactly students of history, and corporate types falsely assume that what worked at one company, in one type of industry will work exactly the same in a different company in a totally different industry.
"Have I ever told you, the definition of insanity?"
Another funny case study for business schools for students to ROFLMAO
Slight disagreement: OneD&D isn't an "unfortunate" name, it is a declaration of their intent. They want to crush alternatives and competitors as thoroughly as possible, to make 6th edition the ONE edition left standing.
I call it
mONEy
D&D
One D&D to rule them all, One D&D to find them, One D&D to bring them all, and in the wokeness bind them.
Stick a fork in Hasbeens they're Dead & Done.
D&Done
Completely missing the reason why d&D is so popular!
Hopefully soon it will be NoneD&D
Hasbro / Wizard of the Coast have proven they misunderstand and underestimated their customer base. Personally I say that their upper echelon need to be fired. Their disregard of their customer base is proof they are unqualified in running at least this portion of their business. I have no confidence that they have any clue what they are doing, and will run their business into the ground, and costing their shareholders millions before they even begin to understand. Personally I have lost all faith with Wizards and Hasbro, and will be spending my money elsewhere and suggesting to my peers that they do also. I sincerely hope that they take a real close look in how they run their IP, and remember that without their customer base they are nothing.
A purge if all leftists in their company would be what should be called for.
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Indeed, the sad thing is there are a lot of sycophants that blindly defend their actions here........... :(
@@HighmageDerin honestly, that is fine. Let WOTC survive off those people alone and see how they do.
@@KraxThebOld Yp NP with that at all, Hasbro thinks that the potential short term profits they *MIGHT* gain from "Whales" will Outweigh all the Loyal Returning Customers they spent 30 years building up...........that they have now chased away........ Not to mention almost ALL the content that kept people coming back to their game was made by people OUTSIDE their office walls........................
I can smell a golden age of rpg games just around the corner.
People building systems to give the middle finger to WotC/Hasbro; even if they don't go through with it, they made themselves pariahs and folks will jump ship as a matter of principle to spite them
A new business opportunity is about to open.
1. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
2. Never interrupt your foe when they are making mistakes.
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Except the D&D landscape is much different than it was 14 years ago. So its not exactly repeating itself.
Yes, (#1) I would have thought that WotC/Hasbro would have figured it out from 4e's release. It's a fragile company and it isn't that hard to basically half your player based for a decade and seed it to another company. The damage could be worse this time. 6e is probably a pipe dream, players will revolt, there isn't a Pathfinder to nurse disaffected fans, the thirty-party base will be gone, etc.
No (#2) I've never considered WotC a foe. Even with this, I'd rather see them succeed. It's just sad they can't. WotC doing another 4e (or probably worse) doesn't help players. I don't even think it helps Piazo or other third parties. Pathfinder 2.0, Paradigm's pre-5e ruleset, etc. aren't likely to draw many of the players. They aren't as popular at 5e. Most likely they'll fragment those not just sticking to 5e home games. I don't see this helping D&D players. Maybe if it's really bad, it will force Hasbro to sell WotC and/or the D&D brand. That could take years even if Hasbro wants to take a massive loss and someone wants it.
3. Those who bend their knee must also spread their cheeks.
4. Papa John foretold the Day of Reckoning in 2019.
@@oneearrabbit History runs in a zig-zag, not a loop.
Reject Hasbro. Return to Meatball.
Meatball is my inspiration.
Love how Pundit can go from swearing like a sailor using slang in one video and speak like a professional in plain simple language the next
I'm multifaceted.
Kobold Press is making their own TTRPG now. If you look up Kobold Press Black Flag you can see it. I am definitely going to buy it, and read to see if I want to run it. Their products are great, and they said they will have a very Open License
Just going out on a limb here I would guess that nerdy men with disposable income are over represented in the DND fandom relative to the general population. Might be worth actually understanding them before trying to EA sports them.
I think Hasbro's bold move is to say "We don't want or need you anymore, you are obsolete".
I guess we will see what comes of that.
Not only are Kickstarters not going to make money, they'll LOSE money. A lot! There is no way a million dollar Kickstarter has anywhere near a 25% margin to spare.
Okay, if they can't spare 25%, why would Hasbro want to grow DND when the company-wide gross margin is 67%. Book publishing is not a great business at scale.
