Dungeons & Dragons Wizards of the Coast publisher finally broke his silence regarding the game’s Open Play License on Friday, trying to calm down tensions in the D&D community and answers the questions that came up after Gizmodo broke the news on the content of a draft of the document last week.
In a message titled An update on the Open Gaming License (OGL)Posted on the D&D Beyond website, Wizards of the Coast’s official digital toolset, the company addressed many of the concerns raised after the Open Gaming License 1.1 leak earlier in the week and quickly reverted them. Notable changes include the removal of royalty structures and a promise to clarify copyright ownership and intellectual property.
But it could be too little, too late.
Despite the Hasbro subsidiary’s assurances, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) may have already suffered the consequences of its week of silence. Multiple sources within WotC tell Gizmodo that the situation inside the castle is dire, and that Hasbro’s concern is less about public image and more about the IP hoard the dragon sits on.
The bottom line appears to be: After a fan-led campaign to cancel D&D As the subscriptions went viral, he sent a message to higher-ups at WotC and Hasbro. According to multiple sources, these immediate financial consequences were the main thing that forced them to respond. The decision to further delay the release of the new Open Gaming License and then adjust messaging around the release came due to a “verifiable impact” on their bottom line.
According to those sources, in meetings and communications with employees, the message from WotC management has been that fans are “overreacting” to the leaked draft and that in a few months, no one will remember the fuss.
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Licensees are pushing back
But despite any hopes that this all might blow over, well-known publishers who have previously used the OGL—some almost exclusively, such as Kobold Press, and MCDM— have already put out statements saying that they will either be moving away from all versions of the OGL, or explicitly offering up their own gaming licenses for their core games.
The “negative impact of implementing the new OGL might be a feature and not a bug for Wizards of the Coast,” said Charles Ryan, chief operating officer of Monte Cook Games. “A savvy third-party publisher might look at where 5e is in it life cycle,” he said, and if they were planning 5e products, reconsider their investment. Monte Cook Games released their own open, perpetual license for their acclaimed Cypher System last year.
Smaller indie presses have pulled together resources to help people make third-party content for small games. Rowan, Rook and Deckardeg thrown The Resistance Toolkita document intended to help designers break free from fifth edition D&D rules and write third-party content for their acclaimed role-playing game. Needle.
A third-party publisher told Gizmodo that they expected WotC to update the OGL as seen in the leaked documents, but not until 2025, during the full release of DnDOne. Now, many third-party publishers have moved up their migration schedule after the publicity disaster surrounding the new leak. Dungeons and Dragons ogl
One of WotC’s biggest competitors, the independent publisher Paizo, which owns the Pioneer Y star finder role-playing games, is currently leading a campaign to create a Open RPG Creative License (ORC) which would be managed by a non-profit foundation. Other publishers, including Kobold Press, Chaosium, and Legendary Games, have already committed to the effort.
Another third-party publisher who asked not to be named told Gizmodo that his company “has already collaborated with other third-party publishers” to mount a legal defense of the original, circa 2000, OGL 1.0(a).
The OGL 1.1 text and FAQ 2.0
Last week, Gizmodo received leaked drafts of an “OGL 1.1”, and then, a few days later, an FAQ document that referred to an “OGL 2.0”. (This is an important distinction, because while a 1.1 might be considered an update to the original 1.0(a), calling the new deal 2.0 may indicate that you’re envisioning it as an entirely new, stand-alone deal.)
One of the most revealing parts of the OGL 2.0 FAQ included a statement that clarified one of the most incendiary points of the leaked OGL 1.1: whether or not the original OGL 1.0a would be deprecated. The leaked FAQ stated that “OGL 1.0a only allows creators to use ‘authorized’ versions of OGL, which allows Wizards to determine which of its previous versions will continue to allow its use when we exercise our right to update the license. As part of the OGL 2.0 implementation, we are disallowing future use of OGL 1.0a and removing it from our website. This means that OGL 1.0a can no longer be used to develop content for release.”
