Halfway Through 2023: Wizards of the Coast Ruining Their Community Reputation

Nerds, or geeks as I prefer to self-identify, can be a fickle group.  It’s so easy to get us excited with fan-service of our favorite things, like seeing Lord of The Rings (LotR) cards coming out from Magic:  The Gathering (MtG).  I was hype when they came out, even going so far as to buy each of the four precon EDH decks (easily doubling the amount of money I’ve spent on MtG in the last three years).  But it’s also way too easy to upset us nerds, sometimes with the mismanagement of an intellectual property (IP) that we like (looking at you LOTR:  Gollum) and sometimes by overflooding the market with a single IP until it feels like it matters less (Embracer wanting to “exploit” the LOTR to take over the gaming industry). 

I should probably get off the Lord of the Rings examples for a moment, because I’m not talking about Tolkein’s legacy today.  

No, I’m here to discuss Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the company that owns Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and the previously mentioned MtG. Owned by Hasbro, Wizards looks, on the outside, like the ultimate nerd company, providing two of the biggest names in tabletop games, role-playing or trading card.  The company has also been doing pretty well for itself lately, seeing record profits for the last eight straight years.  D&D has been a big part of that streak with success from the unveiling of 5e, the rise of D&D in pop culture like Stranger Things, and the beginnings of virtual tabletop tools coming at the perfect time for those locked down by the pandemic to keep playing.  The whole Dungeons & Dragons:  Honor Among Thieves might also be a sign, sure, but we’ll get to that in a minute.  MtG is also looking strong, with reports that the IP brought in $1 billion in 2022, amped up thanks in part to popular cross-promotional products like the Warhammer 40K set.  

And yet....for all the success and the financial gains WotC has been bringing in, it feels like a lot of us nerds aren’t super pleased with the company responsible for our biggest hobby addictions.  While mainstream and economic success are always going to be the most important factors considered by industry CEOs and all those business people that I assume wear suits all the time, it’s hard to not look at Wizards in a different light, the way that a fan does.  After all, both of their cash-cows only exist because of the crazy fan base that keeps those profits rising.  Be honest, would a normal person spend $200 on a Monday morning to buy cardboard pictures of Sam and Frodo with “heh, Food tokens, hilarious” as their only reason? No, no they wouldn’t, but I’m not normal.  I’m a geek and that means I show love by spending too much money on dumb things.  

You see the important part of what I just said, right?  I show love by spending money. 

So yes, I’ll sell my kidneys to buy more crap from WotC, but I do so out of love.  That means, if the love dries up, so does my desire to bring my bank balance to zero.  Wizards has a serious threat looming towards them, the threat of their passionate fan base losing interest in their IPs and going to other fandoms.  Honestly, if executives at Hasbro think that mainstream audiences will buy a single bugbear mini for $4.99, they’re insane; the pricing on any D&D or MtG product is inflated as all Hell and it’s only because we’ve been investing in the game for decades that we’re willing to pay for goods like this.  

But that’s the issue I want to talk about today:  with 2023 coming to its halfway point, it’s time to really look at the six months Wizards of the Coast has had and how their community is judging them for it.  While this article will look at the high points for the nerdy super giant, (spoilers) a lot of this discussion is going to be negative BECAUSE WotC has done a LOT of slimy business in the first half of this year.  Between business decisions that clearly push profits over player experience to obvious attempts to weaken competition to threatening YouTubers with literal hired thugs, I’m going to go over all of the major moments Wizards of the Coast has had in 2023 so far.  By the end of the article, maybe we’ll have a better idea of why so many nerds and geeks alike are turning away from one of the cornerstones of the nerd community.