25% license fee on a million dollar Kickstarter would be $62.5K (since the fee is on every dollar *above* $750K) which translates to about a 6% fee. That seems feasible to me
@@means_well you forget Kickstarter also takes a sizable cut. And these are indie publishers who have to bear all the other expenses a larger company at scale can manage, with lucrative distribution deals and warehouse expenses amortized over a much larger stock. You are looking at it 1 dimensionally.
@@means_well 5% or 6% might be their entire profit.
Also, even if the 3rd party companies could afford it (which they can't) - that doesn't make it right for WotC to steal 25% when WotC did 0% of the work to get the Kickstarter going.
You know it is serious when even the rpgpundit is calling it the dungeons and dragons "community".
Kasimir… this really is an excellent summary of the history.
Unfortunately, Hasbro - and Ms. Williams - won’t be swayed. They want money. They think they know how to leverage money out of us. It doesn’t occur to them to expand the community by making being a DM easier, more appealing, and more affordable. They don’t consider tapping the vast array of celebrity D&D fans to promote the hobby. They just want to leverage more money per player.
You're probably right, but I had to try.
So not only are their products getting worse but they are now making it harder to produce third party products for their own platform? Yeah, don’t see how this is going to work out long term.
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They're either trying to crash the bus to make it affordable for the Chinese to buy out, or they're actually delusional enough to think they're going to make money from this. Probably the latter, they probably huffed their own farts to the point where they really think they can pull this off.
This will work out for them because they are an internationally known brand, whose marketing focus is on an age group that is used to micro transactions and add-on sales in the gaming and recreation space. If they manage it properly and make it compelling it will work fine. That being said, I think they're rat bastards for doing this. Typical Microsoft behavior.
@@crapphone7744 I'd just like to point out that while they may be a international brand, that really doesn't mean they are the only or most popular RPG brand in other countries. In Japan some of the most popular RPGs are Call of Cthulhu, Sword World, and Tenra Bansho Zero. Simply because D&D is a present choice doesn't necessarily make a preferred or profitable one.
@@crapphone7744 Man I made be on the older zoomer side but I am the dm for my millenial friends and I will not stand for this busines, Im moving to Shadow of the demon lord and waiting patiently for Kobold Press Project Black Flag.
The younger ones that are really used to microtranaction riddled world of games probably dont dm themselves and if they get or got their stuff from a local store/community they'll know this is going down.
If they learnt through the internet as I did and learnt 5e with youtubers... They are gonna hate this as this is craping on the influencers that brought them here in the first place and now through every channel we have the bad news blasting, I dont think many people are gonna stay, wotc will have to get new players for "6e" vtt without the voice of influencers on youtube and other media, they decided to *F* around, now they are gonna find out
I've seen so many idiots defending this new OGL online - hopefully the backlash Wizards received will make them think twice but they haven't shown much sound judgement lately.
Can't believe anyone but the most stalinist would support that lol
They're not idiots, they're shills. Whatever Hasbro pays them its probably not enough but when you have no soul it doesn't matter.
@@katydidd6321 I wish I could say they're shills but these are just ordinary folks on social media. They act like "well this won't affect me" - my brother it will affect you when there's no more content for you to enjoy.
I haven't seen ANYONE who isn't being paid or rewarded by Hasbro saying anything nice about it.
@@TheAlterspark Well those are very short-sighted folks I guess. Its a pity but the world is full of them, they only wake up when their comforts are taken away from them.
Since Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic used OGL 1.0, WOTC is effectively claiming ownership of Bioware's masterpiece. Disney is going to be majorly pissed. Would be a great idea to sell before the inevitable lawsuits happen!!
Oh wow and remake of the game I think is in the development. This will be a great dumpster fire if Disney and Hasbro will have beef.))))
@@mrksimka1159 They updated the OGL again to not apply it to past works or projects currently in development, and it was done purely as lawsuit protection. I would still sell because there is going to be a shortage of people hosting games if they refuse to play it. Wizards is doing awful PR right now.
@@MagnificentDevil I actually mentioned they added a clause to grandfather OGL 1.0 works to the draft to prevent lawsuits earlier. Cynthia Williams bankrupting Wizards herself would do it if she doesn't revert her horrible decision.
Maybe it's because I'm new and don't have a significant connection to D&D, but I actually want Hasbro to stick with their plan so it can go under. I want to see it get to a point where people have no choice but to jump ship instead of barely correcting course and continuing to slowly along with mediocrity towards a cliff.
When they bankrupt the company and the shares plummet, the community should do a kickstarter, buy it and then truly open source it all.
That won't happen, but it would be very amusing to see.
