Hasbro/WotC tries to destroy D&D in one fell swoop

[Samwise]

I have to imagine that third parties were always aware of this kind of thing as an existential risk

...and if they weren't before, they sure as hell are now.   

[Tebonas]

From the way they walked that back it really seems they didn't think that would become such a shitshow. Are the people at Hasbro really really dumb?

[Trippy]

Yes.

Edit: it's literally this meme personified:

[Threash]

From the way they walked that back it really seems they didn't think that would become such a shitshow. Are the people at Hasbro really really dumb?

I don't know, I am thinking they just proposed something ridiculous so they can make a show of walking it back and then people will be more willing to accept their "compromise" which will still suck, but maybe slightly less egregiously.

[Tebonas]

Then they should fire their PR department to the last person. They sell something replaceable by people with smart ideas and a color printer. Their brand recognition and the goodwill of the people buying their stuff are the only advantages they have.

[Khaldun]

Sort of reminds me of how Disney came up with the theory that they didn't owe any of the royalties that LucasArts contractually owed to people who'd written Star Wars novels and other SW work even though they actually did own all that old property and could still make money from it. So, notably, Disney said "Yeah, we can republish Splinter of the Mind's Eye but we don't owe Alan Dean Foster anything, because when we bought Star Wars all those old contracts became automagically void". When Foster said "Wait, what? That's not how that works", Disney said: yes, that's how it works unless you have the money to hire more lawyers than we do. It turned out of course that Disney was routinely stiffing people in exactly this way, and usually over peanuts. They've settled with Foster (and he apparently signed an NDA about the terms) but that probably leaves most of those other cheated people still out in the cold.

The astonishing thing is that this is not only about really small sums of money in the end from the perspective of big companies (and not small to creators on the other end) but that this often strangles off the kind of widespread adoption and affection that makes the core property more valuable and more widely relied upon. D&D is doing great at the moment precisely because it's a cultural touchstone, even if there are better tabletop gaming systems, but that's precisely because the company allowed for other people to get in on the action. It's just such stupidity on every level--it shows once again that the worst threat to cultural capitalism emanates from the vast incompetent middle of its executive ranks, the people desperate to prove they're doing something the company needs done but who have no vision at all of value or creativity or sustainability.

[Samwise]

"Hand's back on the menu, boys."

[NowhereMan]

Interestingly the Opening Arguments podcast did an episode on this where Andrew Torres (the lawyer bit of the podcast) was defending WotC for being pretty reasonable in the new OGL. The royalties aspect of this only kicks in after $750,000 in revenue and that only if you're actively selling a product using their ruleset i.e. if you're producing a podcast available for free and taking donations they won't touch it (so I think Critical Role is fine for most of their stuff, the Netflix series might be a different beast).

The only element that he was critical of was the fact that Wizards declared that they have full rights to using your creations in DnD and you aren't owed anything. So the new OGL could mean Hasbro could start producing their own books using Critical Role's content and characters, which would be massively shitty. But basically there are about 20 people/companies in the world who will actually be affected by the revenue changes. However it has been an absolute shitshow PR wise.

[Khaldun]

Because nobody believes them--as nobody should--in their post-shitshow representations of what they really intended, e.g., Oh we were just trying to make sure we had a way to shut down racist content. That's the new bullshit coming out of culture companies to explain money grabs or dumb IP aggression, the "oh we were just trying to be so very woke". No, no, come on.

[Tebonas]

Also, that is an argument only a lawyer can make.

"That robber baron is pretty reasonable. Sure, you used to be able to walk down that road for free, but its his road and he could take more than 25% of your money."

Ignoring that many people only walked down this road because it was free.

[Khaldun]

Because the owner invited them to walk down the road and set up roadside businesses on the road for other walkers and promised it would always be free.

[Rendakor]

Because nobody believes them--as nobody should--in their post-shitshow representations of what they really intended, e.g., Oh we were just trying to make sure we had a way to shut down racist content. That's the new bullshit coming out of culture companies to explain money grabs or dumb IP aggression, the "oh we were just trying to be so very woke". No, no, come on.

