Roll for Combat reveals the terms of the "sweetheart deal" offered to 3pp

[Parmandur]

I don't think that was ever their goal. I think it was a horrible thing that they would make concessions on in order to get what they did want.

15% on the millions in revenue theybfelt they were offering seems obvious and sufficient motivation. Seriously, 15 million subscribers. Versus thousands of book buyers. I can see the value on offer.

 

[Maxperson]

15% on the millions in revenue theybfelt they were offering seems obvious and sufficient motivation. Seriously, 15 million subscribers. Versus thousands of book buyers. I can see the value on offer.

Then why did so many companies turn them down flat and start running for ORC?

 

[ersatzphil]

...or that third party publishers might not be cold calculating business Reptialians...

 

[MarkB]

Contracts were 2 years, and granted the following:

• Pay 15% instead of 25% on revenue over 750k
• 6 articles about your product on D&D Beyond
• 6 emails about your product to D&D Beyond users
• 8 social media posts on D&D Beyond or D&D branded channels
• 2 YouTube videos on D&D Beyond or D&D branded channels
• 6 days of D&D Beyond home page placement

This was the carrot to the OGL 1.1 stick. Notably Wizards disclosed that they have 15 million registered users on D&D Beyond.

How many articles does D&D Beyond publish routinely? I don't really keep track, but my impression wouldn't be more than one or two per week.

With this deal, even if they only signed up ten companies, that's 30 articles per year not including WotC's own regular content. That's a whole lot of advertorials.

 

[Parmandur]

Then why did so many companies turn them down flat and start running for ORC?

Because they have a different perspective than the WotC numbers guy, who was probavly missing some key information on their motivations and situation. I mean, obviously it was not an offer that people wanted to take up. But it is casually easy to see given this information how somebody thought it would be a great deal on the WotC side.

 

[Lanefan]

"We give you the resources to make tens of millions of dollars, inexchange foe a cut." I'm not saying theybare being altruistic, but if you look a the numbers (25 million D&D Beyond users, all the marketing pushes being offered), then a selfish "we'll scratch your back if we scratch yours" calculus becomes pretty obvious.

Looks more like "you scratch our back, we'll stab yours" to me.

And making tens of millions of dollars (as if!) isn't much use if none of it ends up in your pocket after production costs, expenses, and WotC's cut.

 

[Parmandur]

Looks more like "you scratch our back, we'll stab yours" to me.

And making tens of millions of dollars (as if!) isn't much use if none of it ends up in your pocket after production costs, expenses, and WotC's cut.

I think the person making the number calculations probavly assumed that third party RPG companies had better margins than they actually do.

 

[Jer]

I think the person making the number calculations probavly assumed that third party RPG companies had better margins than they actually do.

I suspect they probably assumed margins similar to what Wizards has, adjusted slightly for the fact that Wizards is bigger and can afford to make larger print runs of things.

I also suspect that they guessed wrong about how much bigger Wizards actually is and how much more leverage they have to negotiate prices than even a very successful not-Wizards ttrpg company does.

 

[Parmandur]

I suspect they probably assumed margins similar to what Wizards has, adjusted slightly for the fact that Wizards is bigger and can afford to make larger print runs of things.

I also suspect that they guessed wrong about how much bigger Wizards actually is and how much more leverage they have to negotiate prices than even a very successful not-Wizards ttrpg company does.

I think that you are right, using their own sales and pricing data as a basis probsvly is what happened. And WotC could probsvly easily pay 15% to Disney for, say, a Disney Princess campaign or a new d20 Star Wars, so assumed that more freedom to use WotC material and get major.marketing assistance would seem great to the small press guys. I thinknthey underestimated hoe small most of them are.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

"We give you the resources to make tens of millions of dollars, in exchange for a cut." I'm not saying theybare being altruistic, but if you look a the numbers (15 million D&D Beyond users, all the marketing pushes being offered), then a selfish "we'll scratch your back if we scratch yours" calculus becomes pretty obvious.

If they were going for a win-win situation then they would have negotiated with the publishers. They would have said, "This is what we want, what would make it worthwhile for you to sign off on that?" Then the different parties would have traded ideas and worked cooperatively to craft a license. But WotC didn't do that at all, they simply went to all the top publishers in December with a demand that they sign a new license or else a much worse license would be forced upon them on January 13th. That is not negotiating, that is coercion. And coercion is used to make people agree to something that is NOT good for them.