DND makes up 3% of Hasbro's revenue at bad gross margins.
@@paulvalentine4157 WotC is still a company. It belongs to Hasbro but it's not just a division.
WotC would be pretty easily sold off if it was deemed a liability.
I think you did a bang up job laying out the history of hubris, it's a shame most HazBro shareholders will never see it.
Some already have.
ONE D&D to rule them all, ONE D&D to find them, ONE D&D to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them; In the Corporation of HASBRO where the shadows lie (and so do the company lawyers) 👀
Already packed my dice and moved on to another system.
I love how they call it OGL 1.1 when it has little to no resemblance to the version just .1 away.
That's the point.
By overwriting the existing OGL, they are trying to make all previous versions "go away."
@@carlflaherty2215 exactly why it's not gsl1.1 even though it is worse than the 4e license
I think you're predictions are right. I am furious at the greed and indifference being displayed by Hasbro. I will not buy another D&D product again and will be advising my friends and gaming groups to play alternative games going forward.
Check out the OSR!
@@RPGPundit I'll pass thanks, found a lot of the OSR crowd to be very gatekeepy and condescending. Even Questing Beasts video on "why you don't need the OGL" forgot to mention that the key point of the OGL wasn't that you "can't copywrite rules, so you should be fine, just like the OSR crowd!" it was WotC saying "if you agree this, we will not sue your ass into oblivion if you use our rules" Not to mention it suffers from the same problem that the WH40k fandom suffers from, there's a decent portion of alt-right Chuds in it.
Literally just type in "I hate OSR" into google and the top results are all people going on about 'SJWS getting Triggered!' or 'Modern gamers are too soft for OSR'. Having been in that space for a brief time as well...yeah that sentiment runs deep. OSR has a problem, I mean, fuck me, the a lot of people recommend Lamentations of the Flame Princess and that was written by someone who was so right wing he had to be booted off the team AFTER they'd published it because he was a PR nightmare.
Sorry I just have a LOT of problems with the OSR crowd that I need to get off my chest...
Do not be furious. Shareholders will be furious for you when they lose money. And once that happens there is no turning back even if they restore OGL.
TBH the damage is already done, because now even if they step back, this is the SECOND BETRAYAL and why would anyone in heir right mind wait around for a third?
Damage has already been done, granted. But there's now either damage control, or doubling-down.
To be honest, if they withdrew 1.1 and published 1.0b, an identical copy of 1.0a with an ironclad {irrevocable} clause, most of the community would settle down.
We would have 3rd and 5th edition forever. While they're still scum and they don't deserve the 3pp community back, they would reclaim a huge chunk of it.
4th Edition was also designed to emulate an online model, specifically MMORPGs. Look how that ended up.
I'm an analog gamer who owns everything I need to run 5th Edition (and 3.5) until my diet and lack of exercise finally catch up with me.
a good contrast is Minecraft believe it or not it has a huge modding community and would not be half as popular without it
Im glad to hear the OGL being rightly described as a source of network externalities. I wasn't aware Dancy noted this decades ago. Nifty!
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Bulk
Agility
Durability
Memory
Acuity
Negotiation
Roll a 20 sided die, and add a bonus equal to: your statistic - 10, divided by 2. Ie; Agility of 12 - 10 = 2/2 = 1. This is different from D&D, as this enables negative stats. D&D however, uses increments of 2 where 0 is the lowest and usually 20 is the highest. How statistics are determined is up to the gamemaster, though a recommended method is 24d6 and remove the lowest 6, then arrange in groups of 3. Or for more consistent statistics, your stats will consist of three 6’s and three 20’s. The specialties are Artist, Berserker, Creator, Cultist, Druid, Hunter, Knight, Martial Artist, Priest, Philosopher, Warrior, and Wizard.
Our publishing studio name is Philosophers of the Mountain.
Our dimension that we set our stories in are those of actual mythologies, from the eastern story Journey to the West, to the tale of the North American giant, who introduced a dog to some lost natives. The tale of greed versus generosity is included too, an old man and his friendly sparrow, whom he lives his days with ever since his wife died trying to steal from said sparrow who so freely gave to the old man.
Our license is the Free Roleplay Certificate 0.1z
In all seriousness, others are right. The current goal is to have D&D be another instance of, “You will own nothing and be happy.”
Badman. I dig it.
I agree with your sentiment, but WotC doesn't even own "Strength" or "Dexterity" or even "Wizard" or "Fighter". An OpenD&D could be made that is strikingly close to WotC's D&D.
