Is Alta Fox the reason for OGL 1.1?

[humble minion]

So what was the deal with Dark Souls? I remember it being in development but I never followed it.

I didn't buy it either, but i remember the backlash. The rules were bad to the point of non-functional, and a lot of people felt cheated.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

What that table tells me is that ownership is so distributed that no single shareholder is likely to be calling the shots. The top 10 shareholders between them don't even own 40% of the shares, they couldn't pass a binding AGM motion between them even if they all did agree unanimously on something.

That tells me it's more likely the board who's running the show. They'll largely be self-selected. When a board seat opens up, they'll select a suggested replacement (who'll inevitably be someone who thinks the same as the incumbents, perhaps in collaboration with major shareholders) and place their name before the shareholders, who will almost certainly approve the nomination barring extreme circumstances (if you're on a board and the shareholders knock back your board nomination, it's time to start thinking about your career options). Given Vanguard is at 11% ownership they probably have one of their people on the board, but that'd be about all.

Disclaimer: i worked at Vanguard up until quite recently. My job was in IT rather than investment, so I can't really have an opinion on their investment management strategies since I know very little about them.

Those who don't own enough shares can't vote according to Hasbros own constitution, so the tiny investors might as well not exist for the purposes of deciding board members.

 

[humble minion]

Those who don't own enough shares can't vote according to Hasbros own constitution, so the tiny investors might as well not exist for the purposes of deciding board members.

Sorry, i haven't seen the constitution. What's the share ownership threshold you have to reach to get voting rights?

 

[Deset Gled]

Alt Fox didn't tell WotC to breach contracts or act stupid, they meant more and better quality D&D products.

Alta Fox never gave a dingo's kidney about quantity or quality of anything, ever. Literally the only thing they have and ever will care about is stock price.

 

[Scribe]

The thing is: they still stay in the D&D ecosystem and are less likely to try something entirely different, and thus they contribute to D&D dwarfing the competition.

Which again, I get it, but I dont think Wizard does, and thats exactly why the 1.0 OGL (5.0 SRD really) is the problem.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Sorry, i haven't seen the constitution. What's the share ownership threshold you have to reach to get voting rights?

I can't remember.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I can't remember.

This is not accurate. There are 600,000,000 issued common shares in Hasbro, and each share has a vote, in the ordinary way. It would be unusual for this to be otherwise in a publicly traded company in respect of common shares. Their Form 8-A is here.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

This is not accurate. There are 600,000,000 issued common shares in Hasbro, and each share has a vote, in the ordinary way. It would be unusual for this to be otherwise in a publicly traded company in respect of common shares. Their Form 8-A is here.

It might have just been voting on board members, but perhaps I am mistaken.

 

[Umbran]

Wizards of the Coast makes up 70% of Hasbro's income year to year. With D&D a sizeable portion of that, but, y'know, Magic the Gathering is also doing well.

Um... M:tG fans have been widely criticizing WotC's handling of the game recently. This was backed up by a 23% drop in game sales revenue in Q3

Hasbro Game Sales Down 23% in Q3

According to Quarterly Report

icv2.com

Specifically, for unknown reasons WotC chose to flood the market with recent releases, vastly reducing the value of cards in the aftermarket.

I think this has less to do with Alta Fox, and more with how, in aligning the company behind WotC as the revenue lead, they have been trying to run it like Hasbro is used to running things - aiming at ubiquitous sales of casual, low-engagement products.

D&D and M:tG aren't low-engagement products, and their core audiences aren't all that causal about them.

 

[Clint_L]

I don't think the OGL was "Devaluing" D&D at all.

It made other people money, yes, but the biggest seller D&D always has is the PHB. And to use 3pp OGL compliant materials you needed the PHB/DMG/MM/Etc.

But that's exactly the problem, from Hasbro's perspective. You have this incredible well known brand, and you're mostly using it to sell...rule books? That's like if Marvel stayed focused on just selling comics. They were looking at WotC and asking why MtG, with very limited brand recognition beyond gamers, was making so much more money for them than D&D, with almost universal brand recognition.

From the bean counters' perspective, the OGL wasn't doing much for D&D at all, because they see book sales to gamers as a drop in the potential bucket. I'm sure they anticipated some pushback (not a fraction of what they got, of course) but were willing to risk it because they were much more interested in locking down the IP for the potential entertainment revenues, VTT revenues, and ancillary revenues.