OGL 1.1 live chat with a lawyer at Roll for Crit.

[Greg Benage]

My guess is that WotC honestly thinks that getting to publish content for 1D&D – with an Official BadgeTM and everything! – is the carrot.

Yeah, because Paizo must be drooling at the opportunity to put WotC's "JV" patch on their product covers.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My guess is that WotC honestly thinks that getting to publish content for 1D&D – with an Official Badge^TM and everything! – is the carrot.

God. They probably do. I can only imagine how wildly incomprehensible this must be to the Microsoft people. Because if you could put a Microsoft badge on office/productivity software, that would obviously be amazing in a lot of ways. Microsoft was so utterly confused when it turned out pretty much all gamers utterly loathed the Microsoft Store (esp. for games). Microsoft were like "But they're official, and checked, and safe! And we install them in a special way so they can't be altered! That's good right? Why are you booing? What do you mean overpriced? What's a mod?". They did at least learn a bit from that with Xbox Game Pass for PC (though not to give things snappy names!), though games still install in the dumbest way possible.

 

[Aldarc]

Casual fans won't notice it ... yet. The ripple effect, they will not be able to avoid.

Let's say MCDM (Matt Colville's studio) stops producing D&D content. Not a single word mentioned of the game again on his YouTube channel. That's 418,000 subscribers who will notice.
Let's say Matt Mercer doesn't want to sign the agreement to basically give WotC permission to publish his works without giving him royalties. That's 1.86 MILLION subscribers.

If Wizards goes through with this, D&D is going to lose market prominence. And I'm not being hyperbolic. After the struggles with MtG, if they slaughter their only remaining cash cow, there are going to be heads rolling.

While YouTube content creators encourage subscribers, they will also tell you that subscribers are not always engaged viewers or fans. Many people, and I can't stress this enough, have susbscribed to channels, have stopped watching, but then never bother to unsubscribe. Subscriber numbers are unreliable when it comes to YouTube channel engagement.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

While YouTube content creators encourage subscribers, they will also tell you that subscribers are not always engaged viewers or fans. Many people, and I can't stress this enough, have susbscribed to channels, have stopped watching, but then never bother to unsubscribe. Subscriber numbers are unreliable when it comes to YouTube channel engagement.

correct, but those are still not small ripples if they bad mouth the company... BUT without something to say "Instead you should use Vampire the Masqurade Dark Ages rules" or the like I don't see it having a big impact.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

While YouTube content creators encourage subscribers, they will also tell you that subscribers are not always engaged viewers or fans. Many people, and I can't stress this enough, have susbscribed to channels, have stopped watching, but then never bother to unsubscribe. Subscriber numbers are unreliable when it comes to YouTube channel engagement.

I mean, you can go by views on videos instead, then, and looking there you can say Matt Colville, his videos get a pretty wide variance in views between about 5k and 200k in the last year or so. His ones where the title is a question seem to strongly correlate with higher view figures, and ones where looks at products get much lower (even his own!). Given his 418k subscribers, he actually gets up to some extremely high levels of engagement, comparable with extremely successful YouTubers.

Critical Role looks even better for engagement.

So I think any suggestion their subscriber bases are irrelevant can clearly be seen to be wrong in these two cases.

 

[Branduil]

3PPs and streamers are simultaneously stealing all of poor widdle WotC's rightful money and so irrelevant that nothing they say or do can stop the invincible D&D juggernaut.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yeah, but I think folks still had some thought that WotC had not been fully Hasbrodized. This is probably disabusing a lot of folks of that notion.

And if/when WotC walks back the more egregious parts of this rumored 1.1 and makes something more palatable (while still getting their money)... WotC will be seen as the little guy who stepped up against their corporate Hasbro overlords and put their foot down.

At the end of the day... the results are the same. People make D&D content because they know that is the most effective way to get the most eyeballs and wallets onto their products. That's why they don't just make "generic" roleplaying products or products for other RPGs... it's because the affiliation with D&D is what makes their sales as high as they are. They make more money they otherwise wouldn't be if they didn't hitch their wagon to Dungeons & Dragons.

And if they try and avoid giving WotC a cut of that money by not releasing it through DMs Guild (which is pretty much already WotC's "GSL" for 5E)... then yeah, it's not surprising that WotC/Hasbro sees this as a hole in their revenue stream that could be patched. And what better way to do so with an eventual acceptance of terms than to go insane with a massive patch to begin with to draw the ire that was going to be coming regardless... and then walking back and making it seem like they're doing everyone favor by being more reasonable?

I mean none of you actually think that had WotC started at a more reasonable position of tightening the OGL to begin with that everyone still wouldn't have gone ballistic do you? I mean come on. WotC was going to be seen as greedy and/or incompetent no matter how much or how little they tried to reacquire a piece of the D&D-affiliated pie. So if you're going to freak everyone out anyway... you start as Mr. Hyde and then slowly transform back to Dr. Jackyll later on. Because at least then people will be happy with avoiding what could have been.

 

[Aldarc]

So I think any suggestion their subscriber bases are irrelevant can clearly be seen to be wrong in these two cases.

Irrelevant? No. Unreliable? Yes, which is what I actually said.

Edit: I do agree that there would be ripples. I'm just not sure if subscriber count is the metric I would use to gauge how big those ripples would be.

 

[Cergorach]

Microsoft was so utterly confused when it turned out pretty much all gamers utterly loathed the Microsoft Store (esp. for games).

The problem with the Microsoft Store was not the label, it was not the prices, it was just that it was a horrible store! And it wasn't just the store, the Xbox (store) interface was also absolutely horrible! And that's from someone that's in IT for 20+ years, eyeball deep in MS products.

But MS or WotC isn't unique in that regard. The EA Origin store/launcher was horrendous for the longest while, the Ubisoft one always has been horrible and still is.

The leaked stuff from the OGL 1.1 reads like someone wanted to reach certain business goals and disregarded all other factors. The amount of damage this is doing to the D&D brand is huge. Especially in the long term, even if they fix it now, that still leaves businesses with 0,0 trust in WotC/Hasbro to not do it again. And when there are multiple companies working with the OGL that do produce a million+ a year in OGL products, they are suddenly motivated to make sure this doesn't happen again. Either by just moving completely away from D&D with their IPs and create their own RPGs (as many already have over the years) or band together and setup something similar to the OGL outside of WotC/Hasbro that they can collectively use. That results in less exposure for D&D and people who make content for it (via YouTube/Twitch/etc.) might just move away as well because who knows when they are next... There goes a TON of exposure for D&D and that directly translates to sales for core rulebooks.

 

[Retreater]

I mean none of you actually think that had WotC started at a more reasonable position of tightening the OGL to begin with that everyone still wouldn't have gone ballistic do you? I mean come on. WotC was going to be seen as greedy and/or incompetent no matter how much or how little they tried to reacquire a piece of the D&D-affiliated pie. So if you're going to freak everyone out anyway... you start as Mr. Hyde and then slowly transform back to Dr. Jackyll later on. Because at least then people will be happy with avoiding what could have been.

If they weren't trying to revoke the past OGL (which gave us other systems from Pathfinder to OSR to FATE), I wouldn't give a rat's butt. Let them have their crummy OneD&D and its license. Let other companies stay with their "dead" systems (OD&D - 5e).