Matt Colville weighs in.

[Jer]

WotC are saying they want a bigger slice of that market.

People want a lot of things. Doesn't mean we have to care whether they get them or not.

If Wizards wants a bigger slice of the VTT market they could start by making an actual VTT product. If they had a product out there they might discover that the OGL doesn't matter for their VTT product direction at all. Or is a minor blip on their screen as trivial as a rounding error. Or perhaps it might even help them with their VTT product.

But they don't have a clue because they aren't even in the market yet. So instead they'll blunder around, create chaos in the industry and the community, fracture their player base without even an edition war in sight, and generally destroy a huge amount of good will that they've generated for basically nothing. Because they still don't have a VTT product out there to see if what they've done actually matters to it.

They're really bad at their jobs.

 

[TheSword]

Unless, you know, you want to buy new third party books for D&D I guess.

People had been traditionally doing that.

You can still buy third party books - you think there won’t be folks coming through who want to write for One D&D and self publish? If OGL 1.2 had been released now folks would have bitten WotC’s hand off for it.

The controversy is about the change for existing writers and not wanting to take less preferential terms (which in fairness they feel they shouldn’t have to take because they were promised them). That is the crux of the matter though.

That doesn’t stop OGL being a great deal for new publishers. Particularly with the revisions proposed.

 

[Justice and Rule]

So to put this in perspective. Maybe.

IIRC, the $30 was from a faked document. Now, I haven't read all the threads, and I am certainly not going to watch all the stupid youtube videos, but I don't think that there has ever been an actual, non-fake source for that? (Correct me if I'm wrong).

There was a faked version in August, but as I understand it, it came from a DnD content creator named Dungeon Scribe. Not a YouTuber, but a few YouTubers said their sources confirmed it. We've seen pushback against this, but only from the official account.

Edit: Worth noting he was included in this list of follows from Linda Codega, the Gizmodo writer who helped break this whole thing open.

In terms of subscriptions, I think of the Playstation.
PS Plus Essential is $60/year.
PS Plus Extra is $100/year.
PS Plus Premium is $120/year.

Given that the top level of PS Plus Premium is the top level tier, I find it ... difficult ... to understand how they would be charging a lot more than this.

OTOH, I also know that a lot of kids have versions of these various plans- just like, "How can they afford a cell phone," it's something that they ask for and receive, either by paying it for themselves or getting it as a gift.

PS Premium is $18 a month if you don't just package in a year. Not quite that, but maybe that's the idea: high one-off month cost, with discounts for longer buy-ins. But yeah, still high even if you are getting all the content that is available. They'd have to have a helluva content mill to make such a thing worth it.

Of course, we've already seen/heard their ambitions, maybe they just think they have a captive audience that they can push hard on. They did do well at ****ing up prices in MtG, as I understand it.

 

[TheSword]

People want a lot of things. Doesn't mean we have to care whether they get them or not.

If Wizards wants a bigger slice of the VTT market they could start by making an actual VTT product. If they had a product out there they might discover that the OGL doesn't matter for their VTT product direction at all. Or is a minor blip on their screen as trivial as a rounding error. Or perhaps it might even help them with their VTT product.

But they don't have a clue because they aren't even in the market yet. So instead they'll blunder around, create chaos in the industry and the community, fracture their player base without even an edition war in sight, and generally destroy a huge amount of good will that they've generated for basically nothing. Because they still don't have a VTT product out there to see if what they've done actually matters to it.

They're really bad at their jobs.

Well that’s possible… or maybe they want to launch the VTT at the same time as One D&D and want all the noise about this out of the way well before then.

Maybe they’ve been working on the VTT for a year or two now and will release it when they think it’s ready.

Maybe they are playing the long game, and not being reactionary - fully expecting that their biggest 3rd party competition will fracture into a dozen separate game systems. That Twitter rage is impossible to sustain for a long period of time… and that the outrage is now turning into more of a process story than it is about the actual issue and that people lose interest in process stories.

