If You're "Permanently" Boycotting WotC, They're Not Going To Listen To You

[I'm A Banana]

Because this is a negotiation

I think this is missing a little something. It's not like "people upset about the potential OGL changes" are a unified entity or anything. It's not a back-and-forth with some formal agreed-upon terms.

What we're seeing is WotC doing whatever the ding dang doodle they desire, and the fallout from their doing that.

This isn't a negotiation, any more than climate change is the earth negotiating with ExxonMobil. This is consequences.

A consequence of their actions is that some people are just not going to want to engage with them anymore. There's no problem with the people who want to disengage. They aren't being bad negotiators. They're reacting to something they don't like. We owe WotC exactly bupkiss, and if someone wants to take their ball and go home, I get it.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

This isn't a negotiation, any more than climate change is the earth negotiating with ExxonMobil. This is consequences.

But it's working. They walked back a lot of the bad stuff from the OGL 1.1. If we want them to keep it up until all of the bad is gone, they need an incentive. Telling people to abandon WotC D&D forever disincentives that. It hurts the goal of getting rid of the rest of the bad stuff.

 

[JAMUMU]

Yes, they have lost my dollars. Yes, they have lost my group's collective dollars. Yes, they have lost the dollars of the other GM in my group, who has pivoted to PF2 faster than a dancer on ice. And in that short-term-profit-motive-moment they might not care.

But others like me will chip away with different systems, compatible books with the IP chipped off (as a veteran of the 80s, I remember hits-to-kill and death checks in off brand supplements), social media guerilla warfare, grizzled vets passing down stories of the OGL Wars of 2023. They will never be allowed to forget. RPers can be like that.

Hasbro has turned itself into nerd Nestle. We'll see how that works out for them.

 

[billd91]

I think this is missing a little something. It's not like "people upset about the potential OGL changes" are a unified entity or anything. It's not a back-and-forth with some formal agreed-upon terms.

What we're seeing is WotC doing whatever the ding dang doodle they desire, and the fallout from their doing that.

This isn't a negotiation, any more than climate change is the earth negotiating with ExxonMobil. This is consequences.

A consequence of their actions is that some people are just not going to want to engage with them anymore. There's no problem with the people who want to disengage. They aren't being bad negotiators. They're reacting to something they don't like. We owe WotC exactly bupkiss, and if someone wants to take their ball and go home, I get it.

Yeah, I'm with you on this.
Wizards could have started a negotiation, convened some kind of summit, and laid out that they wanted to change terms of the OGL while coming up with a suitable alternative for their 3pp community members.
But by unilaterally dropping the bomb, they cut off any chance for that. Now it's just them scrambling about and reacting to the community's reaction to their unilateral action.

 

[Scribe]

We owe WotC exactly bupkiss, and if someone wants to take their ball and go home, I get it.

And this is the only power we have with megacorps. They do not hear us, as individuals. We are just a statistic.

Enough people move the needle in the reporting on a power point? Then you get action.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Hasbro has turned itself into nerd Nestle. We'll see how that works out for them.

That's going a bit far, isn't it? The 1.1 OGL is indeed terrible, but the things Nestle has done are thousands of times worse than anything WotC has done/tried doing. The worst things Nestle has done are considered crimes against humanity (slavery, causing the starvation of hundreds/thousands of infants, etc).

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

And this is the only power we have with megacorps. They do not hear us, as individuals. We are just a statistic.

Enough people move the needle in the reporting on a power point? Then you get action.

And so you need enough people to shift the statistic to make WotC stop doing bad things. Boycotting them perpetually doesn't accomplish that. It's just petty vengeance.

 

[Scribe]

And so you need enough people to shift the statistic to make WotC stop doing bad things. Boycotting them perpetually doesn't accomplish that. It's just petty vengeance.

Lets just say this.

I'm not going to call for anyone to be fired, but I'm certainly never going to trust the leadership of D&D, Wizards, MTG, or Hasbro every again.

So, if they want to negotiate with Scribe, of ENWorld, somethings gotta give.

