WotC Hasbro selling D&D IP?

[Morrus]

Making new accounts isn't hard

Ok, thanks for declaring your intentions. I assure you pressing the spam ban button is way quicker than making an account. See ya!

 

[SteveC]

I don't know what the future is going to hold but there is starting to be discussion outside of the original article. And that's what this site is about: discussion, forecasting what's going to happen, sharing news when we hear it. Sometimes I like what I'm hearing, sometimes not but it's all interesting to discuss.

 

[NuSair]

DND is no longer a cash cow, it's bleeding to death.
1) The OGL upset too many players & tons have quit, moved on, stopped buying.
2) The new content is garbage compared to the old content, especially since their push to be "diverse", "equity", and "inclusive".
My LGS has sold ONE DND source book in the past 8 months, only ONE! The owner says that all his clients pick up a book, glance through it, and complains WotC has gone too woke; they won't buy it.

Absolutely false. D&D is still making money, you can see that from the investor reports. The local stores here are still selling the D&D core books. And the rest of the books are selling as well. Radiant Citadel is good, as is Keys from the Golden Vault and Phandelver and Below. Spellhammer and Planescape were subpar- but that has nothing to do with what you mentioned.
The OGL had little effect on the sales of physical product. While it might have caused a large wave in social media, most of the play base didn't know or doesn't care.

 

[NuSair]

As others said, this is someone picking up and running with RFCs talking points to make clickbait. And then others piling on.
When only 1 division of your company (WotC) is making money, covering the losses of the rest of your business, you don't sell it off (or part of it off).

 

[Timespike]

To voluntarily waste time by replying to the absent: I'm certainly no fan of Hasbro's, but the evidence just isn't there to support the idea that D&D is in financial trouble, that angry right-wing grognards are the only paying customers for it, or that representation drives anyone away from the game. Baldur's Gate 3 was a runaway commercial success and has a fair bit of representation in it. Limitless Heroics, which literally is just a massive doorstop of a book solely designed to simulate disabilities in the 5e ruleset (niche if anything ever was) made 85 grand on Kickstarter, too. Finally, going full anti-woke doesn't seem to be such a great business model, either. One only needs to look at the ... saga that was (is?) NuTSR to see that in action.

As far as the OGL scandal went, what that really did was incense publishers and creators and those ripples will continue to move outward slowly over time; even though the OGL fiasco was a year ago (almost to the day; WotC put the 5e rules in Creative Commons on January 27th, 2023), I'm only looking at being able to switch away from the OGL (I'll be moving to the ORC, which I can in turn only do because EN Publishing is nice enough to let you pick your license for A5E) in the next couple of months because I've finally gotten the stuff that needs to reference prior OGL content finished up.

I think the release of Tales of the Valiant in its final form will be an interesting bellwether. Once you can license freely from both that and A5E with the ORC, we may start seeing more kickstarters for 5e-based products that dodge WotC entirely. Even then, I fully expect D&D to remain the 800-lb gorilla for a really long time. It's the Coca-Cola of RPGs. There are lots of other options, and many are better, but none are as widely known or popular.

 

[Parmandur]

You mentioned "studios". What other studios are still hiring? I have a ton of friends in the video game industry who lost their jobs in the last few months, and I would like to point them to these listings as I haven't heard about this at all.

Well, here are two of the video game studios fully owned and operated by Wizards of the Coast, for one thing, and I believe they have a few others as WotC is ramping up as a video game publisher:

Home | Invoke Studios

Invoke is a close-knit team making ambitious, high-quality games for millions of fans around the world to enjoy.

invokestudios.com

ARCHETYPE ENTERTAINMENT

Archetype Entertainment is a video game studio located in Austin, TX. We build epic story-driven roleplaying games.

www.archetype-entertainment.com

 

[mamba]

As for D&D failing: We'll know by the end of 2024. This is the first time they've seen such massive competition at the time of release of a new edition

maybe by the end of 2025, not sure all the new core books are even out by the end of 2024. Also, what massive competition? Other TTRPGs? I am not seeing that, really

If Daggerheart, in particular, ends up being a really strong system that people like ... it could be significant.

if they get 5 - 10% of D&D’s market share, I’d consider that significant already

 

[Timespike]

I think ToV has a chance to carve out a community roughly the size of A5E's or slightly larger (that is to say, large enough to be self-sustaining, but not a serious threat to the big dog). Daggerheart and the MCDM RPG have the potential to be bigger. I seriously doubt they'll dethrone D&D, but something closer in size to Call of Cthulhu or maybe even Pathfinder doesn't seem totally outside the realm of possibility.

 

[bedir than]

Well, here are two of the video game studios gully owned and operated by Wizards of the Coast, for one thing, and I believe they have a few others as WotC is ramping up as a video game publisher:

Home | Invoke Studios

Invoke is a close-knit team making ambitious, high-quality games for millions of fans around the world to enjoy.

invokestudios.com

ARCHETYPE ENTERTAINMENT

Archetype Entertainment is a video game studio located in Austin, TX. We build epic story-driven roleplaying games.

www.archetype-entertainment.com

They're listing positions for the 3D VTT constantly. Just today Kale and Dan were promoting a game design position for anyone with any version of RPG experience - not necessary video game stuff.

Which means they could have kept Dillon rather than let him go three weeks ago

 

[ersatzphil]

They're listing positions for the 3D VTT constantly. Just today Kale and Dan were promoting a game design position for anyone with any version of RPG experience - not necessary video game stuff.

Which means they could have kept Dillon rather than let him go three weeks ago

Kale and Dan?