Every piece of work made on the OGL uses IP made by WotC and IP made by the content creator. If something is ludicrously successful, is it really unreasonable for the people who made some of the product to ask for a cut of the money?
Yeah so Hasbro made $2.1 BILLION last year I’m sorry your “ludicrously successful” $750k is 0.00036% of that like my man sending them a Christmas card?
That’s beyond unreasonable. That’s greedy.
Again, you're letting how much WotC made themselves get in the way of it. The product making over $750k per year contains their IP. They said before that the OGL was never meant to allow people to build large businesses on WotC's IP, it was meant to let creative people make some money doing what they love.
I mean, it's gone now - they're revoking the royalty thing as well following this backlash - and I cannot argue that they need the money. But the world doesn't work on people getting what they need, or there would be nobody hungry and nobody paying Jeff Bezos to go on a day-trip to space. The OGL is very much an exception to the rule in most things. You try making a game using content owned by EA, or Ubisoft, and see how much of the revenue you get to keep once they're done with you.
I'm just saying I dont think it was actually unreasonable, WotC's circumstances aside, for them to ask people making large amounts of money to pay them a small proportion for the IP they are using.
Hasbro’s circumstances aside like what ok let’s conveniently forget about the BILLION$ they made in profit and assume our 0.00036% is a “large amount of money” in respect. No it’s not. It’s not even close. The point of D&D is that it’s your adventure. Not theirs.
First of all, them claiming it was "never their intention to steal other people's IP" was a lie. A Proveable lie.
Page 14, Section XII. Other Products "B. You own the new and original content you create. You agree to give Us a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose."
There is literally no other reason to include this passage, other than WotC's intentions to profit from other people's original content without paying due royalties or credit. They can license 3rd party works out to film and television, videogames, comics, etc, and keep all the profit from themselves. Subsection A. of the same section, however, says:
"A. Nothing prohibits Us from developing, distributing, selling, or promoting something that is substantially similar to a Licensed Work."
On it's own, this would seem fine for protecting WotC of false claims of copyright infingement if they ever released content that was similar by pure coincidence. But the fact that 3rd companies would be required to provide their products for review by WotC before launch (which they can then reject for any reason they see fit), it suddenly seems a lot similar to Hollywood's abuse of spec-script writers. They would have 3rd party companies doing all the work, and they could cherry pick which one they'd kill off and release themselves, and the 3rd party could do nothing about it because they agreed to give up right to sue when they signed.
They never said they would remove this from their next draft, because they claimed the intention to steal work was not included in the original, which means they don't consider XII B. a form of stealing work, just licensing it.
As to the idea that WotC deserve to profit from 3rd party success: They already do. Third party support is what keeps the communit engaged with the game. When there's a long period between releases, or the release was disappointing, a strong 3rd party support system keeps people playing the game with new ideas, concepts, characters, mechanics, etc. Hasbro is already the biggest profiteer in the D&D game's economy, by a huge margin. They just want more, regardless of the long term impact on the game's communuty, and even it's economy. It's also incredibly anti-consumer to box out healthy competition. There's a reason why monopolies are considered a bad thing for everyone:
Without competition, it becomes financially benificial to provide poorer quality in your products and services for a higher price. People end up paying more for less, and with no competing product or service, they either begrudgingly continue, or give up the product and/or service due to disillusionment or an inability to afford the costs. The consumerbase becomes smaller, meaning profits decrease. The company needs to meet its targets, which were based off previous growth, and so they tighten their grip and exploit their remaining consumers more. Eventually, all consumers are priced out, and the company crashes. The workforce lose their jobs, the IP gets sold off by the higher ups in order to fill their pockets as much as possible before jumping ship, its taken up by another company either to start the cycle again, or to gather dust.
As for your hang ups about the working class hating the rich because it's trendy, or because their jealous, because they're uneducated, or whatever personal justification you have for it, I don't personally care. You're free to venerate the uber wealthy as much as you like, I hope it brings you joy. But please, don't allow your personal distaste for the working class cloud you to the blatant wrong doing of the upper. I won't challange your reasons for believing that that is how the world works, because I know nothing would change your mind. But even if you believe that the poor person claiming a rich person just stole their dog from them is jealous of their wealth, or too woke, or whatever, that doesn't mean a crime hasn't been committed, and it doesn't mean you can ignore the wagging tail poking out of the rich person's armani suit.
The OGL1.0a was designed by WotC to EXPRESSLYallow 3rd party companies to use a limited portion of D&D's copyrighted expressions to provide a framework for original, 3rd party, profitable support. It was sold to companies as being irrevocable, because otherwise those companies would not sign up to it, and WotC needed them to to ensure their upcoming 5e would have the 3rd party support they'd lacked with their failed 4e release, which featured a highly restricted GSL. Despite their recent claims to the contrary, the 3rd party companies profiting from the OGL1.0a was the exact thing the OGL1.0a was created to support. 5e would not have survived had it not been for the OGL1.0a, and D&D might have collapsed entirely. You can agree or disagree about whether or not the OGL1.0a is legally irrevocable, or if it was a good idea, or whatever. But the fact that it was WotC's intentions to support 3rd party companies in creating royalty-free, profitable works for the long term benefit of WotC's properties is just that: A fact. One they are blatantly lying about now.
There are many more provable lies in their statement, which should make clear to any reasonable consumer that they can no longer trust Hasbro/WotC to followthrough on any promise in regards to the quality of their products/services. If you'd like more examples of such untruths, I'd be more than happy to compile them, and I'll even do my best to provide sources, because I really have that little going on this month.
First of all, them claiming it was "never their intention to steal other people's IP" was a lie. A Proveable lie.
Page 14, Section XII. Other Products "B. You own the new and original content you create. You agree to give Us a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose."
There is literally no other reason to include this passage, other than WotC's intentions to profit from other people's original content without paying due royalties or credit. They can license 3rd party works out to film and television, videogames, comics, etc, and keep all the profit from themselves. Subsection A. of the same section, however, says:
"A. Nothing prohibits Us from developing, distributing, selling, or promoting something that is substantially similar to a Licensed Work."
On it's own, this would seem fine for protecting WotC of false claims of copyright infingement if they ever released content that was similar by pure coincidence. But the fact that 3rd companies would be required to provide their products for review by WotC before launch (which they can then reject for any reason they see fit), it suddenly seems a lot similar to Hollywood's abuse of spec-script writers. They would have 3rd party companies doing all the work, and they could cherry pick which one they'd kill off and release themselves, and the 3rd party could do nothing about it because they agreed to give up right to sue when they signed.
They never said they would remove this from their next draft, because they claimed the intention to steal work was not included in the original, which means they don't consider XII B. a form of stealing work, just licensing it.
As to the idea that WotC deserve to profit from 3rd party success: They already do. Third party support is what keeps the communit engaged with the game. When there's a long period between releases, or the release was disappointing, a strong 3rd party support system keeps people playing the game with new ideas, concepts, characters, mechanics, etc. Hasbro is already the biggest profiteer in the D&D game's economy, by a huge margin. They just want more, regardless of the long term impact on the game's communuty, and even it's economy. It's also incredibly anti-consumer to box out healthy competition. There's a reason why monopolies are considered a bad thing for everyone:
Without competition, it becomes financially benificial to provide poorer quality in your products and services for a higher price. People end up paying more for less, and with no competing product or service, they either begrudgingly continue, or give up the product and/or service due to disillusionment or an inability to afford the costs. The consumerbase becomes smaller, meaning profits decrease. The company needs to meet its targets, which were based off previous growth, and so they tighten their grip and exploit their remaining consumers more. Eventually, all consumers are priced out, and the company crashes. The workforce lose their jobs, the IP gets sold off by the higher ups in order to fill their pockets as much as possible before jumping ship, its taken up by another company either to start the cycle again, or to gather dust.
