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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 6673704" data-attributes="member: 2525">They're not licensing them out (they're contracting them out - different legal term), so it's a false premise.  They've always used contracted freelancers.  If they cannot find a good company with a group of freelancers to hire under a single company title, they will just return to hiring a bunch of individual freelancers to hire under multiple company titles.  So for example instead of hiring five guys under the Green Ronin company title, they will hire Owen Stephensen under whatever sole proprietorship title his company uses, and Sean K Reynolds under his company name, and a bunch of artists and editors and such, combined with their own staff (which appear to be actually rather large at this point, despite rumors to the contrary).  I don't see the problem here - WOTC tried something new by using groups of freelancers under one title instead of a bunch of individuals.  Fans keep taking it the wrong way, calling it a license or outsourcing and such, when that's never what was going on. So yeah, it might actually help their PR to just go back to the way they used to do it, which the way Paizo still does it.  Functionally it's almost identical to the way they're doing it now, but visually to some fans it apparently looks very different, and it keeps getting spun as a negative or a problem.  Though, the more likely scenario is the one mentioned above - they won't run out of good third party companies to partner with them because it's profitable for those companies.  Those companies would just use the money they make to hire more good freelancers if it ever became an issue.</blockquote>

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