This article was always planning to go chronologically through 2023, so that makes it really convenient that Wizard’s worst piece of PR in YEARS came on January 5th, 2023. While some of us were still recovering from New Year’s Eve parties, internal documents leaked showing that WotC were planning to go back on the Open Game License (OGL) 1.0a they had created back in 2000. To make a complicated business-y term a lot easier to understand, the OGL meant that other companies and individual content creators could use ideas and mechanics from D&D without having to get official permission. Pretty much, as long as you weren’t using their art or their character names, you could take as much inspiration from D&D rulesets as you wanted. Overall, people agree that this was awesome because you could make D&D-related content and put it out into the world. Sites like DMsGuild and Kobold Press, or any homebrew content creators of your choice, wouldn’t be able to sell their products if they weren’t protected by the OGL. Actual Play podcasts like Critical Role, Dimension 20, The Adventure Zone, and others would not exist at all (or at least would probably have to use a different game system and lose a ton of their viewers) if the OGL didn’t allow them to use the 5e system. Even more dramatic, it let companies use mechanics and language from D&D without having to create an entirely new system, which was great for the smaller developers while also letting players jump to new game systems with less time spent learning a brand new rulebook. You ever heard of a little game called Pathfinder? Second biggest TRPG system in the world? Yeah, that was created thanks to the OGL, so that’s awesome. Now, the OGL 1.0a has had changes and alterations in its history, usually at the time that a new edition of the D&D ruleset came out, but overall it’s been a pillar of Dungeons & Dragons’ brand for the entire 21st century; and through that, a positive force in the entire tabletop community that allowed us to see strong growth across the board (pun intended) for the last 20 years.

It really does say a lot about the good will of a company to have a near-monopoly on a hobby to decide that they’ll allow others to utilize parts of their copyright to make the overall community stronger. Granted, the OGL was always a net benefit for D&D as all of the homebrew content, any podcasts showing people playing D&D, all helped WotC’s brand. Homebrew meant people would still be playing their game, not someone else’s, and the gods only know how many people bought their first Player’s Handbook thanks to watching the Critical Role cast. Overall, the wave of third-party content has to be seen as a win for WotC because it meant that they would never see a lack of playable media, and they didn’t even have to do the work of making it themselves. The fact remains, however, that this was a huge step taken only a year or two after Hasbro bought Wizards, and to make a step in such a community-friendly direction is incredible. I mean it, think of how many companies you can name in 2023 that would willingly help its potential competition just to strengthen the industry as a whole. I can’t think of many, personally.

Which makes this next bit more unfortunate, because Wizards of the Coast is no longer a part of that small list. On January 5th, 2023, document leaks showed the world that Wizards was planning to create a new OGL 1.1, which would attempt to undo the protections of the original OGL 1.0a. The big changes would be that many third-party creators would now need to seek permission from WotC, new fees that would have to be paid to Wizards for the license, giving WotC permission to use third-party material for its own purposes, and the possibility of non-book content like videos and podcasts of being shut down. Besides the legal debates about whether or not Wizards can actually get rid of OGL 1.0a, which really does seem like it may not be able to do, the future impacts this could have on the industry are enormous. This could mean the end of shows like Dimension 20, major sanctions taken out against Paizo and other publishing houses, but worst of all would be how WotC could use any independent content it wants for free; all of the hard work any writers or artists do under OGL 1.1 could be legally snatched by Wizards and turned into advertising or even end up taken and copied into an official rulebook. Thankfully, as bad as this issue looked like it would be, it didn’t really have a chance to play out because fans got ANGRY about this, fast.

Within hours, most nerdy journalism platforms were reporting on the situation and within days, mass protests of D&D had begun. Probably the biggest community response was the push for users to cancel their D&D Beyond subscriptions, starting the #DnDBegone movement online to raise awareness and hurt Wizard’s coin purse. In terms of industry response, however, nothing compared to the steps that other TRPG companies took almost immediately. Most of the powerhouses in TRPGs would ban together to create the Open RPG Creative (ORC) license, an open license to combat the OGL 1.1 that Paizo claims will provide “a legal ‘safe harbor’ for sharing rules mechanics and encourages collaboration and innovation in the tabletop gaming space.” By this point, thousands of different companies have shown support for the ORC system or signed onto it, which you have to imagine is a significant part of the overall industry. Today, the license is closing in on being copyrighted by the Library of Congress, making this officially protected material that WotC won’t be able to do anything about.