As for your hang ups about the working class hating the rich because it's trendy, or because their jealous, because they're uneducated, or whatever personal justification you have for it, I don't personally care. You're free to venerate the uber wealthy as much as you like, I hope it brings you joy. But please, don't allow your personal distaste for the working class cloud you to the blatant wrong doing of the upper. I won't challange your reasons for believing that that is how the world works, because I know nothing would change your mind. But even if you believe that the poor person claiming a rich person just stole their dog from them is jealous of their wealth, or too woke, or whatever, that doesn't mean a crime hasn't been committed, and it doesn't mean you can ignore the wagging tail poking out of the rich person's armani suit.
The OGL1.0a was designed by WotC to EXPRESSLYallow 3rd party companies to use a limited portion of D&D's copyrighted expressions to provide a framework for original, 3rd party, profitable support. It was sold to companies as being irrevocable, because otherwise those companies would not sign up to it, and WotC needed them to to ensure their upcoming 5e would have the 3rd party support they'd lacked with their failed 4e release, which featured a highly restricted GSL. Despite their recent claims to the contrary, the 3rd party companies profiting from the OGL1.0a was the exact thing the OGL1.0a was created to support. 5e would not have survived had it not been for the OGL1.0a, and D&D might have collapsed entirely. You can agree or disagree about whether or not the OGL1.0a is legally irrevocable, or if it was a good idea, or whatever. But the fact that it was WotC's intentions to support 3rd party companies in creating royalty-free, profitable works for the long term benefit of WotC's properties is just that: A fact. One they are blatantly lying about now.
There are many more provable lies in their statement, which should make clear to any reasonable consumer that they can no longer trust Hasbro/WotC to followthrough on any promise in regards to the quality of their products/services. If you'd like more examples of such untruths, I'd be more than happy to compile them, and I'll even do my best to provide sources, because I really have that little going on this month.
Just a couple of things:
1: I am actually open entirely to people changine my mind, and have changed my mind through discussion and debate on several occasions, and this is no different - if you can provide me with a good reason to, then I will not avoid it. I debate, not argue; the focus is on finding the true answer, not on pursuading others to agree with me. Your statement "I won't challange your reasons for believing that that is how the world works, because I know nothing would change your mind." implies that this is somewhere we differ. You seem extremely fixed in your world view that "Hasbro are lying to us because the big corporation said they want to make more money, therefore they only care about money", and have assumed the same of me, incorrectly.
2: I don't venerate the super-rich. If anything, I am also predisposed to think that they either don't deserve or shouldn't have the money they do. But the fact is, their rights over their own IP does not change based on how much money they are making. It is just as illegal to steal from the rich as it is to steal from the poor - Morals are not the same as laws. I personally think that people should be limted to 1 million, and that the world would be better if there were fewer people who could just buy everything they wanted and still have change to spare.
3: your comparison of the rich stealing someones dog is not relevant, and the make of their suit is also irrelevant - it could be the dogs tail poking from a hobo's jacket, it would still be just as illegal to stal the dog. Instead, contemplate a wealthy person who has many dogs, and says to their community, "I have a lot of good-quality dogs. If anyone wants to walk a dog, you can walk one of mine, for free. You can even do odd jobs with them, and keep the money". Then they find out that someone has been running a business which relies on these dogs, offered freely, and is making a large sum of money from it. Is the rich guy stealing if they ask, not for them to stop, but for a cut of the profit? Now swap the rich guy for a poor guy, who has these same dogs. The legality of it doesn't change, but the morals do. Exploiting a generous rich person somehow feels less bad than exploiting a generous poor one. But the legalty remains the same.
And that's the thing - this is a legal document, not a moral document. They could have said "all products need to pay royalties on the licence", but they limited it to just 20 people in the entire-freaking-world, who had entire businesses with six-figure incomes based off a document that was never meant to make other people rich from WotC's IP. That right there is the opposite of money-grabbing. How many of those Hasbro suits do you think suggested they remove the OGL entirely and just use DMs Guild, to get royalties off of everything? How many of them suggested using DDB to sell the homebrew, for the same reason? Do you not think that WotC (who haven't been kicked out and replaced, it's still the same people with a new boss) have worked hard to avoid such things?
I'm not trying to change your mind here - but I do believe that the original text, which is clearly a piece of legalese which was inserted as a fairly standard practice, in a section explained as being so that they could release product without worries over plaigarism claims, might actally have been so that they could release product without worries over plaigarism claims. And the fact that their response was, more or less, "Oh, wow, we didn;t think of it like that. We're not trying to steal your stuff, we were trying to release product without worries over plaigarism claims, we'l go back and change that", might just point to a consistent piece of information - that they were just trying to release product without worries over plaigarism claims.
First of all, them claiming it was "never their intention to steal other people's IP" was a lie. A Proveable lie.
Page 14, Section XII. Other Products "B. You own the new and original content you create. You agree to give Us a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose."
There is literally no other reason to include this passage, other than WotC's intentions to profit from other people's original content without paying due royalties or credit. They can license 3rd party works out to film and television, videogames, comics, etc, and keep all the profit from themselves. Subsection A. of the same section, however, says:
"A. Nothing prohibits Us from developing, distributing, selling, or promoting something that is substantially similar to a Licensed Work."
On it's own, this would seem fine for protecting WotC of false claims of copyright infingement if they ever released content that was similar by pure coincidence. But the fact that 3rd companies would be required to provide their products for review by WotC before launch (which they can then reject for any reason they see fit), it suddenly seems a lot similar to Hollywood's abuse of spec-script writers. They would have 3rd party companies doing all the work, and they could cherry pick which one they'd kill off and release themselves, and the 3rd party could do nothing about it because they agreed to give up right to sue when they signed.
They never said they would remove this from their next draft, because they claimed the intention to steal work was not included in the original, which means they don't consider XII B. a form of stealing work, just licensing it.
As to the idea that WotC deserve to profit from 3rd party success: They already do. Third party support is what keeps the communit engaged with the game. When there's a long period between releases, or the release was disappointing, a strong 3rd party support system keeps people playing the game with new ideas, concepts, characters, mechanics, etc. Hasbro is already the biggest profiteer in the D&D game's economy, by a huge margin. They just want more, regardless of the long term impact on the game's communuty, and even it's economy. It's also incredibly anti-consumer to box out healthy competition. There's a reason why monopolies are considered a bad thing for everyone:
Without competition, it becomes financially benificial to provide poorer quality in your products and services for a higher price. People end up paying more for less, and with no competing product or service, they either begrudgingly continue, or give up the product and/or service due to disillusionment or an inability to afford the costs. The consumerbase becomes smaller, meaning profits decrease. The company needs to meet its targets, which were based off previous growth, and so they tighten their grip and exploit their remaining consumers more. Eventually, all consumers are priced out, and the company crashes. The workforce lose their jobs, the IP gets sold off by the higher ups in order to fill their pockets as much as possible before jumping ship, its taken up by another company either to start the cycle again, or to gather dust.