@@RHampton Thank you! It was intentional, because WOTC is being a very bad man right now.
@@Grogeous_Maximus Art thou implying SADMAN would be better over BADMAN? Perhaps if WOTC falls due to this debacle, it would be a better alternative.
If you still had shares in Hasbro after what they've done to MTG over the last couple of years, you've either been given bad financial advice or just weren't paying any attention whatsoever.
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Woah woah woah, I need to know what type of internet boss I am facing before stepping into this dungeon
This time I was assuming some people who aren't normal fans of my channel (or even know anything about D&D) might watch this video.
Is anyone else here actually a Hasbro shareholder? I am, and I've been wrestling with this all week.
I've done my own research, which may or may not be helpful if any of you _are_ Hasbro shareholders. As well as a shareholder, I'm a game store owner and a Chartered Accountant.
Hasbro doesn't disclose financial results of Dungeons & Dragons, but it does disclose the results of the "Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming" segment. That segment only makes up 20% of Hasbro's total sales*, but in 2021 it provided 84% of operating profit. Dungeons & Dragons is a big enough part of that to be mentioned frequently in the Annual Report. A big reason for this is that certain other key segments of Hasbro's business are loss-making.
So if sales of D&D decline significantly, that would seem to be a big problem for Hasbro.
But that doesn't seem to be what brokers are saying or what the markets are saying. Hasbro's share price is up 4.5% this week. Looking at what brokers are saying, the vast majority think that Hasbro, at $65.50 a share is significantly undervalued.**
* Using results for the year ended 26th December 2021, which is the last full year that they've reported. Hasbro 2021 Annual Report: investor.hasbro.com/.../78098a21-d496-4e87-892f...
** Out of 15 brokers surveyed, nine rate it as a 'Buy' at this price, one as an 'Outperform', three as a 'Hold', one as an Underperform and NONE as a "Sell". (One had no opinion). (Source: TIKR.com)
Update: After some more deliberation, I've sold my Hasbro shares. Yes, brokers say this is a bad time to sell. But how many brokers are roleplayers? And do they appreciate just how important D&D is to Hasbro's bottom line. (I didn't until I dug into the accounts.) And do they appreciate just how much negative feeling is being spread about WotC right now among consumers in what is inherently a very word-of-mouth industry?
And there are plenty of other equities out there that are undervalued right now, so why not switch my investment from a share I now have doubts about to one I'm more confident about?
Stock price going up? A bubble...
@@aquarius5719 Mattel is up by a similar amount, so it seems more likely to be general industry-wide movements.
Brand damage is a silent process. First you start having bad relations with customers. The brand loses momentum in the mind of a customer and goes down in the ranking of brands. And after a few months or a few years customers stop buying. And when it becomes urgent it is too late. The worst is that the target market is Gen X people who are the ones with buying power. And Gen X are ruthless and they are not noisy. Once they dropped your brand they will punish your company by not buying and mocking it behind your back and investors will not know it until earn per shares start to drop.
"She's an expert in microtransactions".. you mean a score of talented people did that under her leadership. We'll very much see how this gets done in a non-tech company.
Yes, good point.
I'd argue that three times this has happened. The other being the games workshop deal where they claimed everything published in white dwarf was their IP and created the fiend folio. This led to GW going alone and creating warhammer.
Wait, what? I guess I need to finish reading the early White Dwarf issues. I hadn't heard of this part of the story.
and running past TSR/DND forever...
Another similar case, yes.
Hang on,,, I need to dig up my old FF and read through it again.
wait what, Warhammer was born because TSR was being a dick with its licence that wasn't even open?!
I don’t agree with all your politics but I think you have amazing insight into the gaming world and are an incredible writers. I absolutely agree with what you’re saying. First, they alienated all the old gamers by going so woke it’s painful and now they are forcing people to choose sides. This is not going to end well from WoTC.
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They will end like Star Wars. I stopped buying Star Wars. My money goes to Battletech. They messed with Gen X. Gen X is not noisy but try to bully them and you will see them silently backstabbing the bullies. Right now the space franchise is struggling.
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR 5E WORK
Thanks for the video. I've been following the news and reactions, and it seems that a lot of creators hate this leaked OGL because it seems to indicate that Wizards would be able to plagiarize any idea from any creator at any time without paying them royalties for their work. Even if you aren't a creator, you can see how terrible something like that would be. No one wants to sign it, and people are starting to unpublish their previous work because they are terrified that their ideas/work will be stolen.
