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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8867155" data-attributes="member: 18">I mean, this is what we in the trade call "wild optimism".People have made bigger screw-ups, and changing the OGL, especially in a way that seems to be saying "Wait, maybe the not-profitable-enough work IS profitable enough!" indicates a profound change in thinking. So what may have held true for "decades" doesn't necessarily have to continue to hold true. What's especially concerning is they both say "Only 20 companies would impacted", yet see this as some kind of priority. It obviously can't seriously positively impact their bottom line, given how few companies it impacts, can it? Yet they're willing to take the PR hit and potential damage to those 3PPs just to say they're eking out a few more pennies from them. Does seem like smart long-term-ism to you?WotC's leadership now is completely different to WotC's leadership in 2014. Chris Cocks didn't arrive until 2016, and has gradually onboarding more and more Microsoft people. They got rid of the one leader who had significant RPG design experience (but also significant corporate experience) when they ditched Ray Winninger, and effectively replaced his role with a more powerful one, and a guy with absolutely zero games (of any kind) experience, but a ton of experience "converting people to digital subscriptions".If you think "nothing has changed" for WotC, and I'm not saying you do, but it's the impression your posts gives, well, I don't think that's right.The GSL thing happened in 2008, too. And what they're doing here is very similar to the 2008 strategy, except it's actually more far-reaching and aggressive.Before any puerile peanut gallery responses about "doomsaying" pop up, let me stress, I'm not saying that WotC screwing this up completely is necessarily even likely. I think there's ample time for them to course-correct, or equally they could just not go all-in on the worse potential aspects of this. But I think it's very optimistic to think there's "no way" they'd screw up the OGL and so on. Rather I'd say there's a reasonable chance.The issue for me is I am wholly unconvinced any of the people in the genuine leadership positions at WotC really have any concept of what "customer satisfaction" means in the context of a tabletop roleplaying game, and I strongly suspect they aren't very interested in running a tabletop roleplaying game, but rather a digital subscription service - with microtransactions - that happens to theoretically relate to what was once regarded as a tabletop roleplaying game.</blockquote>

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