Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0) • Hacker News Board

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#161

Post by wolverine876 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

Macha wrote: post #158

wolverine876 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original author was an executive at WotC, with access to professional legal advice. If they wanted the license to be irrevocable, they would have put it in the license.

If we look at other contemporary licenses reviewed by professional legal advice, like the GPLv2, Creative Commons v1-3, MIT, Apache v1, they all have the same omission of irrevocable, and it was about another ten years before they released newer iterations with that magic language (or didn't, in the case of MIT). It's also not speculation that that was the intent of the original author, they're on record from both th…

> It's also not speculation that that was the intent of the original author, they're on record

Yes, a corporate executive is on record making a claim like that. Do you take it a face value?

This person is a sophisticated actor in a company that runs on IP. It doesn't matter what FOSS licenses said, and I don't have time to look into that. If Wizards wanted "irrevocable", it would say that. Did you see Wizards' attempt to redefine 'irrevocable' in the first revised draft? Same company.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#162

Post by Macha » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #161

Macha wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we look at other contemporary licenses reviewed by professional legal advice, like the GPLv2, Creative Commons v1-3, MIT, Apache v1, they all have the same omission of irrevocable, and it was about another ten years before they released newer iterations with that magic language (or didn't, in the case of MIT). It's also not speculation that that was the intent of the original author, they're on record from both th…

> It's also not speculation that that was the intent of the original author, they're on record Yes, a corporate executive is on record making a claim like that. Do you take it a face value? This person is a sophisticated actor in a company that runs on IP. It doesn't matter what FOSS licenses said, and I don't have time to look into that. If Wizards wanted "irrevocable", it would say that. Did you see Wizards' attemp…

> Yes, a corporate executive is on record making a claim like that. Do you take it a face value?

When there's twenty years of track record and a prior occasion (D&D 4e's GSL) where it would have been advantageous for them to try this, sure. You can't have a legal contract say an ambiguous statement then spend a literal decade promoting one interpretation then switch to another. This is why US laws about detrimental reliance or EU standards like promissory estoppel exist.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#163

Post by boomboomsubban » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

deeviant wrote: post #72

boomboomsubban wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring. Yet somehow the product completely sold out in under an hour. I really don't understand the outrage on that decision, would y…

> I really don't understand the outrage on that decision What decision are you claiming people were outraged? Because the actual reason people where outraged is the very existence of the magic 30th edition in the first place. It is one of the clearest and starkest examples of a company disrespecting it's customer, ever.

>. It is one of the clearest and starkest examples of a company disrespecting it's customer, ever.

Why?

Compare it to some other fanbases. With music, printing a super pricy limited edition of an album with extra non-music content is a normal decision. With sneakers, that's like the entire market. With comic books limited edition posters and figures are commonplace.

So many fandoms have outlets for the rich megafans that the average fan can just ignore without any real issue. Why is it disrespecting the customer? I can understand disliking the side sets having chase cards that are necessary for some formats, and could see those as disrespecting the customer, but not these.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#164

Post by jqr- » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #129

pdonis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it. There are plenty of people who a…

I’m still holding out hope I’ll be able to have a D&D renneisance after I retire (or maybe when the kids are old enough).

You absolutely will. I just got back into it after a 25 year hiatus, and playing with young people that weren't even born back then, and having a blast in the process.

There's a thriving comunity out there, and so far I've been welcome with open arms every time I've reached out.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#165

Post by boomboomsubban » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

45683344568 wrote: post #93

boomboomsubban wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring. Yet somehow the product completely sold out in under an hour. I really don't understand the outrage on that decision, would y…

Read the sale ended early [1], not necessarily sold out. [1] https://dotesports.com/mtg/news/magic-30th-anniversary-editi...

Shutting it down for publicity after starting the sale makes no sense, you're pissing off both those that want them and those that hate them.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#166

Post by wnevets » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

vaylian wrote: post #48

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled. * WoTC releases the 30th aniver…

> Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years.

Why can't things just exist and be profitable enough to continue? Why must EVERYTHING be ruined by the drive for high but short-term profits?

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#167

Post by noxvilleza » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 2:05 AM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #153

pdonis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it. There are plenty of people who a…

I left the game as I got older. At the end of the day it just didn’t make sense to spend what magic cost if I could only play a few hours a week. It’s easy to spend over $3600/year on M:TG if you want to play competitively and that just doesn’t make sense to me if I’m getting roughly 100 hours of play in. I could do far better things with over $30/hour for hobbies.