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Dungeons and Dragons was a very different game when presented. For example, a "caller" was recommended in early iterations of the game. One could argue that the basis of Role-Play Games was like baseball: an activity that was then monetized by Tactical Studies Rules and MLB respectively.
I follow Treantmonk, and he felt very much like a WotC apologist..until specific details about the OGL dropped.
3rd party content creators is why D&D flourished. And to have them backstab that is insulting.
Thanks for sharing this upload my brother.
Let's hope this "Williams" gets to understand the mistakes of the last one.
My money and interest will go to any of the competitors WOTC is going to create.
Who knew WOTC turns out to be D&D's biggest villain.
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Its always the damn wizards man
Any day now, people are going to wake up and notice that the OGL never covered anything copyrightable in the first place (game rules cannot be copyrighted). Publishers can just continue without using the OGL at all, at which case WotC can become completely irrelevant to the hobby.
the OGL was necessary to use the WoTC System Reference Document, which had a handful of terms that Hasbro could claim as proprietary IP. But even most of the words used in D&D cannot, because they are not exclusive of, nor did they originate with, the Dungeons & Dragons games. So, Wizards could argue that "Melf's Acid Arrow" is proprietary, but they can't claim that "Hit Points" or "Armor Class" or "Saving Throw" are proprietary. Those all predate the existence of D&D.
@@RPGPundit
Yeah, you just rename a few spells, and you've got the whole game system. WotC becomes completely irrelevant at that point. Besides, nobody cares about Melf these days anyways.
Basically what I'm saying is that Paizo could drop the OGL without any legal repercussions, then everybody could play Pathfinder. That could happen in a heartbeat. Somebody should probably explain that to WotC.
As a full fledged neckbeard istaphobe grognard... I hope they fail so bad the Gygax family is able to buy it back.
I know that will never happen, but maybe Cavill will whisper sweet nothings into Elon's ear...
Remember that Gail is a piece of work and has locked down all of EGGs post-TSR output.
Aren't they involved in that NuTSR stuff?
Sounds like a marketing disaster lol.
I'm not saying they're any worse than HasWotC [I lack sufficient insight to have a solid opinion], but that organization is pretty bad in their own way from everything I've heard.
Hasbro of the Coast: "MWAHAHA! BOW BEFORE ME, PLEB CASH CREATURE!"
Me: "...I didn't play D&D for 30+ years without learning a thing or two about courage. Get bent."
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The gamble appears to be: Lose 50+% of your player base but compensate by squeezing much, much more than you lost out of everyone remaining. And that might actually be a good way to make more money, it's just unfair and unethical.
It's not. It's been tried many times in the past in gaming. In the best of cases it leads to a financial death spiral. In the worst, catastrophic collapse.
We in the Hackmaster ™ and Bonfire™ gaming community eagerly await the coming storm that is a wave of people abandoning DnD/WotC in search of other third party platforms.
We welcome you with open arms.
They need us, we don't need them. It's a game played with dice that most of us have the rules memorized to. Most homebrew and 3rd party is better than the licensed stuff anyways, they underestimate our ability to go completely open source and share all of our materials amongst ourselves for free if we really wanted to. Making movies and expanding the franchise and IP is one thing, but to give a middle finger like this, to the very people that kept the game alive long enough to even have the opportunity to see it have a resurgence in popularity, is disgusting. And the funny thing is? Most people in the legal field, heck even one of the architects of the original OGL, say the old forms of the OGL are irrevocable and the new OGL would lack any legal standing to effect anything retroactively. Theyre either stupid, or just showing us the smoking gun while they attempt to sink a knife in our backs, distracting us with something like this so we dont notice them doing something else.
In summary I would say this. Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro is ruining the products of Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) and pushing towards making LESS money by upsetting customers.
You saw what happened to Disney. Now this will happen to DnD. Not too distant is the future when Hasbro will try to restore the things back to how they were but it will be too late. The brand will be damaged beyond repair.
Shared this across Twitter, with my own financial advisor, and with three fund managers.
EXCELLENT. Thank you.
What the current leadership of Hasbro/WOTC fails to recognize is that every piece of content created under the OGL is free advertising for their official products. It doesn't matter if that advertising reached six million people or just six people, they didn't pay a cent for that advertising. With this leaked OGL, they are going to end all that advertising and drive creators and players to their competition and even create new competition out of creators who had been providing that free advertising for them.