Now, with all of this backlash that started as soon as the story leaked, Wizards began stepping back from the proposal and attempting to fix their PR, citing the “incredible outpour of dedication and passion” of fans as they tried to mend the OGL 1.1 to still make them more money while pacifying fans. Their definitive response came relatively quickly, less than two weeks later, but was perhaps still too little, too late. WotC announced that they would not be going through with the ideas seen in the leaks, totally discarding this OGL 1.1 in favor of a new OGL 1.2, which they claimed dealt with most of the problems that customers were complaining about. A major component of 1.2 seems to be that it will be giving out the D&D mechanics, similar to the past, but also continuing to deauthorize the OGL 1.0a in the future (jury is still out if they can actually do that). They’ve used the reasoning that this allows them to legally go after content creators with hateful messages that hurt Wizard’s brand with the association (thinking back to their lawsuit with the revived TSR and their racist rulesets). In particular, it’s been noted that the OGL 1.2 sets Wizards up to be able to combat third party virtual tabletop services that let players see and use maps online. WotC has been developing their own service for a few years now, with early testing still going on, so this particular element feels very strategic.

So, it’s been months since the OGL disaster occurred and while it isn’t being reported on anymore, it’s clear that D&D fans and creators haven’t forgiven Wizards yet. Rumors have been swirling for months about different Actual Play podcasts (even the mighty and WotC-recognized Critical Role) could be stepping away from 5e as their ruleset of choice. As mentioned, Pazio and the rest of the industry is hard at work solidifying the protections of the ORC license for future creators, setting WotC up in potentially a “one vs all” situation. In fact, less than 24 hours before this article was published, Paizo unveiled the final draft of the ORC license. Worst of all, the community itself, all of the players that spent their money and time loving the TRPG hobby, have realized that WotC doesn’t have their best interests as a priority, but rather to truly take over the tabletop market and smother competition. With new editions of D&D still possibly in the works for this year, we’ll all be watching cautiously to see what license changes are proposed and if the OGL 1.0a system is truly dead. Still, this is a shot to Wizard’s reputation that I think will take years to be forgiven.

Our second big flop of Wizard’s 2023 comes in the form of something that I really liked. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was released on March 31, 2023 and it gave us the wonderful acronym of D&D H.A.T. that I love and will use the rest of this article. I want to be very upfront about this, I thought H.A.T. was awesome. It had that fun action/adventure energy that everyone credits to Guardians of the Galaxy (when true scholars know that The Mummy was the real origin point) where the movie is allowed to be serious but not take itself too seriously at any point. It had a decent script, a nice mix of necessary exposition and setting up a fantasy world for D&D fans and newcomers. Most importantly, it wasn’t a total heap of garbage. Be honest, we all assumed it was going to be bad. I did, you did, your mother who doesn’t understand RPGs even thought it would suck. And then it didn’t. Instead it was a fine movie, maybe even a good movie. I’ve already discussed how insane we are as TRPG fans, so we would’ve been happy with something sub-par if it meant seeing a new D&D movie; part of being a fan is sometimes being willing to sit through awful film adaptations for the sake of our fandom (looking at you, almost every anime series theatrical film ever). So I was blown away when H.A.T. ended up being an above-average Summer blockbuster. Granted, it’s no Oscar-contender, but no one thought it would be or really wanted it to be one. We wanted a decent movie, made for nerds instead of made for mainstream appeal and profits, that would capture the real heart of playing Dungeons & Dragons: finding time to be stupid and crack jokes while saving the world with our friends.

The crazy part was, TRPG fans aren’t the only ones who agreed. Critics overall were surprisingly positive when speaking about the movie, with a 72 on Metacritic and a shocking 90% fresh with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It also made itself a decent bit of gold coin at the box office, staying in the top 10 for almost two months and earning $208 million globally. For a movie that sounds like it has pretty limited mainstream appeal, H.A.T. brought in a healthy number of non-nerds that wanted to see another light-hearted action film (Chris Pines as the leading man may have helped to, he’s one of my favorite Chris-es in Hollywood). That sounds pretty great, right?

Right?

