WotC Gale Force 9 Sues WotC [Updated]

In the second lawsuit against WotC in recent weeks (Dragonlance authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman sued the company for breach of contract and other things about a month ago), Gale Force 9 is suing the company for breach of contract and implied duty of good faith.

Gale Force 9 produces miniatures, cards, DM screens, and other D&D accessories. They’re asking for damages of nearly a million dollars, as well as an injunction to prevent WotC from terminating the licensing contract.

From the suit, it looks like WotC wanted to end a licensing agreement a year early. When GF9 didn't agree to that, WotC indicated that they would refuse to approve any new licensed products from GF9. It looks like the same sort of approach they took with Weis and Hickman, which also resulted in a lawsuit. The dispute appears to relate to some product translations in non-US markets. More information as I hear it!

UPDATE. GF9's CEO, Jean-Paul Brisigotti, spoke to ICv2 and said: "After twelve years of working with Wizards, we find ourselves in a difficult place having to utilize the legal system to try and resolve an issue we have spent the last six months trying to amicably handle between us without any success. We still hope this can be settled between us but the timeline for a legal resolution has meant we have been forced to go down this path at this time."

 

[Eyes of Nine]

This is a bit off topic though the author in question did have one of his works Humanx Commonwealth made into a GURPS books so its kind of germane.

A lot of companies that were fine a few months ago seemed to have developed not so good corporate policies. Disney for example thinks If you buy a publisher you no longer have to pay royalties on the works you acquire! SFWA link here And note this is not some new author but the well renowned Alan Dean Foster.

I'm guessing that some larger companies have lost a lot of revenue during this lockdown and aren't sure they'll ever get it back. I know that Disney actually lost money last quarter for the first time in decades .

Given these are all publicly traded companies and the demands of shareholders are going through the roof do to population aging and the economic crisis caused by COVID , straws are being grasped maybe a bit too hard.

I did like ADF's Splinter of the Mind's Eye...

 

[Lanefan]

I wouldn't be surprised if WOTC revenue was hammered by people not playing D&D like they used to. I certainly haven't. There have been several surveys asking customers how they play D&D during COVID.

At a guess, my thought would be the big revenue hit is coming from people not playing (and thus not buying) Magic or other CCGs as much as they were; as a lot of that play is in person and many in-person activities have been limited or outright shut down.

Despite its success, D&D isn't the revenue generator that the CCGs are.

 

[Professor Murder]

Corporate revenue streams are highly diverse when we are talking about companies this size. But a given brand or sub division is run by someone and that someone reports to people and if money is lost on your watch, because you likely make a large chunk of your yearly salary based on performance and stock value, that money lost is in a sense your money. In the end, this may just be someone looking out for themselves and trying to cut corners.

I am disappointed that this likely means no Tasha's spell decks. I would prefer to have a complete set in the same format. I have little doubt that someone else will publish them at some point, but who knows when that will be.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I wouldn't be surprised if WOTC revenue was hammered by people not playing D&D like they used to. I certainly haven't. There have been several surveys asking customers how they play D&D during COVID.

All of the virtual tabletop companies are doing business like never before. Roll20 in particular has been very transparent about what a giant spike they've seen.

Your group may not be playing virtually, but many are. (I'm currently running four monthly campaigns via streaming.)

 

[Espadadelaaurora]

Hate to see this kind of news, not good for the hobby. Hope it all settles down.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

The undercurrent vibe I'm getting from WotC is that the current people in charge have a different mindset than the older ones...maybe? I know WotC has had several changes to the folks calling the shots over the last couple years. Because of that I'm just feeling like the people "in charge" have a vastly different world and business view on what constituted right/wrong and allowed/disallowed, and that ties directly into their choices.

Sort of a "Well, WE are the good guys here...and THEY are the bad guys. Ergo, anything we do in order to cancel the bad guys contracts is, ultimately a GOOD thing and totally justified. Because THEY are the bad guys. If they are the bad guys, then it's totally legal to screw them over because we are just defending ourselves and our loyal fans".

It's a mentality that a surprisingly large number of people world-wide have adopted; a very "the ends justifies the means" way of thinking.

It's the only reason I can think of for a company to try to do the same thing they've done before and gotten sued for...yet think that this time it's somehow going to magically be ok? Strange. A lawyer SHOULD know better and SHOULD have advised WotC to "not do that again".

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Erdric Dragin]

Interesting. There's an expanded look at the filing over at Tenkar's Tavern.

Update - Gale Force 9 Sues WotC in Excess of $950k - Text of Legal Filing

A blog focused on OSR gaming, the Swords & Wizardry RPG and all things Dungeons & Dragons.Tavern Chat is the accompanying Podcast.

www.tenkarstavern.com

As much as I like 5e and many of the products WotC puts out for it, I'm starting to wonder if WotC might be becoming a toxic company to do business with (or at least, more toxic than usual).

WotC hasn't been the same since the OG designers all quit/laid off/fired/submitted to the corporate heads of Hasbro and other upper management there. Things were great in the beginning of when 3e was released, after a couple of years though it slowly spiraled into the mess it is now. 5th Edition was born from a desperate scramble to save the brand after the 4e fiasco, and it paid off. Still didn't addess the other issues at the place, though.

 

[Mirtek]

Are they hoping to move translations in house and do the international distribution themselves? It seems like a weird behavior from WotC, and again based on the claim, it doesn’t sound like WotC were really open to any kind of solution or remedy put forward by GF9.

Are they repeating the 4e fiasco that killed all non-english version for several years? I hope not.

Back during 4e days they suddenly demanded much higher license fees than the smaller non-english markets could reasonably generate. The German publisher just laughed and threw the license at their feet. They then went around among all other eligible German publishing companies (not many, small country) and everyone also laughed at WotCs demands. At the end of the day a decade long history of german D&D translations just stopped and would not be restarted for several years.

 

[Zardnaar]

WotC hasn't been the same since the OG designers all quit/laid off/fired/submitted to the corporate heads of Hasbro and other upper management there. Things were great in the beginning of when 3e was released, after a couple of years though it slowly spiraled into the mess it is now. 5th Edition was born from a desperate scramble to save the brand after the 4e fiasco, and it paid off. Still didn't addess the other issues at the place, though.

My theory is they're looking at other companies as list income plus hit from Covid.

They weren't that interstate it's accessories but that might be changing.

Hasbro's not exactly a nice corporation so not super surprised.

 

[Geoff Thirlwell]

My guess is that WotC want to do more products in house. I’m also a little bit confused where the boundary lies between who can do what with miniatures. There seemed a clear distinction between Wizkids doing random painted figures and GF9 doing kit figures until Wizkids started doing their own unpainted non-randomised figures. Both Wizkids and GF9 do board games.
When 5e came out, WotC were very hesitant about pumping resources into the game. With the backing of Hasbro, they could easily have made everything themselves but instead licensed everything to Wizkids and GF9. Even the first three campaigns were written by third parties.
Now it‘s clear that 5e is a success, they probably want to take everything back.
Personally, a lot more of my money goes to Beadle & Grimm, Wizkids and GF9 than to WotC.
I wonder how aware Beadle& Grimm were about WotC publishing their own deluxe version of Curse of Strahd.