Literally all OneD&D had to do was release a VTT that wasn't total dogshit. Brand it as the "Offical D&D VTT" (or just do an exclusive partnership with Fantasy Grounds for a few hundred grand), stop having your internal dev team us other VTTs as a crutch because you couldn't deliver on a 20 year old promise from back in 3.0e, release your first traunch of content zero'd in on the proprietary settings/creatures. Maybe integrate Twitch Streaming, so all the terminally online tabletop gamers can showboat their GMing style.
They could have charged anything. $30/mo? A "marketplace" for fancy icons and graphics? License fees for 3rd party mods? Quarterly expansion packs retailing for $60/release? A $1000 Platinum License that gives you a Colossal Red Dragon that flies over the map and farts to the tune of Game of Thrones? Done. Sold. Nerds would be spending infiniti money on it. WotC would be rolling deep.
Instead, they absolutely had to fuck the golden goose. Well... congratulations. Enjoy your prize.
They could have even included the VTT lock down stuff, which all they seem to really care about with the change, but they had to go and try and leech all that 3rd party table top rpg money, which got people to actually look at it. Like most people were on the "it's not that bad, these are clickbait youtubers" until the leaks about 25% revenue sharing and license back requirements.
The funniest thing about this is that all of the third party tabletop RPG money put together is probably like 10% of the size of D&D's official products. This is not an industry that generates huge profits, and tons of releases make little to no profit.
Seriously, like, you already have the monopoly. You’re the vast majority of this market! Doing something like this is just trying to get blood from a stone
My understanding is that Paizo is like, the second biggest TTRPG company and pulls in like 12 million in revenue a year. WotC already had essentially all the TTRPG money there is to be had. Completely unforced error here.
Literally all OneD&D had to do was release a VTT that wasn't total dogshit. Brand it as the "Offical D&D VTT" (or just do an exclusive partnership with Fantasy Grounds for a few hundred grand), stop having your internal dev team us other VTTs as a crutch because you couldn't deliver on a 20 year old promise from back in 3.0e, release your first traunch of content zero'd in on the proprietary settings/creatures. Maybe integrate Twitch Streaming, so all the terminally online tabletop gamers can showboat their GMing style.
They could have charged anything. $30/mo? A "marketplace" for fancy icons and graphics? License fees for 3rd party mods? Quarterly expansion packs retailing for $60/release? A $1000 Platinum License that gives you a Colossal Red Dragon that flies over the map and farts to the tune of Game of Thrones? Done. Sold. Nerds would be spending infiniti money on it. WotC would be rolling deep.
Instead, they absolutely had to fuck the golden goose. Well... congratulations. Enjoy your prize.
As an Activision executive once said, golden eggs are nice and all, but sometimes there's nothing like a good foie gras :porky-happy:
They could have even included the VTT lock down stuff, which all they seem to really care about with the change, but they had to go and try and leech all that 3rd party table top rpg money, which got people to actually look at it. Like most people were on the "it's not that bad, these are clickbait youtubers" until the leaks about 25% revenue sharing and license back requirements.
The funniest thing about this is that all of the third party tabletop RPG money put together is probably like 10% of the size of D&D's official products. This is not an industry that generates huge profits, and tons of releases make little to no profit.
Seriously, like, you already have the monopoly. You’re the vast majority of this market! Doing something like this is just trying to get blood from a stone
Corporatism is not about making a profit. It's about maximizing profits.
Flipping a coin, and if it’s heads you go from 95% market share to 98%, if it’s tails you go from 95% to 50%. :galaxy-brain:
My understanding is that Paizo is like, the second biggest TTRPG company and pulls in like 12 million in revenue a year. WotC already had essentially all the TTRPG money there is to be had. Completely unforced error here.