WayneLigon
Adventurer
kigmatzomat said:Ahh, I missed that part. But it doesn't change the fact Sam Walton Jr. could decide D&D is evil at any time and stop all distribution of it. Or worse, require "sanitized" D&D. Gack!
For the last, only if Wal-Mart accounted for an unusually large percentage of sales. Wal-Mart and it's subsidiaries is so large and ubiquitous that it can force the hand of some suppliers; if a supplier sees, say, 25% of their total sales through Wal-Mart then that supplier is going to do anything he can to avoid ticking off Wal-Mart or he's not going to be able to pay his rent, pay down his debts, pay his employees, or satisfy his board of directors or investors. I doubt D&D would see the majority of it's sales through them, so Wal-Mart could only ban it. If it bothered in the first place.
Any other chain could do so at any time, or an individual store could do it, depending on the leeway granted to them by the parent corporation. I went to a B. Dalton's in Atlanta once and, upon not finding the normal RPG section, inquired from the manager where it was. She said 'We don't carry that, thank goodness'. I mentioned this to a friend of mine up North, also a B. Dalton manager, and she said that it might well have been because RPG's rarely bring in enough profit to justify the mess (only the childrens section and the remaindered tables require more upkeep than the RPG/Comics section) and number of cheap-o looky-loos the section generates. If Wal-Mart or anyone else doesn't sell RPG's, it's because it doesn't generate enough cash. Niche markets need to expect that.