I am recently coming back to D&D after an almost two decade hiatus. I have noticed that there seem to be a lot of sour grapes towards Hasbro and WotC. I know that there was the whole issue with the Open Game License, and that there has always been a portion of the community that think that the new edition has killed the game. But it seems a little extreme for these items (or at least my understanding).
Is there another reason for the sour grapes or is there something that I am missing? It is hyped up for ratings/likes?
Hasbro desperately wants to enact a late stage capitalism “enshitification” model with D&D where they squeeze as much money out of customers and business partners as possible. Their priority for providing a satisfactory experience is no longer the player of D&D, it’s the shareholders and they have proved it over the last six months with their OGL and IP antics.
However, D&D is different than other products. The CEO’s in charge come from mobile games and Amazon and thought they could squeeze the same way they did previously, but because of an independent, creative, analog, and DM centric community, they weren’t able to and experienced a lot of pushback that made them relent.
Make no mistake, though, that is still their goal and have openly stated that the brand is “under monetized”. That’s why they want to lock players into using their VTT platform/digital tools and are prioritizing these while mildly discouraging actual physical products. This gives them 100% control of the brand and allows for them to squeeze money later.
If you’re here from Reddit, just know that Hasbro would love to do what Spez is doing. Sly Flourish has a great video on the enshittification of Reddit and how it affects D&D: https://youtu.be/9WGxBtObgl8