As for your hang ups about the working class hating the rich because it's trendy, or because their jealous, because they're uneducated, or whatever personal justification you have for it, I don't personally care. You're free to venerate the uber wealthy as much as you like, I hope it brings you joy. But please, don't allow your personal distaste for the working class cloud you to the blatant wrong doing of the upper. I won't challange your reasons for believing that that is how the world works, because I know nothing would change your mind. But even if you believe that the poor person claiming a rich person just stole their dog from them is jealous of their wealth, or too woke, or whatever, that doesn't mean a crime hasn't been committed, and it doesn't mean you can ignore the wagging tail poking out of the rich person's armani suit.
The OGL1.0a was designed by WotC to EXPRESSLYallow 3rd party companies to use a limited portion of D&D's copyrighted expressions to provide a framework for original, 3rd party, profitable support. It was sold to companies as being irrevocable, because otherwise those companies would not sign up to it, and WotC needed them to to ensure their upcoming 5e would have the 3rd party support they'd lacked with their failed 4e release, which featured a highly restricted GSL. Despite their recent claims to the contrary, the 3rd party companies profiting from the OGL1.0a was the exact thing the OGL1.0a was created to support. 5e would not have survived had it not been for the OGL1.0a, and D&D might have collapsed entirely. You can agree or disagree about whether or not the OGL1.0a is legally irrevocable, or if it was a good idea, or whatever. But the fact that it was WotC's intentions to support 3rd party companies in creating royalty-free, profitable works for the long term benefit of WotC's properties is just that: A fact. One they are blatantly lying about now.
There are many more provable lies in their statement, which should make clear to any reasonable consumer that they can no longer trust Hasbro/WotC to followthrough on any promise in regards to the quality of their products/services. If you'd like more examples of such untruths, I'd be more than happy to compile them, and I'll even do my best to provide sources, because I really have that little going on this month.
Just a couple of things:
1: I am actually open entirely to people changine my mind, and have changed my mind through discussion and debate on several occasions, and this is no different - if you can provide me with a good reason to, then I will not avoid it. I debate, not argue; the focus is on finding the true answer, not on pursuading others to agree with me. Your statement "I won't challange your reasons for believing that that is how the world works, because I know nothing would change your mind." implies that this is somewhere we differ. You seem extremely fixed in your world view that "Hasbro are lying to us because the big corporation said they want to make more money, therefore they only care about money", and have assumed the same of me, incorrectly.
2: I don't venerate the super-rich. If anything, I am also predisposed to think that they either don't deserve or shouldn't have the money they do. But the fact is, their rights over their own IP does not change based on how much money they are making. It is just as illegal to steal from the rich as it is to steal from the poor - Morals are not the same as laws. I personally think that people should be limted to 1 million, and that the world would be better if there were fewer people who could just buy everything they wanted and still have change to spare.
3: your comparison of the rich stealing someones dog is not relevant, and the make of their suit is also irrelevant - it could be the dogs tail poking from a hobo's jacket, it would still be just as illegal to stal the dog. Instead, contemplate a wealthy person who has many dogs, and says to their community, "I have a lot of good-quality dogs. If anyone wants to walk a dog, you can walk one of mine, for free. You can even do odd jobs with them, and keep the money". Then they find out that someone has been running a business which relies on these dogs, offered freely, and is making a large sum of money from it. Is the rich guy stealing if they ask, not for them to stop, but for a cut of the profit? Now swap the rich guy for a poor guy, who has these same dogs. The legality of it doesn't change, but the morals do. Exploiting a generous rich person somehow feels less bad than exploiting a generous poor one. But the legalty remains the same.
And that's the thing - this is a legal document, not a moral document. They could have said "all products need to pay royalties on the licence", but they limited it to just 20 people in the entire-freaking-world, who had entire businesses with six-figure incomes based off a document that was never meant to make other people rich from WotC's IP. That right there is the opposite of money-grabbing. How many of those Hasbro suits do you think suggested they remove the OGL entirely and just use DMs Guild, to get royalties off of everything? How many of them suggested using DDB to sell the homebrew, for the same reason? Do you not think that WotC (who haven't been kicked out and replaced, it's still the same people with a new boss) have worked hard to avoid such things?
I'm not trying to change your mind here - but I do believe that the original text, which is clearly a piece of legalese which was inserted as a fairly standard practice, in a section explained as being so that they could release product without worries over plaigarism claims, might actally have been so that they could release product without worries over plaigarism claims. And the fact that their response was, more or less, "Oh, wow, we didn;t think of it like that. We're not trying to steal your stuff, we were trying to release product without worries over plaigarism claims, we'l go back and change that", might just point to a consistent piece of information - that they were just trying to release product without worries over plaigarism claims.
Is that not a possibility?
I would like to address your comments as directly as possible:
1.1 First of all, an expectation to someone's tenacity in their beliefs is not a reflection of their own ideological tenacity. This is public forum on the internet, a well document locale of ideological arguments driven largely by ego and desire to avoid "looking weak" by backing down. That seemed fairly obvious to me, but I guess it needed to be highlighted.
1.2 Secondly, I don't believe I ever brought up Hasbro's wealth as any contributing evidence or signal of their wrong-doing. I only brought up wealth in reference to your own stated claim of some sort of anti-wealth bias, and suggested that you shouldn't let your own opinions on wealth and status obscure your objective assessment of the situation. You seem and yet from that you have taken away the idea that I not only have the belief that "Hasbro are lying to us because the big corporation said they want to make more money, therefore they only care about money" (something I never once even suggested in my response) but that I am also stubbornly fixed in that position. It seems, to me, that this concept of an "anti-wealth bias" is largely your own projection, as you seem to have added your own fictitious comments and arguments into your reading of my response, which really only highlights the fact that my warning against allowing your personal ideology hinder your objectivity was rather astute, no?
2.1 You seem to be framing the situation as "3rd party companies are profiting from IP stolen by WotC, and WotC is justified in wanting fair compensation". Now, this seems quite a strange take on the topic, to be quite honest. As I already made clear, the OGL1.0a was made with the express purpose of allowing that IP to be used for profit by those who agreed to the license and met its conditions. Therefore, in terms of use of that, and I must reiterate, limitedIP as presented in the System Reference Document, the 3rd party companies were not only doing what they were in their right to do, but doing exactly what WotC were asking them to do at the time of its creation, as that 3rd party support was intrinsic to the survival of the D&D brand. Hasbro/WotC are attempting to misrepresent the situation, as "3rd party companies took advantage of our generous OGL, and we just want to prevent that", which is, as I and many, many, many others have explained, is a bold faced lie designed to curb the fallout of the public backlash.
2.2 Any argument that WotC has a right to change the terms, now that they see a new opportunity, is also highly debatable. The OGL1.0a license was sold to 3rd party companies as a perpetual, irrevocable license, and that is why they agreed to hang so much of their earning potential upon it. The wording of the OGL 1.0a is ambiguous enough that it could be judged as irrevocable or not, but given the nature of how it was sold to them, and the confusion around its irrevocable status, it would not be hard for any 3rd party company to essentially revoke their agreements to the original OGL1.0a (if it is ruled as revokable), as a misrepresented contract, since no reasonable business would agree to build a company around such an untrustworthy keystone.
