The stupid part of all of this...

[UngeheuerLich]

Hasbro is demanding to see $1Billion a year. D&D isn't even close to that under its current state, which is the largest it's ever been.
Based on the calls, Hasbro is planning to put "smaller IPs" (maybe including D&D) into hibernation.
What've been witnessing was Wizards making a desperate push to get the money to pay off the parent company.
The Creative Commons SRD is a last gift to the fans from the design team before it's put on life support.

Maybe. Probably not. And even if. 5e started on life support and was a big success.
Still probably not. Even if DdD is not doing billions. It is more profitable than most other Hasbro Brands.

 

[Dausuul]

Hasbro is demanding to see $1Billion a year. D&D isn't even close to that under its current state, which is the largest it's ever been.
Based on the calls, Hasbro is planning to put "smaller IPs" (maybe including D&D) into hibernation.
What've been witnessing was Wizards making a desperate push to get the money to pay off the parent company.
The Creative Commons SRD is a last gift to the fans from the design team before it's put on life support.

That is highly unlikely. D&D is not the giant moneymaker that Magic is, but it's bringing in a very respectable income stream, enough that they were willing to drop $146 million to buy D&D Beyond. They are not going to shut it down unless it completely tanks.

It's the rest of Hasbro, the non-Wizards part, that needs to worry.

 

[Ondath]

Agreed. Before this whole debacle, I was still slightly sour on D&D One - the game's direction is not one I'm quite happy with since Tasha's, and I was a little hesitant with the changes they proposed in the playtest. Still, I was willing to engage with the playtest and wished WotC well with their new demographic. Then the whole OGL controversy brought me close to boycotting everything Wizards-related, and I ended up deleting my D&D Beyond account that I had for 4+ years. Now, we're back to square 1 in terms of OGL's status, and Wizards even lost more of their IP by releasing the SRD in Creative Commons.

This whole thing was such a waste of time and energy for everyone involved.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Honestly, the only thing they accomplished is to sour a lot of opinions and get themselves laughed at by the media. That's a lot of egg on their face for nothing. Shoulda left well enough alone.

 

[HeartbrokeOcelot]

The lack of understanding for their own market and audience by the corporate overlords is profoundly unbelievable. Dat stock price gunna dive deeper than the Mariana trench if they're left in control.

 

[Minigiant]

It all makes sense if you worked in corporate.

It is easy for the higher ups to be too distant from the customer facing end just by the number of levels between.

 

[DarkCrisis]

The stupidest part is WotC/Hasbro got greedy and burned 20 years of good will and ended up with nothing. Less then nothing as they actually lost customers.

But don’t think they are done with some underhanded stuff. The dragon is just asleep again for now…

 

[Jack Daniel]

I agree. While it's nice to have gotten the 5.1 SRD into CC, the real tragedy of this entire thing is how avoidable, and how pointless, it all was.

As I wrote on my blog recently, it was just a waste of three-plus weeks.

Reminds me of Peter Sellers at the end of Murder By Death.

 

[jasper]

The stupidest part is WotC/Hasbro got greedy and burned 20 years of good will and ended up with nothing. Less then nothing as they actually lost customers.

But don’t think they are done with some underhanded stuff. The dragon is just asleep again for now…

20 years of goodwill in 20 days.
Imagine what I could do in 20 minutes in charge.