The Business: The Fracturing That Has To Happen In The Big Move Has Begun

Speaking of Wizards of the Coast, that recent revision is, well, a revision.

The TLDR is that WOTC is bullshitting about product acceptance by the User Network in order to bamboozle shareholders.

The Conventional Play Cargo Cult think that this is a sign of failure. They're not quite correct. Remember that WOTC has not changed their strategic aims; they remain committed to the Big Move, to that all-digital/always-online Live Service model.

What does this mean? Physical product sales are irrelevant, and so is immediate Beyond usage. Are the current stats bad? You bet your ass they are. Do they matter? No.

What matters is that Now Current Edition is the default now in Beyond. This will only expand with time, as WOTC begins depreciating Legacy content in Beyond and the Big Move continues its migration.

What will happen is that Beyond users will find it harder and harder to continue on with Now Past Edition. Once a critical mass of friction hits, a Preference Cascade kicks off and most users will conform to using Now Current Edition content and material because a critical mass of WOTC's users are already slaved to Beyond and cannot play at all without it. Yes, they can't even use paper and pencil; they are that badly crippled in core competencies.

WOTC will drive more and more people to Beyond, to rely entirely on Beyond, and to stay wholly within Beyond and its associated sites. That's the Walled Garden erecting itself brick by brick, and all of the Casuals/Normies/Tourists brought in by the past decade's zeitgeist will go there instead of coming out of it because that's where Muh D&D is and they are for Muh D&D and not for the hobby.

Remember who WOTC sees as competition: Fortnite, Roblox, MMOs. All of them use Walled Gardens. For the people being targetted by this pivot, this is normal and accepted. Tabletop doesn't matter to WOTC anymore, and it hasn't for years; they know they own it because their Network Effect is unassailable (which is why they only care about D&D editions and those very close to such).

The only way that this can go off the rails now is if it turns out that WOTC was on the USAID money teat. We'll find out if that's the case or not soon enough, and that goes for a lot of others pushing the poz in Tabletop- many of whom are actually cheaper than Crack whores strung out and jonesing for a hit.