There Was a Magic: The Gathering RPG Being Developed at WotC And You Can Bid On The Draft For Charity

Alzrius said:

It wasn't as though WotC had ignored the TTRPG market before they bought TSR; they put out The Primal Order, along with several supplements for it, before M:tG was ever released.

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Wizards bought and killed a bunch of RPGs, too. There was concern that they were buying out competitors to reduce competition in the RPG space.
They also owned, reprinted, and then sold on, Ars Magica.
Their history of Buy & Bury was why the TSR acquisition was on the SEC's radar... there were active complaints about them having anticompetitive practices.

darjr said:

Some crypto folks flush with scammed cash bought the physical copy of Jodorowsky Dune Manuscript that was the proposed movie bible. Full of art and prose etc. They thought it gave them the right to publish it and make the movie.

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I'm extending the thinking -- and they would do so, and it would be good. Do I have that right? Because the only thing keeping it from happening when Jodorowsky was dreaming it up was sufficient funds and their crypt-bro genius (which would obviously make up for not having Jodorowsky there to help).

This reminds me of a Saturday Night Live Weekend Update bit from the Tina Fey era -- supposedly Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (their original get-together, think Gigli) were interested in filming a remake of Casablanca. "It'll be for people who liked the original, but wanted it to be... awful."

Omega Probe said:

Financial loss doesn't come into play in copyright distribution and redistribution rights. You can't distribute copies of a copyrighted work, for profit or for free, regardless of financial damage, unless you have permission from the copyright holders. That's what copyright exists for, to control who has the right to do exactly that.

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It matters for the punishment under the criminal provisions of US copyright.

aramis erak said:

Their history of Buy & Bury was why the TSR acquisition was on the SEC's radar...

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Can you source this? Both companies were privately held at the time WotC acquired TSR, and I'm having trouble finding anything to suggest the SEC investigated or was otherwise involved in the purchase.

I was also a playtester of this system back in 1996. I still have the same documents, and can vouch for its authenticity. HOWEVER, I also have a copy of the Non Disclosure agreement that prohibits the sharing of any of this information.

About 10 or twelve years ago, I contacted Wizards about sharing this information, either online or to my friends. I was told the NDA was still in effect, and could do neither.

I would be interested in seeing how Mr Tweet got around this, as I really have no use for these document, and wouldn't mind also selling them off (or giving them away if I could...)

TGryph

p.s Huh..I just noticed my documents are Version 2.1 and 2.6....even older...of course, they are Playtest Documents....

aramis erak said:

Wizards bought and killed a bunch of RPGs, too. There was concern that they were buying out competitors to reduce competition in the RPG space.
They also owned, reprinted, and then sold on, Ars Magica.
Their history of Buy & Bury was why the TSR acquisition was on the SEC's radar... there were active complaints about them having anticompetitive practices.

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That was pretty much what we figured during the playtest, when the project was stopped suddenly.

Alzrius said:

Can you source this? Both companies were privately held at the time WotC acquired TSR, and I'm having trouble finding anything to suggest the SEC investigated or was otherwise involved in the purchase.

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The SEC pages on the hasbro acquisition of WotC and WotC acquistion of TSR are no longer hosted on SEC.gov. Some links point to them still.

aramis erak said:

The SEC pages on the hasbro acquisition of WotC and WotC acquistion of TSR are no longer hosted on SEC.gov. Some links point to them still.

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Can you repost the URL from those links here? They might still work via the Wayback Machine.