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This is one of the most important videos on this topic. Subscribed! And shareholders, understand this: #OpenDND will happen with or without Hasbro because we don't need D&D to exist in order to play. It has been convenient and that made Hasbro a lot of money, but if it is a liability to us, we'll create something all our own.
Thanks!
WoTC saw no penny from me since 4e came along.
I was writing an adventure module for 5E but now I may rewrite it to a system of my own design just so I can retain all the rights and the profits.
You really should.
You might multistat it for different systems. Decades ago I remember Judges Guild doing this for some of their modules.
Sounds like the best way forward is for publishers and content creators to form a union and then sue the pants off WotC on the first lawsuit.
I don't know the exact word per word verbatim, but i hear a Japanese saying before that basically says "Under Buddha, you can only do the same mistake thrice."
Reasoning is that, the first time you made a mistake, it's due to 'ignorance'. It was committed not in pure intent of malice, so it can be fully forgiven. The second time was due to 'mosfortune'. It can be said it was committed by accident. And the person might pay minor retribution, but still be forgiven partially. But for the Third time, it will be considered 'INTENTIONAL' and hence must face the full anger and retribution of Buddha.
A fair warning to WotC. You are about to step into the "third". Be prepared for your "Buddha's judgement" soon.
Gen X players are not noisy but they are ruthless. You will see them pretending to be powerless but they hit with a hammer.
While it might have been the original intent of the OGL that it wouldn't be revoked, there is nothing in it from a legal perspective that keeps it from being revoked. Section 9 of OGL 1.0a leaves them a complete out to do exactly what they're doing. It's fantastically dumb on their part, but the writing on the wall is that they are planning to go full digital with D&D and turn all the content to subscription based. In that space, they don't care about 3rd party. They want to shut out digital competitors, in the probably false assumption that the players will just move over to whatever they're offering.
"Section 9 of OGL 1.0a leaves them a complete out to do exactly what they're doing."
Except it ... doesn't? What is this "out" you think Section 9 gives WotC?
Yes, Section 9 states that WotC may issue updated versions of the OGL, but it also states that people may use _any_ version of the OGL to access _any_ Open Game Content (ie. the SRD) distributed under _any_ version of the SRD.
To put it another way, the current version of the OGL _explicitly says_ that people can keep using it _even if an updated OGL is issued._
So WotC can issue all the new OGLs they they want and I can keep on using 1.0a which (in Section 4) grants me a perpetual, royalty-free licence to use the stuff in the SRD.
@@nickwilliams8302 I've watched videos from 3 different lawyers and they all agreed that it is revokable because the wording isn't correct, BUT that in a court intent does count, BUT that isn't a sure win either. All three came to the same conclusion: in a court it could go either way and only a couple of companies can afford the lawsuit from hasbro.
Incidentally this is why Paizo made it clear in their statement that they were willing to testify on intent.
Haha warning should be "jump ship.. stocks about to tank."
That is the warning. Except that its not yet too late to exert pressure.
Williams is aware of it, she just doesn't care. This move is Machiavellian.
So, they're trying to retcon their OGL agreement. that's an epic reach.
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@@RPGPundit what i think is there needs to be a coalition of geekdom, we need to unionize ourselves as fans, not as creators clubs. i know everyone is trying to monetize their unruly gaggle and start a stay at home commentators life, but it won't turn the good ship Hobby around.
we're fighting against a group that's bent on controlling how people think, so we need to be the borg ourselves in a fashion; because we're not just fighting hasbro on this topic, we're fighting disney, ect ect. if you've read or watched video's on "arg" or alternate reality games where groups playing a game decipher stuff, stuff that takes complex knowledge: the then you know that everyone from programmers to web designers plays any type of game; together there is literally a corporation to replace these content bullies'
all i have is idea's. i've said the same thing to various large channels over the esg talk from disney at star wars and the star trek stuff, and i posted about your video on clownfish tv's, but it just gets drown out by the seagulls and the hatemail, and i don't have the social skill to engineer it.
C.O.G, Coalition of Geekdom, we transfer the power to move work, without us, there is no us.
One license to rule them all
one license to find them
one license to bring them all
and to WotC bind them.
Yup. And...Kobold Press just issued an interesting statement today...
Good for them!
Good luck with that lifestyle brand after this misstep.
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One D&D will be a TOTAL DISASTER, even a great deal WORSE than 4e!
Agreed, I've only met one person so far ( irl) who's interested in it and they are quite the weirdo lol.
