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.
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?