I'm just here wondering what exactly anyone thinks they can do about it. If you don't want to eliminate the profit motive that incentivizes companies to make these things, we're just going to see more of them. Consumer boycotts don't work. Whining on mtg salvation dot com definitely doesn't work. Even just not buying magic cards probably won't work because it's not really customer feedback. Spamming maro doesn't work because the dude knows his audience isn't really representative of 90% of the people who play this game but moreover it's not his decision.
Have you considered pushing for, maybe like a law against "surprise" products? It worked pretty well for the EU with regard to loot boxes.
Also the whole "it hurts lgs" is a nonstarter bc lgs are just as free to buy the products and sell them at a markup, which they do.
So why don’t we run Secret Lair through local game stores? The short answer is we can’t logistically, at least not without drastically raising the price and taking significantly longer to get the product to you.
Secret Lair is what is known as a “short window print to order” product. It requires having a single uniform ordering point, otherwise there’s no way to monitor the time cut-off. Also, with print to order, you want a single uniform shipping point. In addition, we want the product to get to as many players as possible (and yes, we’re working on the global reach issues) and many players do not have easy access to a local game store.
I don't get why shipping these Secret Lair cards to LGS costs more; they could be included with other releases like Ikoria, for example. It sounds a bit bogus to me, but it might be true. Who knows?
I mean, if you want to produce a product only for the people who pre-order it, it doesn't make much sense to add a middleman who then ships it to you. If you want to sell something with a limited window to order, it also doesn't make sense to do it through an lgs since they have to reply back with signups somehow and coordinate orders. You could try, but it's just not going to work as well as direct sales.
If you're thinking of it more like a from the vault type situation, then that removes the whole limited window, secret revealed shortly before, bespoke nature of the product.
If a company is incapable of turning a profit while maintaining basic ethical standards to avoid the blatant exploitation of compulsive behaviors... then yeah, cancel it.
Blatant exploitation of compulsive behaviors is the central core of their business model. It's not an LCG.
So what is to be done? Just kill the whole game? Or maybe we could just kill the profit motive that spurs these inventions. Re-establish the game as a co-operative enterprise whose first responsibility is to the people who play it, rather than the people who own it.
Lets be real too, the original release schedule of just 4 sets per year is unsustainable as a retail product. Booster sales fall off almost immediately after launch and that big stretch between spring set and fall set is a financial low point. It might have been acceptable when the magic team at wotc was like 10 people, but with all the staffing and weird side stuff they have going on now it's pretty much imperative that they have new stuff out there so sales don't take such big nosedives.
So, it's a company that needs to make a profit to pay the people who own the company. This means anything is fair game. It's not anti-consumer it's pro-owner. If stocks go up then everything is fine. If you want the company to be more responsive to you, you either need to become an owner of the company with significant enough sway, or you need to break up the concept the companies are more responsive to their owners than their consumers or the general public. One way you could do that is by forcing the company to be under public control, with publically assigned owners and a general mandate against profiteering. Another way you could do that is to establish laws and regulations that define what company conduct is acceptable, with significant penalties for violations.
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Let's be real, the paper stock market is just as much a game as the game itself
Have you considered pushing for, maybe like a law against "surprise" products? It worked pretty well for the EU with regard to loot boxes.
Also the whole "it hurts lgs" is a nonstarter bc lgs are just as free to buy the products and sell them at a markup, which they do.
I mean, if you want to produce a product only for the people who pre-order it, it doesn't make much sense to add a middleman who then ships it to you. If you want to sell something with a limited window to order, it also doesn't make sense to do it through an lgs since they have to reply back with signups somehow and coordinate orders. You could try, but it's just not going to work as well as direct sales.
If you're thinking of it more like a from the vault type situation, then that removes the whole limited window, secret revealed shortly before, bespoke nature of the product.
Pretty, uh, impotent.
Blatant exploitation of compulsive behaviors is the central core of their business model. It's not an LCG.