The Business: SOBS' Big Move Is Fortnite Big

Bob The Wonder Shill dropped the news.

I told you that the Walled Garden was the play.

Now comes the lure. To quote one of the Comments: "Matt Colville was on Ghostfire Podcasts over the last week and they had a pretty realistic and even handed in my opinion take on Sigil. Colville observes the business model is Fortnite, for good or ill."

This is concerning.

This move to use the in-app VTT to allow users to play anything sounds like a conciliatory move. It is not. It is designed to centralize all hobbyist activity to its Walled Garden, which it owns and controls 100%, and there is not even any attempt to disclaim that as the goal. They just don't say so themselves.

Remembe folks, you have to submit to SOBS's TOS to use this. You have to agree to whatever bullshit policies they implement or eat shit. 60% of Current Edition users are Beyond-only users; SOBS knows that they can get away with this because they already have.

"But you can play GURPS with it!"

Wrong. What they're saying is "Soon you won't be able to play (competitor) any other way because you have to use our app to find the people who will play."

If you prefer older editions, in-person play, games other than Current Edition, etc. you're going to face the reality that most players will be Walled Garden users because SOBS is going to make it very convenient and easy and cheap to go into and stay in the Walled Garden while punishing not doing so by various means.

Conventional Play Cargo Cultists are going to have a very bad time going forward, both the users and the product-pushers, because the pressure this alone will exert to conform to what SOBS wants is going to overwhelm too many of them and compel them to either quit or follow SOBS to Vidya (and fail because they can't copy SOBS's Big Move).

The Bros, on the other hand, are ready to come forth from the wilderness as a vast horde come to claim all this free real estate.

Not that the Bros won't find difficulties of their own, but the Clubhouse model is not Conventional Play so a lot of typical concerns do not apply.