This post is somewhat inspired by a recent post in this same community called “Is anyone else having trouble giving up Reddit due to content?”
I imagine “Reddit” will be a common answer. (And it’s one of my answers.)
Another of my answers is “Hasbro.” First Wizards of the Coast (a Hasbro subsidiary) tried to revoke an irrevokable license and screw over basically all 3rd-party publishers of D&D content, then they sent literal mercinaries to threaten one of their customers over an order mixup that wasn’t even the customer’s fault. D&D: Honor Among Thieves and the latest Transformers look really good, but those are within the scope of my boycott, so I won’t be seeing those any time soon.
Third, Microsoft. (Apple too, but then I’ve never bought any Apple devices in my life, so it hardly qualifies as a boycott.) Just because of their penchant for using devices I own against me in every way they can imagine. And for really predatory business practices.
One boycott that I’ve ended was a boycott of Nintendo. I was pissed that they started marketing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (though it didn’t have a name at the time) before the WiiU came out, prompting me to be an early adopter of the WiiU, and then when they actually released BotW, they dual-released it on WiiU and Switch. I slightly eased my boycott when the unpatchable Fusee Gilee vulnerability for the first batch of Switches was discovered. I wanted to get one of the ones I could hack and run homebrew on before they came out with a model that lacked the vulnerability.
I’m still boycotting Wizards of the Coast over the OGL drama. In addition to being against open and shared content in their game system, I was getting tired of their half baked books with no substance coming so frequently that I just couldn’t keep up with it. When they announced their own Virtual Tabletop software, I knew it was only a matter of time before you couldn’t even play D&D 5e on another platform so I bailed and I’m not looking back.
Absolute newb regarding non-video games here. What do you mean by that? How do they stop players from sharing content?
So, part of what it seems like they were doing was setting up their new license to begin restricting smaller creators and groups from being able to create premium content for their game system without paying exorbitant fees to WotC.
Also if they create a “preferred” VTT system or environment that they own, only release official content to this system, they kill other VTTs that their audience is already using, and push them all to their software. Notes from meetings with WotC and Hasbro all began to sound like a big push to add microtransactions to a tabletop game and corner their audience into spaces where they will get a piece of any profit being made related to D&D, which is a far cry from the open and collaborative license that we had all enjoyed up until recently. It is all just scummy corporate bs and I’m not going to give them any more of my money until they stop.
Whats VTT, virtual table top? Like a companion app to support playing sessions? Sounds like they were more open regarding custom content than they legally had to in the past and now they are taking these grants away from the community? Like using official content and names in custom adventures and selling them?
Yeah, a virtual tabletop, which due to covid, have exploded in popularity over the last few years. What it really feels like in the community was that between the “Golden Age” of D&D 3-3.5 and even the “Dark Ages” of 4th edition, the publishers at Wizards of the Coast at the time had intended to license most of the ability to make and create content for D&D and share it openly and the original Open Games License at the time was written such that it couldn’t be revoked and that content for D&D would be able to be created and shared openly. The new OGL being pushed by WotC attempts to retract the previous license and includes language that states that WotC owns or has rights to any and all content published for D&D by third party homebrewers, and any profits made up to a ridiculously high number made by third parties was owed to WotC, which is a complete 180 from the previous OGL and many people were rightfully angry about it.
Thank you for explaining!
Besides 3.5 is better /s mostly. Its my preferred system but enjoy what you like
I’ve almost entirely switched to Pathfinder at this point and I’m having a great time.
First end or second edition I have been on first since wotx pulled their bs with 4th edition
Second, I’m looking at the 1e adventures though, I might have to delve into them, even if I’m rewriting them for 2e.