A call for another Boycott
It's been long, and I know many people here just don't buy from WotC or Hasbro anymore. But if you do, I'm calling on you to stop. The direction in which the company is going is going to completely destroy Dungeons & Dragons by the end of the decade or even earlier. But what is my reasoning behind this Boycott? I give the following:
- Admittance to using generative AI and planning to continue. I know a majority of the D&D community are artists. As I and many others. In case you didn't know WotC actively posted and I believe used AI to generate an image for a MTG promotional picture in early 2024. Chris Cocks, Hasbro CEO also said the following about AI in Dungeons & Dragons:
"Inside of development, we've already been using AI. It's mostly machine-learning-based AI or proprietary AI as opposed to a ChatGPT approach. We will deploy it significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid. I'm probably more excited though about the playful elements of AI. If you look at a typical D&D player....I play with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. There's not a single person who doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That's a clear signal that we need to be embracing it. We need to do it carefully, we need to do it responsibly, we need to make sure we pay creators for their work, and we need to make sure we're clear when something is AI-generated. But the themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling, I think you're going to see that not just our hardcore brands like D&D but also multiple of our brands."
I believe that this is just the beginning of the slopification of Dungeons & Dragons content. Not only is this use of AI harmful to anyone who has done anything creative in their life but it also signals that they are willing to stoop to a level as low as using AI to create content for Dungeons & Dragons. This is the first step in what I call the Hasbro-WotC Corpo Replacement Theory or HWCCRT. I believe that Hasbro, and sub-sequentially WotC, in a move to maximize profit and control over their brand, planning to remove the Dungeon Master eventually. Hasbro and WotC are corporations who want money, and you know what the best way to make money is? Control. Control and dominance. If Hasbro were to phase out the Dungeon Master, replace it with an advanced generative AI they would have full control of what stories can be told, every aspect of the game, everything. I believe that this is their ultimate end goal. The vast plan to turn D&D into something ultra-accessible, so that anyone with a wallet can play it and never experience anything negative while playing it is just beginning. If we allow it to continue by 2050 people will be playing games entirely online with AI dungeon masters and AI generated rulebooks with AI art inside of them. The only thing WotC will have to pay will be the server running costs and internet bill. Then, when they can pump out slop every day, they'll have us conditioned like rats on heroin in a lab. They'll get rid of the difficulty, challenge, anything that allows the people to play freely. This would be the last step of an AI-infused D&D, and it's something I hope we'll never have to see.
Mass Layoffs. In October, 2024, WotC laid off less than 100 people. Yes, this is small, but it's also contributing to the Hasbro-WotC Corpo Replacement Theory as these layoffs would be the first steps to getting rid of people they have to pay and using AI to replace them. These also are added to some 1100 people laid off in 2023, and an additional 800 people, this together makes somewhere less than 2000 people laid off. Who will take the jobs of these people now that their positions are open? I think it will be AI. It's all coming together.
Evil Shit. WotC are straight up villains a lot of the time, and if it didn't get them in as much trouble as it does they would probably do it more. The whole WotC Pinkerton MTG thing which happened in 2023 is still something we should be very pissed at WotC about. Nobody should be forgetting this or forgiving them for doing it in the first place. Sending the Pinkertons after some guy who got MTG cards a little early is absurd and is not something that we can just say "Oh well" about. If we collectively decide to ignore or forget this event then we let Wotc/Hasbro win and they learn they can just do it, and do it silently.
So, I ask you, r/DND to help teach the people who make our games a lesson, more importantly, the Corpos who run it all. We need to act, because if we don't then we normalize this behavior. So, if you agree with me, I ask one thing of you and that is to not buy anything produced by Hasbro or WotC until they get their act together.
(sorry about weird numbering on the things if it goes 1, 1, 2, then it's a weird reddit formatting thing. It should be 1, 2, 3.)