I just think bureaucratic f-up is more likely than anything. Yes, they wanted to shut down OGL 1.0. You have to ask why.
To me, the most plausible reason is to protect their brand identity as they try to expand into movies, streams and the all important toy market. They want a family friendly face so they can expand profits outside of the TTRPG niche.
None of this requires nuking the OGL, nor does it require other things present in 1.1 and 1.2, like the stiff morality clause. Much of this stuff destroys the 3PP community very directly.
The "competition" from smaller 3PP likely doesn't even register on a projection spreadsheet. A Disney coming along and creating their own version (along with the related swag) was probably also part of it.
This entire line of argumentation was inane when it was put out by D&D and has always been as such. It's like them claiming they need to put in a stiff morality clause and nuke the OGL because they need to save the the brand from "racism". It doesn't come off as real, it comes off as pretext.
It also comes off as even more inane given that they released in all in CC. If that was a true and real reason for doing this, they would have never done that, even if they were trying to get good in the community.
The impression of wanting to shut down all 3PP (again, why?) is most easily explained by ignorance and incompetence. There's no evidence that it was a goal.
I disagree. That they specifically fought and kept the royalties where they were more than indicates that they were looking destroying larger companies in the market, as well as their incredibly stiff terms. None of these are necessary to get "control" of the brand. They
are necessary if you want to bring the 3PP market underneath your thumb, though.
Just because they don't "confess" to some internet conspiracy theories isn't "proof" that they are lying. It's more likely a bureaucratic self inflicted wound because very few companies open up their core products like the OGL did and they didn't understand it.
That's all.
You keep chalking this up to some sort of "bureaucratic" thing, but this wasn't a mistake on a spreadsheet or a small thing overlooked: this was a strategy, something that had been in the works for multiple
years. This isn't like they forgot to flip a monthly switch so that the OGL didn't revoke, they planned this for
years. They consulted people like Brink on it and
ignored him; we know this because he basically said as such in interviews. This goes beyond just a bureaucratic mistake and shows a complete misunderstanding of what they actually
have with D&D.
