Rumours: WotC Announcement Today; Insider Email Reveals Plans

There's a couple of rumours going round today. I cannot verify either, but I'm reporting them as most of the recent OGL rumours have proven true.

First -- it is rumoured that today at 3pm ET Wizards of the Coast will make some kind of video statement about the current Open Game License situation. This rumour came from the folks at Roll For Combat who were the first to break the draft OGL scoop.

[[UPDATE -- This didn't happen!]]

Second -- an email has been circulating from an anonymous WotC insider. Again, I must reiterate I cannot myself verify this, so read this with that in mind, but the email says:

Hi,

I'm an employee at WotC currently working on D&Dbeyond (DDB) and with D&D business leaders on the health of the product line. If you want I can provide proof of this.

I'm sending this message because I fear for the health of a community I love, and I know what the leaders at WOTC are looking at:

-They are briefly delaying rollout of OGL changes due to the backlash.
-Their decision making is based entirely on the provable impact to their bottom line.
-Specifically they are looking at DDB subscriptions and cancellations as it is the quickest financial data they currently have.
-They are still hoping the community forgets, moves on, and they can still push this through.

I have decided to reach out because at my time in WotC I have never once heard management refer to customers in a positive manner, their communication gives me the impression they see customers as obstacles between them and their money, the DDB team was first told to prepare to support the new OGL changes and online portal when they got back from the holidays, and leadership doesn't take any responsibility for the pain and stress they cause others. Leadership's first communication to the rank and file on the OGL was 30 minutes on 1/11/23, This was the first time they even tried to communicate their intentions about the OGL to employees, and even in this meeting they blamed the community for over-reacting.

I will repeat, the main thing this leadership is looking at is DDB subscription cancellations.

Hope your day goes well,

P.S. I will be copying and pasting this message to other community leaders.

If both rumours are true, I guess at 3pm ET today we'll find that out.

 

[Malmuria]

did not have Ginny Di the consumer activist on my 2023 bingo card...

 

[bedir than]

According to io9 sources, the new OGL, now known as OGL 2.0, was supposed to go live on Thursday afternoon, along with a detailed FAQ explaining changes and addressing fan concerns.

OGL 1.1 is already dead! hahaha

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah but what happens if, at the same time you drop the bad news, you bring A5E to the table and a Frog God Games adventure module… and exclaim: “I’m buying this instead!”

I mean, before I could do that I’d have to wait and see what ENP and FGG are planning to do in the post-OGL world.

 

[dave2008]

Wizards of the Coast Cancels OGL Announcement After Online Ire

The new Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License was expected on Thursday afternoon, but a fan campaign against changes has caused the company to hesitate.

gizmodo.com

According to the article cancellations caused the delay:

"...the message was widely shared, and a stream of subscribers turning off their payment to D&D Beyond appeared to temporarily shut down the landing page for subscription cancellations because of server errors."

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm reasonably certain that they are concerned about paying subscribers.

And probably won't care about people that sign up just to quit.

But when we feel powerless, sometimes any action helps? So why not!

Corporate will take notice of the difference in cancellation rates before and after. They may also take into account net subscriber rates, but opening and closing won’t affect that one.

 

[Reynard]

Wizards of the Coast Cancels OGL Announcement After Online Ire

The new Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License was expected on Thursday afternoon, but a fan campaign against changes has caused the company to hesitate.

gizmodo.com

Daaaaaamn. If the sources in that story are solid, stuff just got even realer.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Maybe this is just my unrealistic idealism talking, but I find that -- or hope that -- focusing on short term gains ends up hurting in the long-run. Of course the capitalist system is endlessly exploitable, and corporations seem to always find a way to shift around short-term gains and keep making tons of money (perhaps because we, the consumers, are suckers). But I'd like to think that companies that actual emphasize quality, and taking care of their customers, end up doing well.

well it does and there are grounds that corporate capitalism suffers from what i call the condottiari problem. In that fund managers, CEOs and the like tend to be in position for 5 to 10 years and all sit on each others boards. This created a corporate behaviour that maximises their reward structure and not the job their were supposed to do.
A bit like medieval and renaissance Italian mercenary captains that occasionally had battle where the outcome was negotiated rather than fought because that was a better outcome for the captains rather than their principals.

 

[Scribe]

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It isn't, no.

But if I saw that chat? I might run away too lol.

Always disable the chat when you're doing crisis communications, folks.

 

[Mercurius]

M:tG might be able to survive on casual fans alone (though that is certainly not their business strategy). It was designed for quick, easy games.

D&D cannot possibly survive on casual fans. A game where you need multiple hardcover tomes to hold the rules? A game which requires one player to do substantial creative work each time you get together to play it? Even with the best VTT in the world, this is still a game which depends massively on its community of players. Most people do not learn D&D on their own, they rely on established groups and especially established DMs to bring them along.

Without the community, D&D withers. At which point, heads will roll at Hasbro, the world will move on, and after a few years someone will come up with the bright idea of trying to engage the community... and the cycle will start over.

I hear you, and think this has definitely been true for most of the last 50 years, but that WotC might be banking on it not being true in the future, at least based on what Lisa Codega wrote. WotC is (or will be) focusing on VTT, and "ease of play" modalities, so it might be that the D&D of the future will be one in which the "messy wires" will be more hidden, and people will just be able to plug in an play. Meaning, less reliance on rulebooks and even rules.

So we might see our long hoped for "complexity dial," with the dial determining how much of the rules (messy wires) you want to see and directly interact with. This would allow countless casual players to come in and out of the game, and perhaps keep the ship afloat (and the profits pouring in).