2.3 This little notion you threw in that "it is as illegal to steal from the rich as it is from the poor"? That is demonstrably false. It is, not so much an open secret, as it is a common place fact that wealth provides you with a great deal of protection from the legal consequences of criminal activity. The Bail system allows the rich to avoid pre-trail incarceration. Rich corporations constantly file frivilous lawsuits, knowing that their targets cannot afford the legal costs, even if they are in the right. It is statistical fact that people from wealthy background are given leniency in a court than those of a poorer background. And even IF you deny all of that, at you cannot deny that being wealthy allows you to more greatly affect the lawmaking process. Why do uberwealthy corporations have so many options to avoid paying tax? To avoid paying their workers a living wage? To sell potentially harmful products? To mark up lifesaving medacine to extortionate degrees? Because their money supports policians who repay them by writing laws in their favour. So, in actuality, yes morals ARE the same as laws, but only the morals of those who can afford to enforce them. (Also, "Morals are not the same as laws" is something that could honestly be discussed on its own in length, because... Yes they are. Laws are not a fundamental aspect or reality, or a gift from the heavens. They are a list of moral rights and wrongs, given specified conditions, agreed upon by a body that has the ability to enforce them. Like, what did you think they were? The law against murder is there because we all agree it is morally wrong to kill people. Why does execution exist? Because some people think there are exceptions to that moral judgement.)
3.1 The stolen dog analogy was, in fact, extremely relavent to the point I was making (see my response 1.2), as I was attesting that the crime of stealing a dog should NOT be ignored because of the economic classes of the parties involved. Once again, you seemed to have interpretted it as a claim that being wealthy makes one a thief of pets, and presumable other cartoonish acts of villainy. And once again, I think this interpretation is a result of your own predilections with this internalised "class warfare" ideology. If I say, very clearly, that "you should not ignore a crime because the criminal is wealthy" and you respond with "but hobos can be criminals too!", I can't help but feel you have missed the point. I agree that the law should be applied equally to all peoples, regardless of wealth. You claim, yourself, to be in that same boat, and yet you seem extemely pre-occupied with arguing that the wealthy (not specifically Hasbro, but in general) are the victims of some sort of culture war, but seem to have very little interest in the actual facts and happenings of this specific issue.
3.2 Your dog analogy, on the other hand, is a perfect example of WotC propaganda in trying to rewrite the history of this controversy. In your analogy, the dog owners were surprised that the community members were secretly making move on the side from the owner's dogs, despite all the generosity the owner had shown to them. This is factually, historically untrue. In reality, the analogu would go something like this:
"One day a Dog Owner with many, many dogs realised they could not handle all their dogs by themselves, and asked the community to take some of the dogs away and take care of them themselves, to help the Dog Owner reach a point of stability. Many in the community were reluctant to take the dogs, as the Dog Owner had done this previously, but then abruptly taken the dogs back from them. Now, many of the community have their own pets, and while adding a dog to the household would certainly make the dog-loving community happy, they were afraid of investing the love of themselves and their other pets into a dog that might be taken away just as abruptly. So, the Dog Owner said 'I tell you what! Not only will I promise to never take the dogs away, but you can breed the dogs to make even more dogs, and sell to other people in need of a loving pet! I don't even want the money, so long as you don't take these dogs that I want to keep!' The community was convinced it was a safe investment, and accepted their new dogs, and loved them for many years, and many generations of new puppies were born. Then, one day, the Dog Owner realised 'If I had kept those dogs and bred them myself, I'd have so much money!', forgetting that he was, alone, unable to cope with the original generation of dogs. He called a town meeting, and informed the town that he demanded that each family were to give him every tenth puppy born, and that he could, at any time, demand even more puppies from them. If they didn't agree, he would take all the dogs, as they had been his originally. The community were furious, as they were promised that the Dog Owner would never take back the dogs, to which the Owner replied 'Ah, but you see, you failed to notice my fingers were crossed!'. The community were sure that couldn't possibly hold up, but the Dog Owner had really expensive lawyers, and they knew it would be impossible to go to trial against him, even if they were in the right. The Dog Owner, good friends with the local paper, announced that after many year, he had finally 'taken back the dogs stolen from him by his community', but unfortunately the papers were mostly delivered to people from whom he had taken the dogs from, and so his lies were only believed by the few people who had recently moved to town, or who worked for the Owner, or had some strangely overt political views that they always seemed to bring up, regardless of their relevancy to any conversation. And so, most of the community banded together, and decided to buy some cats instead, and the Dog Owner shat himself, and tried to lie his way out of it, offering to only take 1 in 100 puppies, and claim it was all a misunderstanding."
I cannot lie, I rather enjoyed writing that, resulting quality notwithstanding.
3.3 I see that you are presenting this (whether in good faith or not) as a question of morality rather than of legality. i.e. "You might not like it, but they are following the law." If you would refer to 2.2, you can see that the legality of their actions are actually quite debatable, as the interpretation of the OGL1.0a in regards to irrevocability, and the misrepresentation of the same license as such, is something that holds a great deal of water, legally.
3.4 You apply the "it's not unfair, because it could have been more unfair" fallacy, when you refer to only demanding royalties of 20 companies. You fail to grasp a number of things here, so let me lay these out for you:
i. The potentiality of a worse outcome does not justify or mitigate the harm of the actual outcome. e.g. "It wasn't wrong to beat you up, because I could have murdered you, but didn't".
ii. The OGL1.1 stated that WotC had the right to, at any time, alter the conditions of the license without a given reason. That means that, amongst other things, the only thing stopping that 20 would-be royalty-paying companies becoming 200, or 2000, would be the whims of Hasbro.
iii. You have forgotten to mention the fact that ANY company that signs up to OGL1.1 would have to provide sales data to Hasbro, free of charge. This marketing data very valuable, as it allows a company to direct their marketing towards the most profitable directions. Companies often sell their sales data to other companies for profit, as it is a valuable commodity, or choose to keep it private, either for the sake of their customers privacy, or preventing their competition from gaining advantagious insight into their business. Hasbro is demanding valuable data, in exchange for nothing. As a result, every company that would sign up to it is losing an avenue of making money.
3.5 Your "don't you realise the people at WotC have probably been working really hard to prevent a worse deal" approach is classic emotional manipulation, and stands out quite a bit from the "legal rights" approach. If you think people should focus on what's legal and not on morality, then why are you suddenly preaching empathy for a hypothetical subsect of the corporate entity that is currently performing extremely anti-consumer moves. It's not illegal to stop supporting an anti-consumer brand, just because some of the workers might feel bad, right? So, isn't that the right action to take? That is assuming those people exist because, let's not forget, you just made them up. You imagined them. You don't know any of them, couldn't tell me where they are, or what "help" they've given us, but you're just comfortably "sure" they exist.