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TH-cam might prevent you from doing it, but I still can..."This video is brought to you by the RPGPundint...the final boss in internet shitlords!"
DnD is supported by fans. The root of "fan" is "fanatic". Hasbro and WotC have effectively decided to exit the RPG market.
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An added effect of the OGL on 5th edition is that Wizards could scab away at clever ideas that the independent creators came up with, which had never occurred to the developers. To think that they haven’t used unlicensed/unofficial would be naive in the extreme.
BECMI for the Grognards under the sky
ADnD for the Neck beards in their halls of stone
3.X for the geeks and gamers doomed to die
OneDnD for the Williams on her dark throne,
In the land of Hasbro where the Lawyers lie.
OneDnD to rule them all,
OneDnD to find them,
OneDnD to bring them all,
and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Hasbro where the Lawyers lie.
Two of the more odious clauses are:
1: claiming the right to publish other people's work without limit or compensation
2: the ability to "revoke" the license for non-woke content the zealots at WotC don't approve of.
3: the right to alter the deal on a whim with 30 days notice
TTRPGs need their own Rippaverse.
I wonder if the founder of rippaverse would be open to starting a pdf marketplace
@@panzershock441 Mr. Eric July? He's got a lot on his plate right now, but I think he'd be a backer, just because he's a mack.
@@Richforce1 Can I mention Troll Lord Games picking up the gauntlet? The digital player handbook is free on their site at the moment, and they're working on an OGL scrub and 3rd party publisher friendly model.
It's called the OSR
@@geekybugle4241 I meant a high value competitor that would eat into their sales. OSR is fine but it's not like we have thousands of dollars that we can turn into millions in sales.
TL;DR - OGL 1.1 is evidence of very poor hiring decisions by WotC and Hasbro in the E-Suite, there is most likely more things slipping to hurt D&D and other WotC products in the near future, short Hasbro to make a nice profit in the next few months.
This is what happens when you hire a CEO with experience in a "hot" market skillset and try to apply it 1:1 in a different market.
What is so interesting is that this type of license is so common in the place that this executive came from that this probably wasn't even a big deal in the meetings and discussions that are happening at a top level. OGL 1.1 was probably just an assignment given to the on staff law team to "strengthen our copyright against competitors" and completely forgotten about by the decision makers at the top. The ecosystem of the players was so far out of the plans that these people make.
Conversion metrics and average spend metrics are so important to the monetary strategies of these executives but they have to be approached so differently in this industry. I can't think of a single person in the "Big Business CEO" that would have an existing skillset that would work here. Most microtransaction strategies are geared to an age group that is literally half the average age group of D&D with a far less engaged audience. Honestly, monetizing D&D more effectively is a challenge that is much harder than people think and when you let f*** ups like this OGL 1.1 fiasco slip through, you are the wrong person and team for the job. There are going to be more WotC fiascos like this in the near future, just like there have already been issues in the last 12 months, long term prospects look grim IMO.
I agree with your assessment.
The best way to send the message is to not but the new stuff and but the older books second hand which cuts them out of profit entirely.
wait wait, I was expecting new intro "Meatball Boss of OSR"
Since the theoretical audience here is likely to be people who do not typically watch my videos, I decided to skip the intro this time.
WOTC suffered from the "too big to fail" mentality, guess we'll have to wait for Q2 or the end of 2023 to find out who'll be the sucker.
It'll be interesting...
Completely support this sort of approach. Will NOT be buying anything DND or Hasbro since this awful abuse.
The main thing people can do is unsubscribe from D&D Beyond.
Very good history survey.
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A lot of the 5E third party stuff filled in holes that WotC left in their product!
Exactly!
Just a simple warning: sell them right this very instant!
In a 1year time they will be worth 0,00 since dnd will simply die of boycotting
There's nothing to change or walk back. It's over. I'll never be back as long as they own the IP and I know most of the people in my gaming group feel the same way. Plenty of other options out there.
Check out the OSR!
It's baffling that a company that can attribute it's own success to a card game that is essentially build off DnD is now hypocritically trying to prevent other people from the same thing.
I wonder who's going to buy DnD when if fails this time.
They've already put Hasbro stock on blast for the the MtG 30th. Most people sold their stock a month ago.
When clearing houses hold most of the share they force Company to buy those shares. If you look at shares held by clearing house which are required to buy share when there are no buyers eventually Hasbro will have to purchase those shares back if nobody's buying even at lower prices.