(will try be a bit verbose here so that people who are not MTG fans will still be able to follow sorry if it's a slog to get through!)

I was in a similar boat, though for a long time during university I shared a collection with a friend and we did a pretty good job at selling off stuff to keep the effective costs down.

Since 2016, I stopped playing heavily rotational formats like Standard [for those unfamiliar, there's many different formats of MTG which are played and 'Standard' is one of the most popular ones in which you can play "all the mainline cards released from the last X sets", normally ~2 years worth], and moved to Modern [all cards printed since mid-2003 are playable]. My hope was that because of the longer (and growing) availability of cards, Modern would be more affordable in the long term - since decks would remain viable for long periods of time (perhaps with small adjustments with new cards coming out) and would retain value as a result.

Then over ~20 months, that view changed a lot. First Wizards banned Oko & Mox Opal in January 2020. Firstly, these cards lost value directly - but they also caused quite a big shift in the metagame to the point where entire decks got awful, and hence less valuable. Then in mid-2021 they released the Modern Horizons 2 set, which had a massive impact on very many Modern decks (per MTGGoldfish, 8 of the 10 most commonly played creatures in the Modern metagame at the moment are from Modern Horizons 2). Once again, this totally decimated the value of many existing cards.

I hate the sort of "MTG Finance" approach to the MTG scene, but like you say - it's hard to justify $30/hr for a hobby, and its clear that Hasbro will print whatever it takes to maximize their profits (even if it has a significant negative impact on existing customers).

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#168

Post by Alex3917 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 2:14 AM UTC

vaylian wrote: post #48

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled. * WoTC releases the 30th aniver…

For context, selling toys to kids is no longer profitable, so Hasbro is going all in on making and selling toys for adults. This is a massive pivot for the company, and lots of the existing staff will ultimately be laid off. That’s why everyone there is behaving erratically.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#169

Post by noxvilleza » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 2:24 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #143

jofer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's honestly not so much that set. It's the sheer amount of new supplemental sets that they're throwing out, many of which are cards that you basically _have_ to but to remain competitive. Formats like legacy and vintage are no longer things you can buy into and play a similar deck for a long period of time. Instead, they're things where you have to buy new cards once every two to four weeks to remain competitive. T…

> It's the sheer amount of new supplemental sets that they're throwing out, many of which are cards that you basically _have_ to but to remain competitive. That’s literally been going since around Mirrodin. It’s why I gave up on the game. Now I just have a massive set of only commons that everyone can build their decks with and I don’t have to deal with the insane power inflation.

I think the problem has always existed, but to a much lesser extent than it has in the last 3-4 years. Vintage has always had the bulk of deck's value in Power 9 and lands, and the only recent changes there have been things like Mystic Sanctuary ($1 card), Cavern of Souls ($10 when it came out in 2012, now $50), Urza's Saga ($40), etc. Legacy & Modern also rely on an expensive but versatile land base, but in terms of staples they've both been hit hard by stuff like Modern Horizons 2 where stuff like Ragavan, Urza's Saga, and the elementals (Fury, Endurance, Subtlety, etc) are so pushed that they warp the metagame drastically. I can't think of a time when that was case in a way which impacted so many different decks. Some cards were problematic (Oko!) and made specific decks that included it much better for a time, but I've never seen a single set impact modern in such a big way.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#170

Post by klodolph » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 2:28 AM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #153

pdonis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it. There are plenty of people who a…

I left the game as I got older. At the end of the day it just didn’t make sense to spend what magic cost if I could only play a few hours a week. It’s easy to spend over $3600/year on M:TG if you want to play competitively and that just doesn’t make sense to me if I’m getting roughly 100 hours of play in. I could do far better things with over $30/hour for hobbies.

I've always enjoyed the limited formats. I've periodically checked back in and played in prereleases or leagues or whatnot, without ever committing to building something preconstructed.

I think I may be done, though. The power and complexity creep has gotten to me in the past few years. I can understand that cards need to be rebalanced, or that new rules get introduced over time, but the complexity of the current version of the game has gotten out of hand. The cynic in me says that the power creep is there so that people playing formats like modern will pay for new sets, and since the new cards are more powerful and have more abilities, it drags down the game.