Oh, and I need that Pony.

 

[JAMUMU]

I would be very cautious about comparing the vile acts of Nestle to the leaked proposed changes to the OGL. The 1.1 OGL was indeed terrible, but the things Nestle has done are thousands of times worse than anything WotC has done/tried doing. The worst things Nestle has done are considered crimes against humanity (slavery, causing the starvation of hundreds/thousands of infants, etc).

Which is why I said nerd Nestle. For many, the brand will be untouchable, as Nestle is for another, larger many.

Years ago, on a barge trip round Amsterdam, me and the wife got talking to the American female couple in front of us. One of them was a brand manager for Nestle. My wife in particular, and me in the second rank, got prickly. She asked what was the matter. My wife spat out the litany of death Nestle has left in its wake. She looked at us and sighed. "Why is it always Brits and Australians that remember that stuff?" she asked.

"Because someone has to," replied my wife. We didn't talk to them again for the rest of the tour.

 

[Dausuul]

But if you're boycotting WotC eternally because of the OGL 1.1 without giving them a chance to "make up", then you're not helping solve the problem and are potentially making it worse.

If you've been stabbed and you're bleeding, each individual blood cell is gone forever. Bandaging the wound won't convince it to come back into your veins. Knowing that, do you just sit there and bleed to death? Or do you take action to keep from losing any more blood cells?

The message Wizards needs to hear is, "You are bleeding. Today you lost me. Tomorrow you'll lose someone else. Better fix it." That is very much helping solve the problem.

 

[Mageman]

Why are you simping for Wizards? They don't care about you other than extracting as much money as they can from you.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Why are you simping for Wizards? They don't care about you other than extracting as much money as they can from you.

I'm not "simping". The 1.1 OGL was terrible and WotC should never have even thought of publishing it. And I'm not telling people that they have to buy WotC products. I just think that the way that a lot of the community is reacting to the recent announcements is both short-sighted and slightly immature.

 

[Incenjucar]

I'm not "simping". The 1.1 OGL was terrible and WotC should never have even thought of publishing it. And I'm not telling people that they have to buy WotC products. I just think that the way that a lot of the community is reacting to the recent announcements is both short-sighted and slightly immature.

"I will not give money to people who make my life worse if I can avoid doing so" is not a position I would associate with immaturity. It has the long-term effect of reducing the power of the people who make your life worse while allowing you to spend that money elsewhere.

 

[Mageman]

Losing your livelihood and getting mad about it isn't being immature. Things will be better with the new open source systems being developed. Wizards can't be trusted any longer.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Losing your livelihood and getting mad about it isn't being immature. Things will be better with the new open source systems being developed. Wizards can't be trusted any longer.

"I will not give money to people who make my life worse if I can avoid doing so" is not a position I would associate with immaturity. It has the long-term effect of reducing the power of the people who make your life worse while allowing you to spend that money elsewhere.

Most of the people I've seen say "I'm never giving WotC a penny again" are not 3rd party publishers. From what I've seen on this site and others (Reddit and D&D Beyond), a lot of the people saying "I'm boycotting WotC forever" are people that already have a vendetta against WotC from some "sin" they committed a decade or two ago, or already weren't buying 5e stuff anymore. Definitely not all of the people, but from what I've seen, it's definitely a lot. And a lot of them are gloating about "how they told us so". That's immature.

And it's folly to trust a corporation. Corporations and other companies are not deserving of trust. They're not people and change whenever the leadership changes. Things changed for the worse, and they could change for the better. I don't "trust" corporations to do anything except try to make more money. Not defending their actions, but personifying corporations or having parasocial relationships with them is unhealthy. Boycott them to achieve something. The people on this site that already hated WotC because of 4e or Tasha's or whatever petty thing they did/published and are now gloating about it are acting immaturely and diverting the conversation away from what it should be about: how this could still impact 3rd party publishers and how to fix that/convince WotC to make even more changes to the planned OGL.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But it's working. They walked back a lot of the bad stuff from the OGL 1.1. If we want them to keep it up until all of the bad is gone, they need an incentive. Telling people to abandon WotC D&D forever disincentives that. It hurts the goal of getting rid of the rest of the bad stuff.