Also, their modern definition of racism is pretty broad, so will they try to shut your content down if you still use drow as Evil?

[Trippy]

WotC walks everything(?) that people were upset about in 1.1:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1428-a-working-conversation-about-the-open-game-license

Any changes to the OGL will have no impact on at least these creative efforts:

    Your video content. Whether you are a commentator, streamer, podcaster, liveplay cast member, or other video creator on platforms like YouTube and Twitch and TikTok, you have always been covered by the Wizards Fan Content Policy. The OGL doesn’t (and won’t) touch any of this.

    Your accessories for your owned content. No changes to the OGL will affect your ability to sell minis, novels, apparel, dice, and other items related to your creations, characters, and worlds.

    Non-published works, for instance contracted services. You use the OGL if you want to publish your works that reference fifth edition content through the SRD. That means commissioned work, paid DM services, consulting, and so on aren’t affected by the OGL.

    VTT content. Any updates to the OGL will still allow any creator to publish content on VTTs and will still allow VTT publishers to use OGL content on their platform.

    DMs Guild content. The content you release on DMs Guild is published under a Community Content Agreement with Dungeon Masters Guild. This is not changing.

    Your OGL 1.0a content. Nothing will impact any content you have published under OGL 1.0a. That will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a.

    Your revenue. There will be no royalty or financial reporting requirements.

    Your ownership of your content. You will continue to own your content with no license-back requirements.

[Khaldun]

I would say read the fine print. They're completely reserving the right to alter the deal later when it comes to 5e content--it's one reason I think they're desperately trying NOT to brand the new material as 6th edition, because they want to say 'maybe we leave old 5e content alone, but not anything from this point on'. There's a lot of really careful parsing going on here that leaves the company a lot of room to not only do licensing different from here on but change how they extract revenues from existing derivative work.

[Trippy]

Yes that's the big thing not mentioned yet -- whether or not the new license will be explicitly irrevocable of if they are free to do a bait and switch. They also haven't said yet if OGL 1.0a can continue to be used for new 3E/5E stuff.

They are obviously trying to say enough to get people to stop cancelling D&D Beyond subscriptions and drag things out so the outrage moves to something else not D&D related but giving up royalties and the license-back requirements are already big concessions.

[Comstar]

They are very clearly laying the ground work to remove access to the 1.0a agreement and any new content will need to sign up on the new one.

I currently don't mind that- there's going to be a LOT of other ones you can agree with instead. You don't need the sign on the front cover to say it's going ton be compatible with the D&D brand now.


This could be the first step to the death of D&D,  perhaps being bought out later and resurged like Battletech has been after FASA died.

[Khaldun]

The thing is that there's such a wealth of good systems out there now that I think a lot of players AND content makers will be glad to just shove off to something else, maybe just because of the novelty of it, and anybody making a digital tabletop playing system would likely also be just as happy to not deal with some of the specific headaches of D&D's rules/mechanics.

[Kail]

I'm not even sure what the purpose of the OGL even is...?  As far as I know, you can't copyright game mechanics (or systems in general).  You can trademark specific terms, and you can copyright specific characters and artwork, but that stuff is all excluded from the OGL anyways, and it doesn't touch on patents, so I'm not sure what the point is.

Like, if I made a million dollars selling my knockoff space opera RPG supplement, and WotC comes up to me with their hand out asking for 25%, what are they going to do if I say "no"?  There's no copyrighted material in the book, I'm not using their art or their characters, what are they going to claim?  Or, if they claim to own my work because they want to print up a bunch of merchandise based on my supplement, and I hit them with a copyright lawsuit, how can they claim that I signed over all my copyright to them if I didn't explicitly agree to the OGL?  You can't just unilaterally decide that a bunch of shit that belongs to other people is yours now.

I assume that lawyers looked at this, but it makes no sense to me.

