We got an official leak of One D&D OGL 1.1! Watch Our Discussion And Reactions!

[mamba]

Would this mean Ryan Dancey failed in his efforts to open D20 up forever?

as far as I am concerned, yes I would consider that a failure

 

[Alzrius]

they are the only supplier of D&D…

At the risk of devolving into semantics, WotC is D&D's creator; the suppliers are the various retailers that you can buy D&D products through.

 

[darjr]

FYI the leak part of the video starts here.

 

[mamba]

I am sure we could go back and forth for hours which would be dull quick. While WoTC has the lions percent of the TTRPG market there are literally hundreds of other TTRPG that are not dungeons and dragons. I think it is incredibly wishful thinking to believe the FTC would look into this in any way.

but it is the lion’s share that makes them a monopoly…

Whether they are one or not would in reality be largely dictated by how the market they are competing in would be defined / which interpretation the judge follows.
If say Paizo argued the market is TTRPGs, WotC would argue that they compete in the entertainment space, so CRPGs and MMOs should also count as competition, at which point they definitely no longer are a monopoly

 

[mamba]

At the risk of devolving into semantics, WotC is D&D's creator; the suppliers are the various retailers that you can buy D&D products through.

and where do they get their product from?

If Apple were the only cell phone manufacturer, they would be a monopoly, even if you can buy their phone at Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and other places

 

[Umbran]

a monopoly does not need to be the only one around, they only need to be sufficiently dominant

I agree that you can have monopoly power without being a monopoly; that said, the definition of a monopoly includes being the only supplier of a particular thing.

Whether they are technically a monopoly is an academic question.

The functional question is whether they have sufficient power, and engage in anti-competitive behavior, such that antitrust legislation comes into play.

 

[Alzrius]

and where do they get their product from?

Their distributors.

And before this goes into "and where do they get their products from?", this line of inquiry ends with the idea that anyone who owns something that they sell commercially has a monopoly over it, which is quite clearly not in sync with the legal definition of that term.

 

[Alzrius]

The functional question is whether they have sufficient power, and engage in anti-competitive behavior, such that antitrust legislation comes into play.

That's a fair point, and in that regard WotC quite clearly has neither of those things.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

and where do they get their product from?

Look, I appreciate the effort, but this is a non-srtarter. Find a single case since 1980 that is comparable and we will talk.

But for a host of reasons, starting with the change in approach to antitrust spearheaded by, inter alia, Bork (yeah, that Bork) the idea that WoTC is a monopoly is not just a non-starter, it’s laughable.

 

[Cadence]

That's a fair point, and in that regard WotC quite clearly has neither of those things.

Assuming the worst reading that they were trying to stop any companies from doing further development on anything done under 1.0a without giving WotC complete arbitrary control under 1.1 kind of feels like it would be anticompetetive? (Given how many ttrpgs were made using 1.0 or 1.0a).

Edit: Whether any regulators would care feels like it might depend on which senators have kids that like 3pp ttrpgs.