It incentivizes them in this way: If they want to avoid alienating people like this in the future, they will be more careful about this kind of thing.

But I don't think the people who are opting out of WotC are doing it as a negotiation tactic. They don't care if WotC changes or not (clearly, they're done). And nobody owes WotC the time of day - being done with the thing is something that someone can do literally at any time. People have been done with the thing for any number of reasons, usually quietly, usually personally. Sometimes, it happens in bigger ways, too.

 

[Incenjucar]

Most of the people I've seen say "I'm never giving WotC a penny again" are not 3rd party publishers. From what I've seen on this site and others (Reddit and D&D Beyond), a lot of the people saying "I'm boycotting WotC forever" are people that already have a vendetta against WotC from some "sin" they committed a decade or two ago, or already weren't buying 5e stuff anymore. Definitely not all of the people, but from what I've seen, it's definitely a lot. And a lot of them are gloating about "how they told us so". That's immature.

And it's folly to trust a corporation. Corporations and other companies are not deserving of trust. They're not people and change whenever the leadership changes. Things changed for the worse, and they could change for the better. I don't "trust" corporations to do anything except try to make more money. Not defending their actions, but personifying corporations or having parasocial relationships with them is unhealthy. Boycott them to achieve something. The people on this site that already hated WotC because of 4e or Tasha's or whatever petty thing they did/published and are now gloating about it are acting immaturely and diverting the conversation away from what it should be about: how this could still impact 3rd party publishers and how to fix that/convince WotC to make even more changes to the planned OGL.

Blanket judging people is not associated with maturity, nor is making a whole bunch of additional assertions of their character and nature based on thin information. We are individuals, not some stereotypical hivemind Other.

I am a 4E fan. I was looking forward to OneD&D very, very much. While I was hoping to release some content for it as a fan, I was never going to make more than a few bucks on it and it wasn't a factor. But I do not like it when companies pull nonsense either, and I have historically responded by spending my money elsewhere. This is true for candy bars, books, video games, and housing.

You don't trust corporations, you trust or do not trust the people those corporations are composed of and are led by. Some people in charge of corporations are mostly okay. Some are much less so. WotC leadership - or whoever specifically is pushing the OGL - seems currently composed of people who are not acting in good faith, regardless of what happened two decades ago.

Per the parts that I have bolded, you seem to be feeling things about this, and while it's okay to feel, I don't feel that it's super great to project your feelings at others in such a negative and accusatory way.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm temporarily boycotting as a result of WotC's actions.

I will permanently boycott only as a result of WotC's further actions.

I will also only continue to be a customer of WotC's based on their actions.

If they want me as a customer going forward, they need to: 1) alter the OGL only in as much as necessary to make it properly ironclad and permanent, irrevocable, non-de-autorizable (or whatever other nonsense they try to do); 2) transfer ownership of the OGL itself to the law firm working on the ORC, and; 3) stop jeopardizing the livelihoods of the 3PP that have supported D&D for decades.

Release an SRD for 5.5 or don't. I don't care.

It's entirely up to them whether I leave as a customer. If that incredibly basic and simple stuff is too much for them, then cool...we part ways forever. I don't owe them my business. It's my choice who I do business with. They don't owe me behavior I approve of. It's their choice how they behave as a company.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

Speaking only for myself, it's less a boycott than it's a deep disappointment. Seeing so many small publishers that seem to have passion for the craft, it feels almost pointless to invest your money in a company like WotC. While I believe that there are people in their design team that really care for the hobby, the real decisions aren't made by them. I always knew that this was the case, but I didn't expect that the execs would be so souless that their business plan was to actively hurt the community that supports their product. For now on they won't have a dime from me, and it saddens me because I really like the 5e, and I have almost every book on DDB.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

No. They broke the trust so badly and tried to put everyone out of business but them. I'll will never go back. They don't deserve my money ever again

I don't think that would have happened.