This might encourage people to decide on a new set of open-source tabletop roleplaying game rules, that would replace D&D as the default ruleset for people to design adventures and books for. D&D 5E is pretty good but I homebrew the shit out of it to make it suitable to play and I assume many others do the same. Since we are mostly making it up ourselves, we just need an agreed framework, a system, similar but different from D20, that we all like.
The only thing 5e had going for it was that it was easy to get into if you have a premade dungeon or campaign to run. It's absolutely terrible for everything else. 5e would have crashed and burned if there weren't thousands of third party creators filling in the gaps that WotC was too lazy to make.
Kobold press is working on their own self proclaimed open and free system code named black flag, so maybe we are getting to that, they dont have to make a great game just a decent and open enough skeleton in the end as you say we make it up
I was already on that very thing before ONE D&D was announced.
Granted, I am still on the fence about going open source or not. People tend to assume that value correlates with price and thus often overlook reasonably or underpriced goods and services.
That said, it is impossible to make a single framework to service everyone. The more extreme a game, engagement, or experience is, the more it will tend to need specialist rules, not only in slight modifications but in the fundamental rules and systems. While mine is designed to operate on modular sliding scales to encompass most things, I am not sure it could ever simulate the same engagement/experience as, say, Blades in the Dark.
Creative Commons license
@@aquarius5719 Paizo has already announced that they are making a new open license and are calling it the Open RPG Creative License, or ORC for short.
I've frankly been surprised their stock hasn't been more impacted, especially given how important WotC is to Hasbro's income streams.
I think a lot of stockholders have no idea what's going on. They won't until the quarterly report comes in, by which time it would be too late. Hence this video.
It went down by 1/4, what do you mean?
From an outsider's perspective, 'reclaiming product control' and potentially shutting down competitors smells like a good thing.
They'll see what it really does when the sales numbers come in for this quarter
@@moritzk4795 Over the last week it's gone up from 62.065 on January 4 to 64.44 yesterday.
I don't believe the creation of 4th edition had anything to do with 3rd reaching its limits - I think they just wanted to put an end to the OGL, and decided that introducing the 4th edition and the GSL were the way to do it.
4th edition was done because WotC wanted to sell miniatures. They had Games Workshop envy by that time.
The 4th edition was the start of an attempted cash grab by making it specifically for a Virtual Tabletop, but they got backlash and delayed and created 5e but now they are trying it again.
@@gregoriancatmonk6904 Yes it was, and thankfully it failed hard.
For me the real question is: Which Williams will fuck up 8th edition?
Games Workshop also shut down all Warhammer 40k fan material. And now many GW customers moved to Battletech. Catalyst Game Labs is celebrating that move as it increased Battletech sales
The best dragons have PPCs
Hasbro will soon be has-been. Well at least with regards to d and d.
They have been for a long time.
Gamers don't play d&d because it's d&d. Gamers play it because they like the rules and the open community. Make these decisions about purely increasing profit it will just encourage people to move to other games.
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YO HO... ITS TIME LADS TO HOIST THE BLACK FLAG! heres hoping Kobald press comes up with something nice.
Looks like it.
"they are doing this to avoid another pathfinder"
My brothers in christ, do you know what happened the first time the owners of D&D tried to claim the D&D compatible stuff on a certain British zine belonged to them and wanted money? The zine made Warhammer.
And that was BEFORE any open licence. Wizbro has to pray one of the big guys (and I don't mean Paizo, I mean Amazon and Disney) doesn't notice the OGL changes affect them too, or that people can just pull out of the licence, or that the country of Germany realizes the licence cannot be worldwide because it's illegal there.
Start publishing gaming material that is "usable in many d20 based games."
My only question is this. The IP lawyers MUST know they can;t copyright rules and as soon as they came up with their idiotic 1.1 OGL they would sooner or later create another PAZIO. So why do something designed to create animosity and overall be a wasted effort. The creators and the lawyers can't be this dumb.
Very interesting explaination and history lesson, thank you.
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"...that THREATEN to harm..." WAY too late, THAT ship sailed and passed over the horizon AGES ago.
This is why you don't hire a non-fan to make decisions on something that relies on its fans.
Well, a good businessman will engage in deep level study of the thing he's selling, regardless of personal interest or not. A crappy businessman will assume that you don't need to know anything about the thing you're selling because it's all just about economic theory.
@@RPGPundit Exactly. One has to already be knowledgable of the product before hand.
It is like hiring an illiterate to plan space missions for NASA