Roll for Combat reveals the terms of the "sweetheart deal" offered to 3pp

[Parmandur]

If they were going for a win-win situation then they would have negotiated with the publishers. They would have said, "This is what we want, what would make it worthwhile for you to sign off on that?" Then the different parties would have traded ideas and worked cooperatively to craft a license. But WotC didn't do that at all, they simply went to all the top publishers in December with a demand that they sign a new license or else a much worse license would be forced upon them on January 13th. That is not negotiating, that is coercion. And coercion is used to make people agree to something that is NOT good for them.

Yeah, heavy-handed, sure. But the best explanation for why rhey thought ur would work was that the numbers made godd business sense on their end. And I can see why they thought that based on the leaked info.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

There is one legitimate reason for such a clause. If you are going to try and yank the rug out from under everyone by revoking OGL 1.0a, then you also put in a bunch of other ridiculous changes so that when you get pushback, you can "compromise" by removing those, leaving you with the change or changes you wanted to begin with. You get what you wanted and the customers feel like that got something out of it.

WotC just failed to anticipate the level of pushback they would get and continue to make things worse with their deceptive practices.

The scenario you are describing here is exactly what they were trying do. I would only disagree with calling that tactic "legitimate" precisely because that clause was not offered in good faith in the belief that it would be acceptable to the other party. It was simply coercion, and I don't think calling coercion in this situation should be considered a legitimate motive.

 

[Maxperson]

The scenario you are describing here is exactly what they were trying do. I would only disagree with calling that tactic "legitimate" precisely because that clause was not offered in good faith in the belief that it would be acceptable to the other party. It was simply coercion, and I don't think calling coercion in this situation should be considered a legitimate motive.

It's a legitimate bargaining strategy. If you want to sell your house for 750k, you don't list it for 750k unless the market is super hot. You list it higher so that the other side can bargain you down to what you actually want.

 

[Ashtagon]

It's occurred to me that one possible reason a 3PP might reject this offer is that they aren't big enough to scale up effectively from selling 10-15 thousand units to selling 250k+ units. Even if it was a good deal in terms of profit per unit, if you can't make and distribute the product in a reasonable time span, it does nothing but damage your reputation.

 

[Parmandur]

It's occurred to me that one possible reason a 3PP might reject this offer is that they aren't big enough to scale up effectively from selling 10-15 thousand units to selling 250k+ units. Even if it was a good deal in terms of profit per unit, if you can't make and distribute the product in a reasonable time span, it does nothing but damage your reputation.

And that may have been off the radar of WotC finance people.

 

[raniE]

15% on the millions in revenue theybfelt they were offering seems obvious and sufficient motivation. Seriously, 15 million subscribers. Versus thousands of book buyers. I can see the value on offer.

What 15 million subscribers? As far as I can tell, subscriber numbers have never been released for D&D Beyond. 10 million accounts was the thing in April of last year. But say it's 15 million accounts. How many of those are active, so not dormant accounts just sitting there? Is it 20%? 30%? More? Less? I don't know, but I doubt it's even a majority. Then, how many of those accounts are subscribed? you only need one subscription per group really, and the people I've played with have always unsubscribed whenever they weren't in an active campaign, and only one account was ever subscribed per group, because more would be pointless. So one out of every five active accounts maybe? Let's be generous and say 25%. So 15 million accounts, 30% active, 25% of those subscribed. That's 1.125 million subscribers. Substantially fewer than the total number of accounts. And if the number of subscribers was actually a significant proportion of the number of accounts, we would have heard such a number proclaimed at some point. We haven't, so it's likely to be a small fraction of total accounts.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

It's a legitimate bargaining strategy. If you want to sell your house for 750k, you don't list it for 750k unless the market is super hot. You list it higher so that the other side can bargain you down to what you actually want.

Sure, that's legitimate if you are actually negotiating. That is, trading offers back and forth. So you list the house at 850k and someone offers 650k; you counter with 800k, they respond with 700k, and then both agree to 750k. But that's not what WotC did. They simply dropped this contract in front of them and said "accept this license or you will be forced to take a far worse deal" with the "far worse deal" serving as a gun to the head. It's like if you're house is worth 750k and someone says "sell your house to me for 200k or I will make you sell it to me for 50k". That's not legitimate negotiation.

 

[Haplo781]

Sure, that's legitimate if you are actually negotiating. That is, trading offers back and forth. So you list the house at 850k and someone offers 650k; you counter with 800k, they respond with 700k, and then both agree to 750k. But that's not what WotC did. They simply dropped this contract in front of them and said "accept this license or you will be forced to take a far worse deal" with the "far worse deal" serving as a gun to the head. It's like if you're house is worth 750k and someone says "sell your house to me for 200k or I will make you sell it to me for 50k". That's not legitimate negotiation.

More of a "pay me 50k or I will burn your house down" IMO.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

More of a "pay me 50k or I will burn your house down" IMO.

Pretty much. "I will make them an offer they can’t refuse."

 

[Parmandur]

What 15 million subscribers? As far as I can tell, subscriber numbers have never been released for D&D Beyond. 10 million accounts was the thing in April of last year. But say it's 15 million accounts. How many of those are active, so not dormant accounts just sitting there? Is it 20%? 30%? More? Less? I don't know, but I doubt it's even a majority. Then, how many of those accounts are subscribed? you only need one subscription per group really, and the people I've played with have always unsubscribed whenever they weren't in an active campaign, and only one account was ever subscribed per group, because more would be pointless. So one out of every five active accounts maybe? Let's be generous and say 25%. So 15 million accounts, 30% active, 25% of those subscribed. That's 1.125 million subscribers. Substantially fewer than the total number of accounts. And if the number of subscribers was actually a significant proportion of the number of accounts, we would have heard such a number proclaimed at some point. We haven't, so it's likely to be a small fraction of total accounts.

I mean, tons of unknowns there. Which is why I focused on numbers assuming that WotC could move sales to about only 1% of their supposed numbers, which would still mean millions upon millions of dollars.