Unfortunately, $205 million only sounds big for us NPCs and Tier 1 play, not those level 20 bigshots in Hollywood. D&D: H.A.T. had a reported budget of $150 million. If you take that cost, then double it to account for all of the advertising and marketing that went on for months before the release, then it looks like the movie is probably losing Paramount Pictures money until DVD sales can help make some profits in the months to come. Even if they make all of that money back in the secondary markets (and I’m sure the DVDs will sell great, most of my friends and I will probably buy our own at-home copies), a true Hollywood blockbuster needs to be earning all of that gold in the box office. After all, every time a movie hits the Top 10, you hear about it, don’t you? The financial success of a movie helps advertise it further, making more money off the fact that they made a lot of money. It also shows producers and CEOs, those people who actually make the decisions, that a film had enough interest to think of making sequels. As it stands right now, it seems unlikely that we’ll be seeing another D&D movie of this caliber in the next few years. It’s a damn shame, both for us as fans and for WotC as a company. Getting a D&D series going in Hollywood really could’ve been a turning point in the popularity of the tabletop game, but now it will probably just serve as another set-back for the company’s 2023.

Our final Critical Fail for the first half of 2023 is a two-parter and looks at MtG to wrap up. March of the Machines is, at the time of writing, the newest full set to come out for Magic: The Gathering, showing the finale of a great, multi-dimensional battle between the corruptive New Phyrexia and…pretty much every hero in the Magic universe. Now, on paper, I was super excited about this. I actually started playing Magic in High School right as the New Phyrexia set was released (for context, I played for two weeks before Caw-blade was banned in Standard), so to go back to my personal entry to the game sounded great. The Phrexians, an unstoppable army of evil biomechanical tyrants leading an army of “compleated” planeswalkers, trying to spread their oily corruption across every plane of existence? Cool, that’s a great threat, the perfect backdrop to tell a dark story where the heroes couldn’t possibly succeed.

Then the set came out and, in general, players were underwhelmed. Now, there were plenty of cool cards included, but that’s true of almost every set that Wizards puts out. For years, the MtG community has had open criticism at many of the large-scale choices made by WotC, from the quality of commons and uncommons to the downgrade from three sets per block to two; so a certain level of critique over the actual cards presented was to be expected. No, the big issue seemed to come from the fact that this incredible story, this decade-long plot to corrupt the entire multiverse, was concluded in only a couple sets; set up by Dominaria United, which released less than eight months before March.

Are you kidding me? It took only eight months for perhaps the greatest threat to life in all of Magic to be introduced and then dealt with? Really? I’ve had EDH games go longer than the invasion of Elesh Norn’s armies.

Many fans were also upset about the lack of real consequences in the overall story. While the lead up featured many planeswalkers, even the unofficial protagonist himself Jace, killed and “compelated” by Pyrexia to become twisted Borg-like versions of themselves, a lot of these characters were totally fine by the end of the set, being cleansed or redeemed or whatever way WotC wants to phrase it. Imagine if all four Avengers movies were lumped into one movie and then no one died actually at the end. Hard to really treat Thanos as a final boss when he’s dealt with in 10 minutes, and Elesh Norn is looking pretty close to jobber territory after this quick loss. Now, pay attention to the fact that MtG fans are complaining about the lore. The lore! Let’s be honest, it’s the element of most trading card games that no one really cares about, to the point that WotC has gone through phases of when they do and don’t care enough to put effort into the narratives of a set. If the lore is bad enough that most Magic players are choosing to complain about it, it must be terrible.

So, an awful narrative told way too fast with a rushed ending and no real stakes for the future. That sounds pretty rough, and normally that would be the low point of a trading card set being released, but not bad enough that it would make a list about the worst mistakes made this year. It would be awful if something else had happened, maybe in the week of its release, a PR disaster of such epic proportions that nothing could possibly save the set. But what could be THAT bad?

Oh. Well, I guess that might do it.

Yes, it’s true. Wizards of the Coast, a company famous for making trading cards and roleplaying games for nerds, actually sent the Pinkertons on a YouTuber mere days after the release of March of the Machines. March had been plagued with online leaks of most of the cards, which sucks for WotC and can’t be good for their overall profits, but it’s also nothing new. I can’t remember the last time a MtG set came out without a major leak, at this point it’s common enough that everyone should be expecting it to happen. But this isn’t just about some card images being leaked, this is about how Wizards decided to respond to the entire situation by acting in a completely over-the-top fashion that only made everything worse.