 

[Parmandur]

When WotC did that silly "don't tell anybody about this" survey for a VTT a couple years ago, they were floating a free to play model: qll the rules for free, aesthwtics cost money.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

There was a faked version in August, but as I understand it, it came from a DnD content creator named Dungeon Scribe. Not a YouTuber, but a few YouTubers said their sources confirmed it. We've seen pushback against this, but only from the official account.

Edit: Worth noting he was included in this list of follows from Linda Codega, the Gizmodo writer who helped break this whole thing open.

But on that, and with apologies to Linda, I don't know that they necessarily vetted that particular link. Again, AFAIK, that's just one of those factoids that was demonstrably faked (literally!) and now just keeps circulating around.

I don't doubt that they are planning on charging through the nose, but that doesn't seem accurate. I assume they'd have tiers with a much lower entry point and then the ability to purchase additional content (aka, microtransactions) somewhere in there.

I just wanted to push back a little on the repeated use of $30/month, because we don't have any reason to believe it's true.

 

[SteveC]

A lot of people are saying "I don't get it? Why should I care what this guy says? Why should I listen to him? And he's certainly wrong!"

Well, the first thing you should do is go listen to some of Matt's content. And realize that he has over four hundred thousand subscribers. If you listen to him, you'll see two things right away: he talks too fast, and he is also super positive. He has as much positivity as Mr Rogers, but he speaks at ten times the speed. Seriously. The thing is: he loves the game, and wants to spread that love and bring new people into gaming.

When I see someone who is involved with the industry as much as Matt is, and is super enthusiastic about it (to a fault!) and then writes something like this, you have to wonder what's up.

Did he just hit a wall about what's going on? Don't know. Is he just worried about what the recent developments will mean for his channel? Also, don't know. But I will say that what he says gives me pause. And that's because he is infinitely more connected to what's going on than I am and I'd also expect him to see it with a positive spin. Maybe that isn't true for you, but you should at least recognize that it isn't someone like me saying this. I can say that this seems to be worse than what happened with the 4E launch, and you can rightfully say "who cares?"

Hopefully this ends up with "I have never been so happy to be wrong" since Matt's takes on things are some of the most enjoyable parts of my time in the hobby.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

A lot of people are saying "I don't get it? Why should I care what this guy says? Why should I listen to him? And he's certainly wrong!"

Well, the first thing you should do is go listen to some of Matt's content. And realize that he has over four hundred thousand subscribers. If you listen to him, you'll see two things right away: he talks too fast, and he is also super positive. He has as much positivity as Mr Rogers,

Oh ... no .... please NO!!!!!!!!!

 

[Justice and Rule]

But on that, and with apologies to Linda, I don't know that they necessarily vetted that particular link. Again, AFAIK, that's just one of those factoids that was demonstrably faked (literally!) and now just keeps circulating around.

I don't doubt that they are planning on charging through the nose, but that doesn't seem accurate. I assume they'd have tiers with a much lower entry point and then the ability to purchase additional content (aka, microtransactions) somewhere in there.

I just wanted to push back a little on the repeated use of $30/month, because we don't have any reason to believe it's true.

I think it's fair to not take it as gospel, but the concept of pushing a higher subscription with microtransactions is the real thing here. If they come in at $20 a month for a VTT, all the content, maybe some animation sharing with other players... I dunno, I'm probably in the wrong mindset because I keep looking at the maximum tier as a DM account and I think the intent is to turn it into a more regularize thing.

Another thing they seem keen to defend on (but again, not getting the same pushback as the whole feedback thing) is no homebrewing. That seems more believable, but who knows.

 

[Alzrius]

IIRC, the $30 was from a faked document. Now, I haven't read all the threads, and I am certainly not going to watch all the stupid youtube videos, but I don't think that there has ever been an actual, non-fake source for that? (Correct me if I'm wrong).

I'll direct you here:


Note that, according to the color coding DnD Shorts gives at the beginning of the video (0:50), that leaks comes from a senior WotC employee. (I hope I'm getting that right, being that I'm colorblind and have some trouble telling the difference between the colors he's using.)