WotC Gale Force 9 Sues WotC [Updated]

Mistwell said:

There is no claim that text specifically was approved. They very likely approved it based on look and format and the trust in the relationship they had with GF9.

And I suspect the "offensive" translation issue IS something out there in international news, but our small community here doesn't follow that Korean subculture news.

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Here's a reddit from about a year ago:
If WotC just approved based on look and format, they'd probably have missed bad translations. But I honestly can't imagine anybody signing off on the approval of a translation of their product without actually pursuing a review of the translation.

Holy crap! Did that actually pull in the reddit post instead of just posting the link?!? What the hell...

Dausuul said:

Looking at the material from the filing posted here, that does not appear to be what GF9 is saying:

Now, I'm not a lawyer (and if I recall correctly, you are), so if the legal meaning of this text differs from the "layman's interpretation," I yield to your expertise. But at least as a layman, it does look as if GF9 is alleging the same kind of behavior that Weiss and Hickman claimed: Wizards was withholding approval of licensed products without giving a reason for it. Nobody said anything about breach of contract until November 9th, when there was an exchange of "You're in breach of contract!" "Nuh-uh, you are!"

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Imagine what the facts would look like if WOTC found out the translations were being done poorly and in a way which was damaging to them, and they then issued a "cease all new translations of previously approved and released products" order, and gave GF9 time to cure the prior error, and no cure could be found. Wouldn't it look...like what you just copied and pasted?

billd91 said:

But I honestly can't imagine anybody signing off on the approval of a translation of their product without actually pursuing a review of the translation.

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You can't imagine that?

Have you...not work for a larger company before? I can tell you, looking for Reddit reviews probably was not on their radar. It's why the Reddit review says they are "seeking to raise awareness of certain issues" I assume.

I mean, none of us had heard this news until you found it, and it was even raised earlier that "we would have heard of it by now through international news" even though we didn't see that post either that you now found.

billd91 said:

Here's a reddit from about a year ago:

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SiCK_Boy said:

I mean, if the “Korean issue” had been such a big deal, we would probably have heard about it through international news before...

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bill91 proved my point. There was news of it. We just never saw it until now.
The expectation that WOTC would have seen it when none of us saw it until now explains how WOTC had not seen it either.

That's very interesting. I didn't realize the extent of the mess with the Korean product. What I find the most surprising is how the local company used a kickstarter-equivalent to sell their products, rather than following traditional retail channels. Is that common in Korean for hobby-type goods?

My personal experiences are with the French products, which are basically available in all the local stores who care to order them from their distributors (with major distributors having exclusivity rights over large geographical areas), who get them from the local publisher (Black Book, before they lost the contract, now Asmodée, although I don't think they've released anything yet since the change in subcontractor).

Obviously, seeing this, especially if that local company had a reputation for bad products even before they started to work on D&D 5e, raises questions about Gf9's judgment in associating with them.

I'm particularly astounded by the sentence where the company claimed they didn't use professional translators... I mean... Who did you use, then? Google translate?

Mistwell said:

Imagine what the facts would look like if WOTC found out the translations were being done poorly and in a way which was damaging to them, and they then issued a "cease all new translations of previously approved and released products" order, and gave GF9 time to cure the prior error, and no cure could be found. Wouldn't it look...like what you just copied and pasted?

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The previously done translations where approved. GF9 claims it has no or limited obligation to retroactively cure approved translations, and they have satisfied their obligations there.

The new translations should be judged on their own merits. If WotC has reason to increase standards, and they decided they shouldn't have approved old stuff, they are free to do so.

This lawsuit claims that this isn't what WotC did.

OTOH, if WOTC states "well, we don't like the old translations, so we'll punish you by not bothering to even review future translations and just say 'no' to everything without even reading it", that is behavior akin to what they are alleged to have done in the Dragonlance case: using the "we are allowed to do quality approval" and converting it into a de-facto "we can cancel the contract while bypassing the contract cancellation clauses".

It is akin to attempting to pull off a "commoner railgun" when the rules already contain text that says "a group of X people in a line can pass an object they can carry 30' per round".

The rules for passing objects from person A to B, and readying an action, are intended for purpose 1. There are already rules that cover the intended action. Your PC argues those rules exist (for passing objects), but they aren't using them, and instead using the readied action rules in order to bypass the limitation on speed.

This is what both the Dragonlance case, and the GF9 case, claim is going on. And if they are right, it is pretty scummy.

Mistwell said:

You can't imagine that?

Have you...not work for a larger company before? I can tell you, looking for Reddit reviews probably was not on their radar. It's why the Reddit review says they are "seeking to raise awareness of certain issues" I assume.

I mean, none of us had heard this news until you found it, and it was even raised earlier that "we would have heard of it by now through international news" even though we didn't see that post either that you now found.

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I've worked for a large company and if we had signed off on something without appropriate QA, and appropriate QA of a translation isn't just reviewing the format, we'd have had our pink slips.

If it turns out that GF9 weren't very diligent in finding a competent translation partner, that sure sounds like grounds for not renewing the license - at least on that issue. But if WotC also signed off on the translation without doing their own due diligence and giving it a quality review, I'm not sure I'd be sympathetic to them terminating the contract early on those grounds. The buck has to stop somewhere.

NotAYakk said:

The previously done translations where approved.

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Yes. As explained previously, this was likely done on look and format, as they had no in-house person translating and that was part of the point of outsourcing this. They probably trusted it based on their prior relationship and only found out later the translations were a disaster. This is not an unreasonable set of circumstances.

NotAYakk said:

GF9 claims it has no or limited obligation to retroactively cure approved translations, and they have satisfied their obligations there.

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Yes I understand their argument, and I think you can understand if you later find out they are a disaster you'd order them to cease immediately as soon as you found out. Approval of a foreign language translation in the context of oursourcing the translation would I think tend to imply you're approving based on the original material and your experience with the company and not the translation.

NotAYakk said:

The new translations should be judged on their own merits. If WotC has reason to increase standards, and they decided they shouldn't have approved old stuff, they are free to do so.

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I think they are being judged on their own merits. They were a disaster. No new standards, but same old standards. They didn't approve anything they knew to be a disaster and only gave notice when they realized it was in fact a disaster.

It think you're in a position to understand where they are coming from now, right? Your entire premise seems to be "they knew what they were looking at when they saw a product they liked which was translated into Korean which they could not read". I see no basis for that belief. We have product X in English, they approved translating product X into Korean based on the English version, and after it was translated it was discovered they had not in fact competently translated it into Korean. That is a reason for a breach of contract claim. There is nothing "scummy" in this set of circumstances. It's pretty ordinary business.

billd91 said:

I've worked for a large company and if we had signed off on something without appropriate QA, and appropriate QA of a translation isn't just reviewing the format, we'd have had our pink slips.

If it turns out that GF9 weren't very diligent in finding a competent translation partner, that sure sounds like grounds for not renewing the license - at least on that issue. But if WotC also signed off on the translation without doing their own due diligence and giving it a quality review, I'm not sure I'd be sympathetic to them terminating the contract early on those grounds. The buck has to stop somewhere.

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I think these are reasonable issues for a jury to decide, don't you? I understand you lack sympathy but I am not sure sympathy is the standard here. Whether you think they should have known or not, if it turns out they did not in fact know and only later found out and then gave notice of breach when they found out, that's not nefarious behavior in like with the Dragonlance issue. It's pretty a pretty normal and realistic contract dispute.