Did any heads roll over this?
I do. Perkins could leave today, announce a project on Kickstarter and probably make an order of magnitude more money than his annual salary. But he remains, ostensibly because his values align with those of WotC. I think it is reasonable to include him in the "bad WotC" camp.
I would expect so, but we never even got a straight answer about Mearls being shuffled off so I won't ever expect to hear about it until some journalist writes a complete tell-all in 2050 or something.
Now, this I find particularly out there. You have no way to know what part Perkins played in all this, to assign corporate blame to an individual like that is frankly absurd. WotC does not have "values," and I assume any employee is there for the money and the chance to play D&D at work rather than write ad copy or something.
Non-compete clauses?
From things I've heard him say and the way he's talked about D&D, it sounds more like he sees himself as being a steward of the game and that means a lot to him. I don't know his personal opinion on WotC but if hypothetically he didn't approve of the direction they were taking the company, I imagine he'd stick around to try to influence the direction of the game in whatever way he could. I get the feeling from the way he's talked about it that the game means that much to him.
You don't get this information from most businesses about employees, mostly because you're asking for a lawsuit.
"They left to pursue other opportunities."
This has ventured into conjecture and personal opinions and away from actual facts. You don't know Chris Perkins. You have no idea at what level his involvement with the OGL issue was. Baseless character assassination is distasteful.
"Character assassination" seems like hyperbole for that rather mild post by @Reynard lol.
I have to say, I've never really bought this line in the countless situations where people use it, not when they've been at place for decades without that change happening anyway. I'm sure plenty of people sign up to do precisely this - but if you're not seeing the change you want within a few years, you're likely leaving. If you're not seeing the change you want within a decade, and you're sticking around, well I think you're probably fooling yourself about why you're there.
As far as we can tell absolutely no heads rolled.
It's been less than a year. The OGL fiasco ended up delaying a bunch of kickstarters many of which have yet to fulfill. It's one thing to say that the OGL was only an issue among enthusiasts, like the people who populate these boards--that the general customer base of wotc did not and does not know or care. I'd agree with you. But then you'll probably have to accept that among enthusiasts--people who buy a lot of 3rd party content and support third party publishers including enworld itself--people are going to be salty about Wotc's proposal to cut off that entire branch of the hobby.
Yeah and tbh the only reason I see to disbelieve him is that he was acting as spokesman for a publicly traded corporate entity.
Absolutely. The corporate structure is almost inherently corrupting, in that way. I liken it to my company at the store/district/region level. Every step from store manager up is incentivized strongly to minimize compensation, investment, and anything else that they can control that increases cost and thus reduces net profit. Because of that, very few managers operate fairly, openly, and honestly, in the best interest of those they manage. If they do, if they give fair raises and encourage employees to be open with eachother about pay (which is a strongly protected right here in CA), they make less money.
This is breathtakingly ridiculous.
Yeah I’d never tell a customer what disciplinary steps I took with someone I manage. They could scream all day, they get nothing. Ever. I’d consider it a gross betrayal of everyone who works with me to do so to anyone who works with me.
