They thought about doing something but never actually followed through. In fact, they bent over backwards and provided more than people asked for.
They tried getting people to sign contracts. They tried to get people to follow through with it. That they failed doesn't really diminish their attempt.
Therefore they can never be forgiven because they have proven that they are a corporation that doesn't deeply care about every other unrelated business that also makes money off of D&D.
I mean, I don't think anyone has actually
said this, and in fact I and others have literally said we
could forgive them in time. This sort of distortion of our points is really rude.
Oh, and something, something greed because they currently make a profit.
This was me, but my point about greed was that putting down a target is unnecessary and sextupling your profits causes you to do rash and stupid things in the pursuit of money. Promise less, grow sustainably, and don't lose your community... or at the least, don't make bonkers promises that require you to take massive risks.
So ... basically they thought about doing something you didn't approve of.
I mean, they
did something that had a huge impact on the community and hurt a lot of people. There were a lot of people making content through Kickstarters and what-not having to scramble to figure out what they needed to do. It's not just that they did something we didn't like, it's that they hurt a lot of people who couldn't fight back, too.
In addition, according to you, they already make enough profit.
I don't think anyone said they "make enough profit", but clearly looking to make too much made them do stuff that ended up being a disaster. I thought that inarguable, but maybe you disagree.
I don't see anything but confirmation of what I said. I don't see the point of continuing. They made a mistake that was never implemented because they listened to the community, even if some bureaucrats had to be beaten over the head by the reaction of the community.
Again, what bureaucrats? You keep acting like this was an innocent mistake when everything we know indicates it was something planned in the long-term.
Yes, both sides of the discussion have to have time to work it through.
But it then follows that the sides poking each other about it prolongs that time. Each side, looking at the other still talking, will feel as if there's some need to continue defending their position.
Someone has to stop sometime, or it won't end.
Maybe this should become orange text instead of white? Like, I joined this thread because I thought people were minimizing what Wizards did. Frankly, I find people are still doing that, and I don't expect them to stop... but the argument is just going in circles. I'll bow out after this, but maybe we just need to keep any of this discussion to specific topics, and specifically on the board that talks about the OGL? I mean, apparently someone raised the "Forgive and Forget" topic anyways. Maybe that could be a containment thread?
I don't think NuTSR was the inciting incident for the OGL, bur rather a pain point for Hasbro that pushed the OGL 1.1 development into a more extreme direction than originally conceived. The inciting incident was likely Hasbro looking at threats to the $350+ million dollars that they were preparing to invest in D&D One to grow it into a $1B division. When you're going to spend that amount of shareholder's money on something, you take a serious look at any potential threats to that investment. In this case, a 20 year old licensing agreement that could be used in ways not conceived of when it was created. Solasta released right about this time using the OGL, and may have been crucial in the initial direction of OGL 1.1.
I don't think that's the case in regards to LaNasa. OGL 1.1 wouldn't have really dealt with anything LaNasa was doing.
Solasta releasing in the summer is something I hadn't thought about, but then again, we know this had been in the works much longer than that. But this is another interesting point that may put context into their actions. But I also think stuff like
Solasta goes more towards supporting the idea that they wanted to basically destroy the 3PP market and wall the garden off: people are making a bunch of content about our system that we don't get any slice of, and now people are making
video games? When you are trying to make $1B, just letting people use your stuff for free is leaving cash on the table, right? To me, that stuff makes way more sense than anything regarding Disney or Meta.
Once the decision on that direction was made, WotC made a crucial error in siloing the development of the new OGL away from the people who understood the D&D community best. That may have been due to disagreements over the goal itself, and as often times happens when major decisions are in contention within a corporation. When a direction has been set and some disagree with that decision, the ones who do agree with it get put in charge of implementing it. "You worry about design, we'll worry about protecting the company."
In fairness to Wizards, that was Kyle Brink's own decision to silo his team off from this. I'm not sure it would have made a difference, but it's worth noting that it was not the higher-ups necessarily not putting them in the room. Brink says he was still in the room, though, so there's that. I've made the assumption based on his interviews that he was arguing against this, but obviously it requires trusting Brink's word. At the same time, I would believe that him that he argued with them, and his talk about how they stuck to their guns on the the lower threshold for royalties makes me think that was something that was important for them.
