TLDR version: some clueless manager making stupid decisions is more likely than an attempted takeover of the TTRPG hobby.
I mean, that's hyperbole, but in the other direction lol.
What went on here would have required quite a few people at the management level, and a significant amount of sign-off, as well as involving the management of multiple departments, as well as possibly external law firms and the like.
And don't you, like me, work in a corporate environment? So you know that's the case. Clueless is spot-on - clearly they were clueless, like 100% without any clues whatsoever, definitely not going to find out it was Col. Mustard in the Drawing Room with the Lead Pipe - but "a manager"? Nah this took a village, and you know it did. A village full of prime village idiots, sure, but a village nonetheless.
And let's be clear - this wasn't an "innocent error", not even by Kyle's account - Kyle was very clear that he was involved, but they wouldn't listen to him. For one specific example, he has said he kept pushing for "much higher" (I believe that's an accurate quote) thresholds (plural) for the proposed fees, and that they just wouldn't listen. It was wilfully not listening to people to push an idiotic and damaging idea. Part of being a half-decent manager is not doing stuff when you're clueless about it and listening to people saying "Uh boss...".
It wasn't even a strongly-held idea or genuine idea in the end - and that makes it worse, not better! It's good because they gave up, and I give WotC a thumbs up for that. But I don't let them off just because they didn't go through with it! If your see your neighbour setting up a flammenwerfer to burn down a wasp nest in his back yard, and you talk him down from doing that, you remember that this dude was a maniac with a nutso idea, even when his wife brings you cookies to thank you for convincing her husband not to burn down the neighbourhood in order to destroy some pesky insects and promises he won't do it again.
There are many non D20/OGL games and they were trying to lock down their IP not take over the RPG universe like a Disney villain, though in an admittedly horrible way that would have impacted the community.
I mean, what do you prefer - that they were willing to let off a nuke to that would have vapourized a significant fraction of the RPG industry, and damaged some of the rest, but like, the majority of the industry might have survived?
Does that sound better to you? Because that's a pretty accurate summary of the effects of deleting the OGL 1.0a and enforcing the OGL 1.1. The devastation would have been extensive. What percentage of companies going out of business for a completely unnecessary decision WotC clearly didn't even really mean (given the outcome), would be acceptable to you lol?
Instead of them being a Disney villain, you'd prefer they were compared to a sort of nuke-happy maniac? It's like "Oh they weren't trying to take over the industry, they were just willing to destroy and damage a large part of it!". Because that's fine right? What on earth!
They backed down because they were stupid and wrong. Maybe we stop trying to rewrite history to make out that it wasn't that bad?
The comparison he was saying was minor was to WotC general and D&D specific Profit & Loss (which seems totally accurate, of the leaked.numbers are near accurate), though he emphasized thet they took it seriously (hence total capitulation).
Agreed. My point is that given how much WotC/D&D make, and that I'd imagine Beyond has significantly south of 1m subs (based on other subscription services registered members vs. subscribers), even losing half of them wouldn't really impact WotC overall that much - the vast majority of profits likely remains from books, merch, and so on. So we have no idea - 40k-50k actual cancellations over an issue on a sub service is pretty nuts though - that's the sort of numbers that make even a service with millions of subs immediately sit up and take note - because it's very hard to find an issue which makes people
actually cancel! The vast majority of cancellations of any service are because people don't care/aren't using it, not because they care, but but are angry.
(The only subs I've cancelled out of "negative care" rather than "not using" in the last few years have been Netflix and Beyond - I was already unsub'd from WoW when Blizzard had their crisis or they'd be on the list too. And I'm pretty sure I'm more prone to cancelling than most!)
