There's still a lot to see about what D&D One actually is in terms of product and not system. But these moves really make me suspect that they're going to try to make it a walled garden of player-driven transactional rewards, and to minimize the DM role as much as possible.
If their theoretical, non-existent One VTT does all the mechanical work for the DM and dresses up lots of cheap player customization options that players actually want, the DM's power to decide the system is diminished. If anyone can DM without memorizing hundreds of rules and looking up obscure 3rd-party homebrew fixes, Hasbro bets the DM can yell all they want, the players will go to One.
I don't know or think it'll succeed - there's zero track record from anyone involved in this specific kind of venture - but I think this is Hasbro giving up on the tabletop community and going all in on VTTs and casuals who don't know (or know but don't like or care) about any existing community. If Hasbro already aren't making money off DMs, and they couldn't bend the existing DMs creating content into their new system, then they'll take their cultural cachet and do something on their own that doesn't require that kind of DM.
Yeah. Why not? Monetizing only 20% of the player base in DMs isn't making them enough money to justify the investment otherwise, and casual DMs don't care about any of this.
If their theoretical, non-existent One VTT does all the mechanical work for the DM and dresses up lots of cheap player customization options that players actually want, the DM's power to decide the system is diminished. If anyone can DM without memorizing hundreds of rules and looking up obscure 3rd-party homebrew fixes, Hasbro bets the DM can yell all they want, the players will go to One.
I don't know or think it'll succeed - there's zero track record from anyone involved in this specific kind of venture - but I think this is Hasbro giving up on the tabletop community and going all in on VTTs and casuals who don't know (or know but don't like or care) about any existing community. If Hasbro already aren't making money off DMs, and they couldn't bend the existing DMs creating content into their new system, then they'll take their cultural cachet and do something on their own that doesn't require that kind of DM.