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Synnibarr vs WotC
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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8780712" data-attributes="member: 907"><p>That is a somewhat uncharitable view. My impression is that it went more like this:</p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Peter Adkison: "Man, look at all this money we're making!"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Peter: "This looks like a cool RPG. I wanna buy it. Hey RPG company, how about you sell the rights to me for this pile of money?" — RPG company: "Sure."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">WOTC Beancounters: "What are you doing? We can get an ROI out the wazoo on Magic and Pokémon, and these RPGs you bought barely break even. It makes no sense to pay people to develop Ars Magica or Everway stuff. Stop that!"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Peter: "Awww. You make a good point. Let's see if we can't find good homes for these games with other companies."</li> </ol><p>That situation changed with the purchase of TSR which was big enough to be made reasonably profitable after some serious cuts to the product lines.</p><p></p><p>I think the only post-TSR purchase that went bad was Last Unicorn Games, and that was because Wizards hadn't checked in with Paramount before the purchase. Apparently Paramount didn't want Star Trek to be licensed by the same company that licensed Star Wars, so they pulled the license and that didn't leave LUG with much.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 8780712, member: 907"] That is a somewhat uncharitable view. My impression is that it went more like this: [LIST=1] [*]Peter Adkison: "Man, look at all this money we're making!" [*]Peter: "This looks like a cool RPG. I wanna buy it. Hey RPG company, how about you sell the rights to me for this pile of money?" — RPG company: "Sure." [*]WOTC Beancounters: "What are you doing? We can get an ROI out the wazoo on Magic and Pokémon, and these RPGs you bought barely break even. It makes no sense to pay people to develop Ars Magica or Everway stuff. Stop that!" [*]Peter: "Awww. You make a good point. Let's see if we can't find good homes for these games with other companies." [/LIST] That situation changed with the purchase of TSR which was big enough to be made reasonably profitable after some serious cuts to the product lines. I think the only post-TSR purchase that went bad was Last Unicorn Games, and that was because Wizards hadn't checked in with Paramount before the purchase. Apparently Paramount didn't want Star Trek to be licensed by the same company that licensed Star Wars, so they pulled the license and that didn't leave LUG with much. [/QUOTE]
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