Rumours: WotC Announcement Today; Insider Email Reveals Plans

There's a couple of rumours going round today. I cannot verify either, but I'm reporting them as most of the recent OGL rumours have proven true.

First -- it is rumoured that today at 3pm ET Wizards of the Coast will make some kind of video statement about the current Open Game License situation. This rumour came from the folks at Roll For Combat who were the first to break the draft OGL scoop.

[[UPDATE -- This didn't happen!]]

Second -- an email has been circulating from an anonymous WotC insider. Again, I must reiterate I cannot myself verify this, so read this with that in mind, but the email says:

Hi,

I'm an employee at WotC currently working on D&Dbeyond (DDB) and with D&D business leaders on the health of the product line. If you want I can provide proof of this.

I'm sending this message because I fear for the health of a community I love, and I know what the leaders at WOTC are looking at:

-They are briefly delaying rollout of OGL changes due to the backlash.
-Their decision making is based entirely on the provable impact to their bottom line.
-Specifically they are looking at DDB subscriptions and cancellations as it is the quickest financial data they currently have.
-They are still hoping the community forgets, moves on, and they can still push this through.

I have decided to reach out because at my time in WotC I have never once heard management refer to customers in a positive manner, their communication gives me the impression they see customers as obstacles between them and their money, the DDB team was first told to prepare to support the new OGL changes and online portal when they got back from the holidays, and leadership doesn't take any responsibility for the pain and stress they cause others. Leadership's first communication to the rank and file on the OGL was 30 minutes on 1/11/23, This was the first time they even tried to communicate their intentions about the OGL to employees, and even in this meeting they blamed the community for over-reacting.

I will repeat, the main thing this leadership is looking at is DDB subscription cancellations.

Hope your day goes well,

P.S. I will be copying and pasting this message to other community leaders.

If both rumours are true, I guess at 3pm ET today we'll find that out.

 

[Morrus]

That's the big mystery! Only a select few seem to have been notified... it's very strange to me.

Yeah, but they're not sharing that info!

 

[Haplo781]

I was merely pointing out the qualities that it shared with phishing emails.

Presumably, if it is real, whoever came up with the plan to drop the OGL1.0a and use a draconian OGL1.1 in the first place would've accounted for a short-term business drop, with a plan to recoup those losses....metrics and KPIs matter most over time. Short-term losses for long-term gains and all that.



Presuming it is real, I would assume that Wizards is counting on the money third-party publishers make with D&D products is enough for people to continue to do so under the new terms.

But that also doesn't address the overhead at Wizards it would create for managing financial reporting, recording, license reviews, and whatnot.

Nobody ever writes a business plan that accounts for failure of any kind. Worst case scenarios are always "we only make X dollars instead of Y"

 

[Charlaquin]

I know things have changed, there was a point where as a poor child, I was homeless and eating from garbge cans. I also had been taught marxism, and how to field strip an ak. RPG's teach one has to know the rules of the game. I got an engineering degree, and later a business degree. More than once I would have liked to go home, it just doesn't exist anymore.

I’m sorry you had to go through that. What does this have to do with anything?

 

[niklinna]

I think the issue is I don’t accept whatever mechanism (that doesn’t fit the parameters I outlined above) is being imagined here to establish the differentiation?

Well then why didn't you say so?

 

[OB1]

In this scenario, WotC could still make a lot more money, just by making their products better (the big hiring frenzy for D&D Beyond suggests that the website could be improving a lot in future, assuming those people aren't all on VTT duty). They could still leverage their enormous size and wealth to increase market share. (Again, D&D Beyond advantages WotC content, and it's hard to put in third party content, even for an individual group's use.)

The amount of effort going in to suffocate an industry that basically serves as third-party marketing doesn't make any real sense. ("Oh, more money!" only makes sense if you don't add in the needed additional marketing work to be done, even without the debacle.)

Suffocate? Or set free? Not to discount the real hardship in the short term for many companies impacted by this decision, but given the response we've seen from many larger 3PPs, it seems like we may enter the One D&D era with many true competitors to D&Ds dominance, which is not a bad thing for the hobby.

 

[darjr]

Where will WotC video be?

Either their main channel

https://youtube.com/@DNDWizards?si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

Or here

https://youtube.com/@DnDBeyond?si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

Subscribe and click the alert button.

Also it’ll be in Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

 

[Nikosandros]

Yeah, but they're not sharing that info!

In one of the YT stream they seem to be pointing D&D website.

 

[jgbrowning]

Yeah, but they're not sharing that info!

They're refreshing the D&D Youtube page.

https://www.youtube.com/@DNDWizards/videos

joe b.

 

[Morrus]

Youtube, Twitch, WoTC site?

 

[Morrus]

Maybe they changed the time when it leaked.