Although many people have come forward to debate the legitimacy of this interpretation, including former WotC executive Ryan Dancey, who helped write the original OGL 1.0, FAQs have continued to push this language. Also, the January 13 update does not explicitly state that the company will not attempt to deprecate OGL 1.0a. “I don’t think OGL v1.0a can be deprecated,” Dancey said in an email to Gizmodo. “There is no mechanism in the license for deauthorization.”
“When v1.0a was released and licensed, Hasbro & Wizards of the Coast did so knowing that they were entering a perpetual license regime,” Dancey continued. “Everyone involved at the executive level: Peter Adkison (who was the CEO of Wizards), Brian Lewis (who was the in-house counsel for Wizards), and myself (I was the VP of Tabletop RPG), all agreed that that was the intent of the license.”
While the OGL 2.0 FAQ was distributed to various teams within Wizards of the Coast, sources indicate that this FAQ did not go live on January 12 as planned due to the impact of unsubscribed subscriptions and the rising tide of backlash. negative online.
The OGL 2.0 FAQ also stated that “the leaked documents were drafts, and some of the content that bothered people had already changed in the latest versions at the time of the leaks.” However, what bothered people, including copyright and royalties, still seemed to be present in the FAQ for 2.0.
“The part of OGL 1.1 that states that once you publish under OGL 1.1, other people can also use your work is very similar to the DMs Guild language,” explained Jessica Marcrum, co-creator of Unseelie Studies. “But that’s not an ‘open’ language. And it looks like they’re using the old OGL disguise to pretend that 1.1 is an open license when it’s not.”
Additionally, multiple sources reported that third-party publishers received OGL 1.1 in mid-December as an incentive to sign a “sweetheart agreement”, indicating that WotC was ready to use the originally leaked draconian OGL 1.1.
The ‘term sheets’
According to an anonymous source in the room, in late 2022 Wizards of the Coast gave a presentation to a group of about 20 third-party creators outlining the new OGL 1.1. These creators were also offered offers that would replace the publicly available OGL 1.1; Gizmodo received a copy of that document, called a “Term Sheet,” which would be used to outline specific custom contracts within the OGL.
These “sweet treats” would entitle signatories to lower royalty payments (15 percent instead of 25 percent on revenues in excess of $750,000, as noted in OGL 1.1) and a commitment from Wizards of the Coast to market these third-party products on various D&D Beyond channels and platforms, except during “blackout periods” around WotC releases.
Third parties were expected to sign these Term Sheets. noah downA lawyer in the tabletop RPG space who was asked about the terms of one of these contracts, said that although the sheets included language suggesting that negotiations were possible, he was under the impression that there was not much room for change.
understanding it
In its “Open Gaming License Update” released on Friday, WotC promised that the new OGL was still in development and not ready for final release “because we need to make sure we get it right.” The company promised to get feedback from the community and continue to make revisions to the OGL to make it work for both WotC and its third-party editors.
But maybe it’s too late. “Even if Wizards of the Coast were to walk completely [the leaked OGL 1.1] behind, it leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth that I don’t want to work with OGL in the future,” said David Markiwski of Unseelie Studios.
Meanwhile, the “#DnDBegone” campaign encouraging fans to cancel their D&D Beyond subscriptions continued to gain traction on Twitter and other social media sites.
To fully delete an account from D&D Beyond, users are routed to a support system that asks them to submit tickets for customer support to handle: Wizards of the Coast internal sources confirm that earlier this week there were “five digits” worth of Claim Tickets in the system. Both moderation and internal issue management have been “a disaster,” they said, partly due to the fact that WotC has recently reduced the support team for D&D Beyond.
Wizards of the Coast stated in the unpublished FAQ that it wasn’t making changes to the OGL just because of some “loud voices”, and that’s true. Thousands of voices were needed. And it’s clear that Wizards of the Coast didn’t make the latest changes on its own. The entire ecosystem of board games makes Wizards of the Coast deliver on the promises it made back in the year 2000. And now, fans are setting the terms.
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