A YouTuber named Dan “oldschoolmtg” Cannon accidentally bought cards from the micro-set March of the Machines: The Aftermath, where he was sold Aftermath cards on “by mistake” with the names of the two sets getting confused. And that confusion makes sense. March of the Machines had come out days earlier, so the person who sold Cannon the product obviously thought they were selling the current set, not Aftermath, which was scheduled for release about two weeks later.

Also, can I take just a second to say how dumb it is to release the “aftermath” of a set within three weeks of the original set, and to have it as a “micro-set” with only 50 cards only seems dumber. It feels like a great way to make both sets feel less special. But I digress.

Cannon says that on Saturday, April 22nd, there was knocking on his door when a Pinkerton agent began asking about the Magic cards. “The gentleman there was very nice and very apologetic about making my wife cry first thing in the morning—by sending the heavy-duty lawmen coming to collect stuff. And talk about stolen products and jail time.” Cannon also said that those last points were threats used by the agent, who said he would go to local law enforcement and used the looming promise of fines and jail time to get the YouTuber to comply. A few days later, Cannon would release a second video where he outlined how these Pinkertons had gone around his neighborhood asking his neighbors about him and his wife, which seemed to really be the point that pushed him over the edge. I have nothing but sympathy for Mr. Cannon, who didn’t seem to be the one in the wrong here, just the poor guy who had to take the fall for this.

Now, the obvious issue here, if anyone is having trouble seeing it amid all the mess, is that WotC sent Pinkertons on a fan reviewing cards. I’ll say that again, Wizards of the Coast (a toy company) sent the Pinkerton agency (who have a long history of taking money to inflict violence against protesters and the working class) to bully someone who had gotten their toys early. That’s insane, full stop. None of the other elements, for me, really matter. This isn’t about protecting a copyright, or preventing spoilers, or trying to find a hole where cards may be getting sent out early. No, this is a billion dollar company hiring muscle to threaten a normal person who makes YouTube videos because he’s a fan of their product. You would think that there could have been a series of other decisions to make on this, like having the YouTube video taken down, but instead they resorted to hiring an infamous company, known for hurting and bullying the underdogs, treat the man the same way they’d treated union leaders and protestors for the last century. WotC have tried to defend themselves by confirming they hired Pinkertons but said that “under no circumstances would we instruct any employee or contracted agency to intimidate an individual.” The issue with this is that looking at Pinkerton's history, how could you assume that wouldn’t happen? This is an organization with a long record of violence and espionage against labor unions and workers protesting. They were at the heart of a congressional investigation into corporate aggression against unions, have been employed in the last three years by Amazon and Starbucks to disrupt workers’ movements, and were even part of a day-long shootout between Pinkertons and strikers that led to several dead and dozens injured on both sides. The company has such a history of bullying and bloodshed that it's their brand.

So you tell me, does that sound like the agency you hire to look into a YouTuber talking about Magic cards?

I love Dungeons & Dragons. It’s my favorite hobby, it’s how I stay in touch with friends from college decades later, and I’m trying to make it a focal point of my career. I also love Magic: The Gathering, it was the game that held my friend group together in high school and I’ve had a blast playing with the new LotR commander decks. What I do not love is the company that licenses those two games, Wizards of the Coast. While I originally wanted this article to be more of an Ups and Downs list, the more I wrote, the more it stood out how irrelevant those high points were compared to the stumbles that Wizards has had the last six months. From threatening legal action against most of the TRPG industry with the OGL changes to H.A.T. flopping to sending thugs to intimidate a man and his family; WotC has made some huge mistakes this year that may not cost them too much in yearly profits, but are bankrupting their community reputation. Like I said earlier, nerds show love by spending money on stuff we love, and I know plenty of people whose love for Wizards has run dry.

It’s pretty clear to me that Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro need to do something to get their community to trust them again. It doesn’t matter how many times the kids on Stranger Things reference saving throws or how much mainstream exposure D&D gets, Wizards is a company that has always been carried by its die-hard fans. Unfortunately, if the second half of 2023 is a repeat of the last six months, I don’t think they’ll have the fanbase to fight against the numerous enemies they’ve made out of their customers and their competition.

So tell me what you think, have you lost hope in Wizards of the Coast? Or am I being overdramatic? Maybe I missed a huge win for the company this year that got ignored from all of the bad PR. Tell me about it in the comments below, and thanks for reading.