As for your assessment of the plagerism angle, I must once again point out something from my previous reply that was overlooked. Refer, if you would, the excerpts from Section XII, A and B. Now, I too would say that subsection A would easily cover them against plagerism, and if it were the only reference to use of IP, I would find it believable that the potential abuse it provides to have been something overlooked. But subsection B. Now that, my friend, is the silver bullet. There is (as I already said, but it seems to have been overlooked) no possible reason to include this claim to right, unless they had written it specifically to be used for, well, exactly what it says. It isn't convoluted legalese that is part of a standard document. That is extemely clear in what it is demanding, and so shockingly one-sided that no-one with any semblance of IP rights and intent to profit would agree to. That clause is not confusing. It's not realistically possible for it to have been accidental. To suggest otherwise, is either unparallelled naivety, or active attempts at obscuring its blatancy. So, to answer your question: No. It is not a realistic possibility that WotC accidentally included a clause that just happens to give them "a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose."
Honestly, you seem to be, consciously or not, willing to go to great lengths to invent justifications to defend Hasbro/WotC, yet dismiss any legitimate concern with equally invented "anti-rich biases" and other imagined constructs. It seems extremely obvious that you have a great deal of investment, emotional or otherwise, in defending Hasbro/WotC from the consequences of their own actions, and I feel you could really benefit from a more objective review of your own biases.
Every piece of work made on the OGL uses IP made by WotC and IP made by the content creator. If something is ludicrously successful, is it really unreasonable for the people who made some of the product to ask for a cut of the money?
Yeah so Hasbro made $2.1 BILLION last year I’m sorry your “ludicrously successful” $750k is 0.00036% of that like my man sending them a Christmas card?
That’s beyond unreasonable. That’s greedy.
The core philosophy of the OGL is that it allows IP owners to state what IP they are comfortable sharing with 3PP and what they are not comfortable with sharing. If Hasbro wants to either have some control over or profit off of the IP 3PP providers are using in their product, then they shouldn’t use OGL 1.0a. Release 6.0 under some other licensing agreement that isn’t open. It’s that simple.
Hasbro has the horrible problem though of also wanting 6.0 to be backwards compatible with the 5.1 SRD, which was released under OGL 1.0a. They specifically created, with their past actions, a scenario where they are unable to achieve both goals. OGL 1.0a combined with SRD5.1 allows for 3PP to release content compatible with 6.0 through the backwards compatibility.
Faced with this conundrum, Hasbro recognizes that their only chance to achieve both goals is the somehow disconnect all of the D&D SRD from OGL1.0a. This is why they are trying to replace, unauthorize and cancel OGL1.0a with OGL2.0.
OGL2.0 is open in name only, and is named Open Gaming License only because it needs to serve as a replacement for OGL1.0a.
Every piece of work made on the OGL uses IP made by WotC and IP made by the content creator. If something is ludicrously successful, is it really unreasonable for the people who made some of the product to ask for a cut of the money?
Yeah so Hasbro made $2.1 BILLION last year I’m sorry your “ludicrously successful” $750k is 0.00036% of that like my man sending them a Christmas card?
That’s beyond unreasonable. That’s greedy.
Again, you're letting how much WotC made themselves get in the way of it. The product making over $750k per year contains their IP. They said before that the OGL was never meant to allow people to build large businesses on WotC's IP, it was meant to let creative people make some money doing what they love.
I mean, it's gone now - they're revoking the royalty thing as well following this backlash - and I cannot argue that they need the money. But the world doesn't work on people getting what they need, or there would be nobody hungry and nobody paying Jeff Bezos to go on a day-trip to space. The OGL is very much an exception to the rule in most things. You try making a game using content owned by EA, or Ubisoft, and see how much of the revenue you get to keep once they're done with you.
I'm just saying I dont think it was actually unreasonable, WotC's circumstances aside, for them to ask people making large amounts of money to pay them a small proportion for the IP they are using.
You are so unfamiliar with the TTRPG industry it's laughable.
25% profit margin is the absolute BEST that can be expected. What your beloved WotC was doing was insuring NO company could make more than $150,000 net income per year, making sure there could never be a direct competitor.
And your statement that anything under the OGL must have WotC original content is even more false. Because WotC STATED UNEQUIVOCALLY that the OGL 1.0a could NEVER be revoked and would EXIST FOREVER, other game companies released the mechanics of their rules under OGL1.0a, content that had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with WotC and was NEVER WotC content, and somehow under their new licensing scheme, WotC would end up owning all of that.
So you really need to educate yourself about the past 23 years of history of this industry, not to mention the 25 years of history that went before it.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
Every piece of work made on the OGL uses IP made by WotC and IP made by the content creator. If something is ludicrously successful, is it really unreasonable for the people who made some of the product to ask for a cut of the money?
Yeah so Hasbro made $2.1 BILLION last year I’m sorry your “ludicrously successful” $750k is 0.00036% of that like my man sending them a Christmas card?
That’s beyond unreasonable. That’s greedy.
The core philosophy of the OGL is that it allows IP owners to state what IP they are comfortable sharing with 3PP and what they are not comfortable with sharing. If Hasbro wants to either have some control over or profit off of the IP 3PP providers are using in their product, then they shouldn’t use OGL 1.0a. Release 6.0 under some other licensing agreement that isn’t open. It’s that simple.
Hasbro has the horrible problem though of also wanting 6.0 to be backwards compatible with the 5.1 SRD, which was released under OGL 1.0a. They specifically created, with their past actions, a scenario where they are unable to achieve both goals. OGL 1.0a combined with SRD5.1 allows for 3PP to release content compatible with 6.0 through the backwards compatibility.
Faced with this conundrum, Hasbro recognizes that their only chance to achieve both goals is the somehow disconnect all of the D&D SRD from OGL1.0a. This is why they are trying to replace, unauthorize and cancel OGL1.0a with OGL2.0.
OGL2.0 is open in name only, and is named Open Gaming License only because it needs to serve as a replacement for OGL1.0a.
It could still be open, depending on how it is used in practice, though. Even the most open world game still has restrictions on where you can go. Reality has restrictions on where you can practically go. "Open" still gets used as a term, even though reality is never completely open.
Immaterial.
Hasbro has to cancel in some way OGL1.0a in order to both a) regulate and profit from 3PP content that is compatible with 6.0 and b) have 6.0 be backwards compatible with the 5.1 SRD.
Hasbro has to cancel in some way OGL1.0a in order to both a) regulate and profit from 3PP content that is compatible with 6.0 and b) have 6.0 be backwards compatible with the 5.1 SRD.
OGL 2.0 is their attempt to do this.
The saddest part of all of this is "has to" is incorrect. They want to.
Historical evidence and the broad popularity of past versions of Dungeons and Dragons overwhelmingly suggests the best move for them financially would have been go move forward under 1.0a and tolerate third parties succeeding and contributing to the value of the DnD brand.
Instead, they chose to shoot themself in the face and set fire to their own house.
I think I like Penny Arcades summary and commentary on it best, which ends with -
"I can't really make heads or tails of your apology, but let me say this: you have entered treacherous waters entirely of your own volition. Literally just turn around, and walk back out."
Hasbro has to cancel in some way OGL1.0a in order to both a) regulate and profit from 3PP content that is compatible with 6.0 and b) have 6.0 be backwards compatible with the 5.1 SRD.
OGL 2.0 is their attempt to do this.
Paizo and other 3pp are prepared to fight any such attempt to "cancel" OGL 1.0a in court. They will likely win since the leadership of Paizo were a part of the team that created OGL 1.0a and they have the receipts to PROVE it is irrevocable.
