Reading the article, I see WotC are saying this, but nothing from Hasbro. With them being the parent company, does WotC even have a say in if DnD is sold to Tencent?
I don't know how this even works, but wouldn't it be Hasbro's call? Can a subsidiary owned by a bigger company sell itself or would it be up to the bigger company? 🤔
I was under the impression that the whole thing has been about Tencent wanting to license the digital product rights to D&D, not the actual game. I'm not sure why that's caused an uproar over the actual IP ownership.
I don't think Tencent would be a particularly great owner for the D&D brand, but they might have been more hands-off than Hasbro went it comes to mucking with the business model, and a major shakeup for D&D could be good. Honestly, WotC (or just D&D) could be doing better if it was an independent operation as opposed to subsidizing the Hasbro revenue sink.
they might have been more hands-off than Hasbro went it comes to mucking with the business model,
Hasbro was extremely hands off for a long while. But then their toy lines fell apart and their board game revenue just became "How many times can we sell you the same box of Monopoly pieces?"
Suddenly WotC was their revenue stream, and the head managers decided they needed to apply their magic touch to the franchise.
I don't really care, because D&D is more a style of playing than a product for sale. Sucks to see Faerun or Eberon cannibalized by these ghouls, but there's just so much fucking material out there that's never going away.
It's just not a game you can ruin (and 4e fucking tried, let me tell you). Too much of it is bound up in what you and your friends bring to the table.
I agree that D&D will always exist, I am just personally uninterested in the direction the game is going with the OneD&D, and I think the source of this muddling path is do to the failure of the original business maneuver with the OGL revision. I don't really see things getting better under Hasbro, so any major shakeup might be a good thing overall.