So ... it's bad for MMOs so it's bad for a VTT? The VTT is not D&D. I see no reason why the VTT side of things would harm the publishing side or affect it in any significant way.
I think you do see reasons as to how it
could, though.
The issue is really whether it
necessarily will.
Companies typically follow the path of least resistance, unless there's strong evidence to suggest a different path will pay off in at least the mid-term.
The point with GTAV is one that does have some relevance, in that a company know for high-quality single-player games, and which had elaborately planned expansions for one of those games, decided to dump all of that in favour of simply applying all efforts to extracting the maximum possible amount of money from GTAO.
Now what's interesting here is this isn't just an MMO. GTAO wasn't particularly planned as being a huge thing. I mean, it was notionally pretty cool, but the previous online modes for GTA games hadn't done that well, and it seems like from the messaging around it, it was expected that it would do okay, but not stunningly.
However it was extremely successful, and this caused a massive strategy change at Rockstar Games, where they pivoted from making any more single-player content (despite apparently being far enough along in production to be recording voice actors) to purely making content directed that that GTAO audience, who were spending insane amounts on microtransactions.
Now you raise a valid point, so let's address it:
They could f*** up the VTT side I suppose, but it's not like Crawford is suddenly going to be assigned to the art department.
This is totally valid. The core designers of D&D are not going to end up repurposed making minis for the VTT or something! That's undeniably right.
But that doesn't mean the bulk of resources that WotC is directing at D&D could not or would not shift, and that the nature of products might not shift distinctly to favour the VTT.
This could be in simple ways - if the VTT has difficulty handling verticality, as many do, it might be that WotC simply stops using verticality in their adventures. Equally if the VTT isn't adaptable to things like ship or car combat, or other alternate rules structures, it may be that WotC adventures stop using those. Some people might well even consider that a win! It's certainly not a purely bad thing!
But it's influence.
And that's towards the lower end of influence.
If the VTT is a huge profit centre, then WotC is going to invest in it more, and that may or may not mean money being shifted away from D&D products we're more used to. Whatever makes money, they're going to go with that.
One thing I could easily see is moving away from books to small "bites" of rules, which could be sold for a relatively higher profit margin (and then a year, or two or three later, probably collected as books - they don't need to have a huge run or anything). So, let say they decided to put out 3 new subclasses and 2 species as a little block, that you could buy for $19.99 on DDBVTT only, then a couple of months later we get 2 more species, 10 spells, and 20 magic items for $14.99 on DDBVTT, then some new online-friendly, very "clickable" crafting rules which are designed for online so would be clunky-as-heck in analogue format, for another $19.99 and so on, and this gradually adds up. And the rules they're adding are designed to integrate well with the DDBVTT, not with analogue book-based play, other VTTs (if they're even still supporting those), or anything else. Maybe after 1.5 years we get an overpriced book collecting this stuff (and more online stuff - that's like maybe 6 months or so's worth there), with the dubious excuse that it can't be much cheaper than what people have paid already online for this.
The ideal situation for anyone who likes tabletop or VTT diversity is that WotC kind of messes all this stuff up, and the good news is, they've as we saying the UK "got form" - i.e. have a history of messing up digital horribly.
But if they find they can make literally 3x as much money per person involved with digital stuff say, then they're not going to worry too much about accidentally losing some of the more analogue people in the rush there. And 3x as much might be a low-end estimate, given what they've said re: D&D being "under-monetized".
As an aside, I think it's incredibly unlikely WotC will attempt to in any way prevent Fantasy Grounds, Roll 20 etc. from using 5E stuff. It seems very unlikely their contracts would allow them to do that without breach on the part of those companies.
But when WotC stops making 5E and starts making 1D&D, they have a valid break point where they could simply stop licencing new stuff to those companies. There'll be crude workarounds - some 3PP will put out a rules book that essentially implements all the major 5E to 1D&D rules changes (including to classes/spells) because rules can't copyright'd, just their expression, and work with Fantasy Grounds etc. to get that implemented and functioning, but it'll be hacky stuff and require niche knowledge for people to deal with it.