Good luck with that WotC. Your best bet is to make 6E a completely new animal, slap the D&D logo on it and license it however you want. Of course, things didn't go so well for WotC in 2008 when they did the same thing with D&D 4E.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
Hasbro has to cancel in some way OGL1.0a in order to both a) regulate and profit from 3PP content that is compatible with 6.0 and b) have 6.0 be backwards compatible with the 5.1 SRD.
OGL 2.0 is their attempt to do this.
Paizo and other 3pp are prepared to fight any such attempt to "cancel" OGL 1.0a in court. They will likely win since the leadership of Paizo were a part of the team that created OGL 1.0a and they have the receipts to PROVE it is irrevocable.
Good luck with that WotC. Your best bet is to make 6E a completely new animal, slap the D&D logo on it and license it however you want. Of course, things didn't go so well for WotC in 2008 when they did the same thing with D&D 4E.
100% agree, and Paizo has even stated that they will fight this in court. I don’t think its a guaranteed win for Paizo (it’s the courts, so you never know), but based on everything I’ve read and listened to, it’s still highly likely Paizo wins. Hasbro’s best option was to try and strong arm their competitors in accepting the unauthorization as a fait accompli, and we saw how that worked out.
I would imagine you’ll see groups like EFF join the case as well, given the implications that unauthorizing OGL1.0 will have on the larger open license community.
Now the interesting question. Paizo and Hasbro go to court, and the court rules that Hasbro cannot unauthorize OGL1.0. Does Hasbro release 6.0 under OGL1.0, or do they remove the backward compatibility of 6.0 with 5.1? Because if the court rules against them, they can’t have both.
Also, this question makes it obvious why Hasbro needs to decide this question now. Whatever path they take will impact the future development of 6.0.
Hasbro has to cancel in some way OGL1.0a in order to both a) regulate and profit from 3PP content that is compatible with 6.0 and b) have 6.0 be backwards compatible with the 5.1 SRD.
OGL 2.0 is their attempt to do this.
Paizo and other 3pp are prepared to fight any such attempt to "cancel" OGL 1.0a in court. They will likely win since the leadership of Paizo were a part of the team that created OGL 1.0a and they have the receipts to PROVE it is irrevocable.
Good luck with that WotC. Your best bet is to make 6E a completely new animal, slap the D&D logo on it and license it however you want. Of course, things didn't go so well for WotC in 2008 when they did the same thing with D&D 4E.
100% agree, and Paizo has even stated that they will fight this in court. I don’t think its a guaranteed win for Paizo (it’s the courts, so you never know), but based on everything I’ve read and listened to, it’s still highly likely Paizo wins. Hasbro’s best option was to try and strong arm their competitors in accepting the unauthorization as a fait accompli, and we saw how that worked out.
I would imagine you’ll see groups like EFF join the case as well, given the implications that unauthorizing OGL1.0 will have on the larger open license community.
Now the interesting question. Paizo and Hasbro go to court, and the court rules that Hasbro cannot unauthorize OGL1.0. Does Hasbro release 6.0 under OGL1.0, or do they remove the backward compatibility of 6.0 with 5.1? Because if the court rules against them, they can’t have both.
Also, this question makes it obvious why Hasbro needs to decide this question now. Whatever path they take will impact the future development of 6.0.
And the ironic part? They could have avoided all of this if they had just worked with the 3PP more. Given them a platform to publish on DDB and integrate with their own material. They would have essentially made DDB the go-to for anything D&D related, homebrew or official. They could have taken a cut for publishing it, hell they could have pulled a steam/apple and and done a 70/30 cut if they posted it to the marketplace and it most likely would have been accepted because of DDB popularity and the freedom / lack of overhead needed to publish on the 3PP side of things. Not to mention it would have been widely accepted as it would not have been mandatory.
Master Tier Subscription cancelled: I loved D&D Beyond. I would like to stay. The actions of WotC made that impossible. Should WotC wish to put a better offer on the table, I would renew my Master Tier subscription. Please be aware that through their actions WotC has changed the value proposition. A better offer than the previous status quo must be made. #OPENDND - #ORC
YES! As the forever DM, the balance in PF2E is so nice. I finished a level 1-20 campaign in 5E and it was a nightmare building encounters after about level 8.
WotC say that if you make money using their IP, they would like a proportionally small cut of it. This is seen as bad and greedy.
3rd Party Publishers say they want to make all the money whilst still using WotC's IP. this is somehow seen as good and not greedy.
Somehow, the idea of two large companies (and if you're making over $750,000 a year, you'e a large company, financially) having to split the revenue when both have contributed to the works is seen as money-grabbing from the larger company. If WotC was only making $100k a year, you would all be on their side - somehow, we are allowing money to get between us and what's actually fair. Saying to someone who made $1,000,000 in one year that they should pay (at 25% of the last $250k) $62,500 to WotC (out of a million dollars. In one year.) for their contribution to the works is not exactly unreasonable. It's 6.25% of the revenue. If a publishing company has such a small profit margin as to be ruined by this, they are not doing very well anyway. And if they lay off staff or up prices to keep up profits, then they care more about their investors than their staff or customers, and so are just as bad as (or worse than) WotC.
I don't have a business relating to D&D or TTRPG, but 25% is in no way a small cut, and $750k a year is not a large company. My friend's company, also not related to this, makes 3.5 million a year. After expenses, he's lucky to have 10% to put back into the company to improve or try to grow. In any industry, 25% of the revenue is ridiculous. This is not a license of their Intellectual Property. It is about their impressions, the IP is and always has been separate and protected. You seem to think revenue and profit are the same things, but they are not. It's not 25% of the last 250K it's 20% to 25% of all qualifying revenue. For tiny companies that make 750k a year, their only investors are friends and family. How anyone would think 750K a year is a large corporation is not in touch with reality. Then if they make 50K a year they have to register? What do you consider a 'company' making 50k a year in revenue? Not profit revenue! That's not a company that's a hobby.
Impressions are NOT IP! This license does not give ANY rights to use the IP, nor does the OGL1.0a. It is about using the rules as they laid them out and the stats they assigned to various not copywritten races and monsters. This covers their wording impressions of non-copyrightable material. Creatures completely made up by WotC are copywritten and can not be used.
Something that has been raised a few times, but seems to have been lost in the noise about this subject is that OGL1.0a itself is not a contract: it is an offer. When a 3rd party publishes under the OGL, they agree to the terms and it becomes a contract. In essence, each piece of content published under the OGL is a separate contract between the content creator and WotC.
This is an important distinction and what this means is that WotC have almost no prospect of revoking the OGL with respect to content already published under it. To do so would be them breaking the contract with all the legal ramifications that would entail.
However....
WotC are under no legal obligation to continue to offer OGL1.0a into the future. Any offer can be rescinded up until the point at which it is accepted by the parties. Acceptance of the OGL by a 3rd party for a particular piece of content does not mean they can continue to publish new works ad infinitum under that licence if WotC no longer offer it. WotC cannot be legally forced to continue to offerthe existing OGL for new content.
Don't get me wrong....Wizards brought this situation upon themselves by not sitting down with content creators and trying to negotiate an updated OGL that would address the concerns they had. Hell, if they had done this they may well have got some compromises in their favour. Instead they blew it and antagonized their customers and partners.