[Trippy]

WotC is claiming copyrights on their Systems Reference Documents. The OGL is the license that lets you create derivative works based on those assumed copyrighted documents. The SRDs are very long and have a lot of stuff in them beyond the game "rules" and basic mechanics. AFAIK nobody has tried to challenge the copyrights on those documents since the OGL 1.0a, at least, is very generous in it's licensing terms so there's no point to try and challenge them.

If OGL 2.0 turns out to be similar to 1.1, it's possible somebody might try and challenge the copyright on the SRD for One D&D but they better have a lot of money to burn since Hasbro will defend it.

[Riggswolfe]

The thing is that there's such a wealth of good systems out there now that I think a lot of players AND content makers will be glad to just shove off to something else, maybe just because of the novelty of it, and anybody making a digital tabletop playing system would likely also be just as happy to not deal with some of the specific headaches of D&D's rules/mechanics.

You'd be surprised. If you spend much time at gaming shops or on gaming forums there seems to be a decent sized subset of players who have only ever played DnD and are very reluctant to play anything else.

[Sky]

I don't know what all the fuss is about, I've been using the same D&D books since the 70s.

[Phildo]

The SRDs are very long and have a lot of stuff in them beyond the game "rules" and basic mechanics. AFAIK nobody has tried to challenge the copyrights on those documents since the OGL 1.0a, at least, is very generous in it's licensing terms so there's no point to try and challenge them.

If OGL 2.0 turns out to be similar to 1.1, it's possible somebody might try and challenge the copyright on the SRD for One D&D but they better have a lot of money to burn since Hasbro will defend it.

This is why you have things like Warhammer no longer using the words "Orc", "Elf", or "Dwarf" to describe their fantasy races.

[schild]

don't buy wotc products

that's it, that's the secret sauce

[Khaldun]

There's some level on which I'm just plain offended when folks have something valuable and they destroy it, even if I don't care about the thing itself all that much. It's worse when I do care, of course.

[Samwise]

There's some level on which I'm just plain offended when folks have something valuable and they destroy it

Boy are you living in the wrong century.   

[Trippy]

OGL 1.2 "playtest" / "discussion" version released yesterday.

Announcement:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1432-starting-the-ogl-playtest

License link:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/39j2li89/OGL1.2_DraftForDiscussionPurpose.pdf

Some high/low lights:

• They are still trying to get rid of 1.0a for new content
• They are willing to die on their "morality" hill
• Their excuse for no more 1.0a new content is its lack of a morality clause
• No class action lawsuits
• They messed up their "irrevocable" clause as it does not include the termination exception(s) so they'll need to fix that

[Count Nerfedalot]

"No class action lawsuits"  is legalese for "next time we misbehave you can't band together to balance our overwhelming financial advantage and force us to behave"

[Trippy]

WotC just released SRD 5.1 under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY-4.0). So they gave up on trying to police that content, at least. No word yet on what license the One D&D SRD will have.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1439-ogl-1-0a-creative-commons

[Khaldun]

I think Hasbro's recent warning of weak earnings plus a 15% layoff adds some clarity to what's going on behind the scenes. They're dumping their in-house entertainment division (I think its last release will be the upcoming D&D movie) and the only product line they have that is performing really strongly over the last few years is, guess what, Wizards of the Coast's stuff, especially D&D. So that's likely what led the middle management to tell the C-suite to squeeze the golden goose as hard as possible.

[Sky]

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star gaming systems will slip through your fingers."

[Count Nerfedalot]

sometimes reason prevails over short-sighted greed?

According to this (old but newer than the latest above) Ars article https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/01/dd-maker-retreats-from-attempts-to-update-longstanding-open-license/ it looks like total capitulation by WotC.

[Khaldun]

At least until they think no one's paying attention any more.

[Trippy]

We still haven't heard what D&D Next (releasing 2024, supposedly) will be licensed with.

[Reg]

I think they've already blown it just by alerting the D&D licensees to how vulnerable their positions are.

[Khaldun]

Sort of feels like mutually assured destruction at this point.