We moved on to Pathfinder 2E back in Aug. Way more fun combat!
And the CR system scales way better. My local table switched years ago.
Ah, man I'm happy to hear that. Currently learning the rules for Pathfinder as a possible system to transition to, and I've always struggled to make encounters a fair challenge for my group. I'm a fan of the whole "3 Actions" system, so far :)
We moved on to Pathfinder 2E back in Aug. Way more fun combat!
And the CR system scales way better. My local table switched years ago.
Ah, man I'm happy to hear that. Currently learning the rules for Pathfinder as a possible system to transition to, and I've always struggled to make encounters a fair challenge for my group. I'm a fan of the whole "3 Actions" system, so far :)
I had to really pull back when I switched! Turns out a few CR 2 zombies was a huge challenge for my party of 1st levels.
It's a great system. Easy to transition to
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Hasbro’s circumstances aside like what ok let’s conveniently forget about the BILLION$ they made in profit and assume our 0.00036% is a “large amount of money” in respect. No it’s not. It’s not even close. The point of D&D is that it’s your adventure. Not theirs.
D&D is Now Trash
Goodbye
First of all, them claiming it was "never their intention to steal other people's IP" was a lie. A Proveable lie.
Page 14, Section XII. Other Products
"B. You own the new and original content you create. You agree to give Us a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose."
There is literally no other reason to include this passage, other than WotC's intentions to profit from other people's original content without paying due royalties or credit. They can license 3rd party works out to film and television, videogames, comics, etc, and keep all the profit from themselves. Subsection A. of the same section, however, says:
"A. Nothing prohibits Us from developing, distributing, selling, or promoting something that is substantially similar to a Licensed Work."
On it's own, this would seem fine for protecting WotC of false claims of copyright infingement if they ever released content that was similar by pure coincidence. But the fact that 3rd companies would be required to provide their products for review by WotC before launch (which they can then reject for any reason they see fit), it suddenly seems a lot similar to Hollywood's abuse of spec-script writers. They would have 3rd party companies doing all the work, and they could cherry pick which one they'd kill off and release themselves, and the 3rd party could do nothing about it because they agreed to give up right to sue when they signed.
They never said they would remove this from their next draft, because they claimed the intention to steal work was not included in the original, which means they don't consider XII B. a form of stealing work, just licensing it.
As to the idea that WotC deserve to profit from 3rd party success: They already do. Third party support is what keeps the communit engaged with the game. When there's a long period between releases, or the release was disappointing, a strong 3rd party support system keeps people playing the game with new ideas, concepts, characters, mechanics, etc. Hasbro is already the biggest profiteer in the D&D game's economy, by a huge margin. They just want more, regardless of the long term impact on the game's communuty, and even it's economy. It's also incredibly anti-consumer to box out healthy competition. There's a reason why monopolies are considered a bad thing for everyone:
Without competition, it becomes financially benificial to provide poorer quality in your products and services for a higher price. People end up paying more for less, and with no competing product or service, they either begrudgingly continue, or give up the product and/or service due to disillusionment or an inability to afford the costs. The consumerbase becomes smaller, meaning profits decrease. The company needs to meet its targets, which were based off previous growth, and so they tighten their grip and exploit their remaining consumers more. Eventually, all consumers are priced out, and the company crashes. The workforce lose their jobs, the IP gets sold off by the higher ups in order to fill their pockets as much as possible before jumping ship, its taken up by another company either to start the cycle again, or to gather dust.
As for your hang ups about the working class hating the rich because it's trendy, or because their jealous, because they're uneducated, or whatever personal justification you have for it, I don't personally care. You're free to venerate the uber wealthy as much as you like, I hope it brings you joy. But please, don't allow your personal distaste for the working class cloud you to the blatant wrong doing of the upper. I won't challange your reasons for believing that that is how the world works, because I know nothing would change your mind. But even if you believe that the poor person claiming a rich person just stole their dog from them is jealous of their wealth, or too woke, or whatever, that doesn't mean a crime hasn't been committed, and it doesn't mean you can ignore the wagging tail poking out of the rich person's armani suit.
The OGL1.0a was designed by WotC to EXPRESSLY allow 3rd party companies to use a limited portion of D&D's copyrighted expressions to provide a framework for original, 3rd party, profitable support. It was sold to companies as being irrevocable, because otherwise those companies would not sign up to it, and WotC needed them to to ensure their upcoming 5e would have the 3rd party support they'd lacked with their failed 4e release, which featured a highly restricted GSL. Despite their recent claims to the contrary, the 3rd party companies profiting from the OGL1.0a was the exact thing the OGL1.0a was created to support. 5e would not have survived had it not been for the OGL1.0a, and D&D might have collapsed entirely. You can agree or disagree about whether or not the OGL1.0a is legally irrevocable, or if it was a good idea, or whatever. But the fact that it was WotC's intentions to support 3rd party companies in creating royalty-free, profitable works for the long term benefit of WotC's properties is just that: A fact. One they are blatantly lying about now.
There are many more provable lies in their statement, which should make clear to any reasonable consumer that they can no longer trust Hasbro/WotC to followthrough on any promise in regards to the quality of their products/services. If you'd like more examples of such untruths, I'd be more than happy to compile them, and I'll even do my best to provide sources, because I really have that little going on this month.
Just a couple of things:
1: I am actually open entirely to people changine my mind, and have changed my mind through discussion and debate on several occasions, and this is no different - if you can provide me with a good reason to, then I will not avoid it. I debate, not argue; the focus is on finding the true answer, not on pursuading others to agree with me. Your statement "I won't challange your reasons for believing that that is how the world works, because I know nothing would change your mind." implies that this is somewhere we differ. You seem extremely fixed in your world view that "Hasbro are lying to us because the big corporation said they want to make more money, therefore they only care about money", and have assumed the same of me, incorrectly.
2: I don't venerate the super-rich. If anything, I am also predisposed to think that they either don't deserve or shouldn't have the money they do. But the fact is, their rights over their own IP does not change based on how much money they are making. It is just as illegal to steal from the rich as it is to steal from the poor - Morals are not the same as laws. I personally think that people should be limted to 1 million, and that the world would be better if there were fewer people who could just buy everything they wanted and still have change to spare.
3: your comparison of the rich stealing someones dog is not relevant, and the make of their suit is also irrelevant - it could be the dogs tail poking from a hobo's jacket, it would still be just as illegal to stal the dog. Instead, contemplate a wealthy person who has many dogs, and says to their community, "I have a lot of good-quality dogs. If anyone wants to walk a dog, you can walk one of mine, for free. You can even do odd jobs with them, and keep the money". Then they find out that someone has been running a business which relies on these dogs, offered freely, and is making a large sum of money from it. Is the rich guy stealing if they ask, not for them to stop, but for a cut of the profit? Now swap the rich guy for a poor guy, who has these same dogs. The legality of it doesn't change, but the morals do. Exploiting a generous rich person somehow feels less bad than exploiting a generous poor one. But the legalty remains the same.
And that's the thing - this is a legal document, not a moral document. They could have said "all products need to pay royalties on the licence", but they limited it to just 20 people in the entire-freaking-world, who had entire businesses with six-figure incomes based off a document that was never meant to make other people rich from WotC's IP. That right there is the opposite of money-grabbing. How many of those Hasbro suits do you think suggested they remove the OGL entirely and just use DMs Guild, to get royalties off of everything? How many of them suggested using DDB to sell the homebrew, for the same reason? Do you not think that WotC (who haven't been kicked out and replaced, it's still the same people with a new boss) have worked hard to avoid such things?
I'm not trying to change your mind here - but I do believe that the original text, which is clearly a piece of legalese which was inserted as a fairly standard practice, in a section explained as being so that they could release product without worries over plaigarism claims, might actally have been so that they could release product without worries over plaigarism claims. And the fact that their response was, more or less, "Oh, wow, we didn;t think of it like that. We're not trying to steal your stuff, we were trying to release product without worries over plaigarism claims, we'l go back and change that", might just point to a consistent piece of information - that they were just trying to release product without worries over plaigarism claims.
Is that not a possibility?
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
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I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
I would like to address your comments as directly as possible:
1.1 First of all, an expectation to someone's tenacity in their beliefs is not a reflection of their own ideological tenacity. This is public forum on the internet, a well document locale of ideological arguments driven largely by ego and desire to avoid "looking weak" by backing down. That seemed fairly obvious to me, but I guess it needed to be highlighted.
1.2 Secondly, I don't believe I ever brought up Hasbro's wealth as any contributing evidence or signal of their wrong-doing. I only brought up wealth in reference to your own stated claim of some sort of anti-wealth bias, and suggested that you shouldn't let your own opinions on wealth and status obscure your objective assessment of the situation. You seem and yet from that you have taken away the idea that I not only have the belief that "Hasbro are lying to us because the big corporation said they want to make more money, therefore they only care about money" (something I never once even suggested in my response) but that I am also stubbornly fixed in that position. It seems, to me, that this concept of an "anti-wealth bias" is largely your own projection, as you seem to have added your own fictitious comments and arguments into your reading of my response, which really only highlights the fact that my warning against allowing your personal ideology hinder your objectivity was rather astute, no?
2.1 You seem to be framing the situation as "3rd party companies are profiting from IP stolen by WotC, and WotC is justified in wanting fair compensation". Now, this seems quite a strange take on the topic, to be quite honest. As I already made clear, the OGL1.0a was made with the express purpose of allowing that IP to be used for profit by those who agreed to the license and met its conditions. Therefore, in terms of use of that, and I must reiterate, limited IP as presented in the System Reference Document, the 3rd party companies were not only doing what they were in their right to do, but doing exactly what WotC were asking them to do at the time of its creation, as that 3rd party support was intrinsic to the survival of the D&D brand. Hasbro/WotC are attempting to misrepresent the situation, as "3rd party companies took advantage of our generous OGL, and we just want to prevent that", which is, as I and many, many, many others have explained, is a bold faced lie designed to curb the fallout of the public backlash.
2.2 Any argument that WotC has a right to change the terms, now that they see a new opportunity, is also highly debatable. The OGL1.0a license was sold to 3rd party companies as a perpetual, irrevocable license, and that is why they agreed to hang so much of their earning potential upon it. The wording of the OGL 1.0a is ambiguous enough that it could be judged as irrevocable or not, but given the nature of how it was sold to them, and the confusion around its irrevocable status, it would not be hard for any 3rd party company to essentially revoke their agreements to the original OGL1.0a (if it is ruled as revokable), as a misrepresented contract, since no reasonable business would agree to build a company around such an untrustworthy keystone.
2.3 This little notion you threw in that "it is as illegal to steal from the rich as it is from the poor"? That is demonstrably false. It is, not so much an open secret, as it is a common place fact that wealth provides you with a great deal of protection from the legal consequences of criminal activity. The Bail system allows the rich to avoid pre-trail incarceration. Rich corporations constantly file frivilous lawsuits, knowing that their targets cannot afford the legal costs, even if they are in the right. It is statistical fact that people from wealthy background are given leniency in a court than those of a poorer background. And even IF you deny all of that, at you cannot deny that being wealthy allows you to more greatly affect the lawmaking process. Why do uberwealthy corporations have so many options to avoid paying tax? To avoid paying their workers a living wage? To sell potentially harmful products? To mark up lifesaving medacine to extortionate degrees? Because their money supports policians who repay them by writing laws in their favour. So, in actuality, yes morals ARE the same as laws, but only the morals of those who can afford to enforce them. (Also, "Morals are not the same as laws" is something that could honestly be discussed on its own in length, because... Yes they are. Laws are not a fundamental aspect or reality, or a gift from the heavens. They are a list of moral rights and wrongs, given specified conditions, agreed upon by a body that has the ability to enforce them. Like, what did you think they were? The law against murder is there because we all agree it is morally wrong to kill people. Why does execution exist? Because some people think there are exceptions to that moral judgement.)
3.1 The stolen dog analogy was, in fact, extremely relavent to the point I was making (see my response 1.2), as I was attesting that the crime of stealing a dog should NOT be ignored because of the economic classes of the parties involved. Once again, you seemed to have interpretted it as a claim that being wealthy makes one a thief of pets, and presumable other cartoonish acts of villainy. And once again, I think this interpretation is a result of your own predilections with this internalised "class warfare" ideology. If I say, very clearly, that "you should not ignore a crime because the criminal is wealthy" and you respond with "but hobos can be criminals too!", I can't help but feel you have missed the point. I agree that the law should be applied equally to all peoples, regardless of wealth. You claim, yourself, to be in that same boat, and yet you seem extemely pre-occupied with arguing that the wealthy (not specifically Hasbro, but in general) are the victims of some sort of culture war, but seem to have very little interest in the actual facts and happenings of this specific issue.
3.2 Your dog analogy, on the other hand, is a perfect example of WotC propaganda in trying to rewrite the history of this controversy. In your analogy, the dog owners were surprised that the community members were secretly making move on the side from the owner's dogs, despite all the generosity the owner had shown to them. This is factually, historically untrue. In reality, the analogu would go something like this:
"One day a Dog Owner with many, many dogs realised they could not handle all their dogs by themselves, and asked the community to take some of the dogs away and take care of them themselves, to help the Dog Owner reach a point of stability. Many in the community were reluctant to take the dogs, as the Dog Owner had done this previously, but then abruptly taken the dogs back from them. Now, many of the community have their own pets, and while adding a dog to the household would certainly make the dog-loving community happy, they were afraid of investing the love of themselves and their other pets into a dog that might be taken away just as abruptly. So, the Dog Owner said 'I tell you what! Not only will I promise to never take the dogs away, but you can breed the dogs to make even more dogs, and sell to other people in need of a loving pet! I don't even want the money, so long as you don't take these dogs that I want to keep!' The community was convinced it was a safe investment, and accepted their new dogs, and loved them for many years, and many generations of new puppies were born. Then, one day, the Dog Owner realised 'If I had kept those dogs and bred them myself, I'd have so much money!', forgetting that he was, alone, unable to cope with the original generation of dogs. He called a town meeting, and informed the town that he demanded that each family were to give him every tenth puppy born, and that he could, at any time, demand even more puppies from them. If they didn't agree, he would take all the dogs, as they had been his originally. The community were furious, as they were promised that the Dog Owner would never take back the dogs, to which the Owner replied 'Ah, but you see, you failed to notice my fingers were crossed!'. The community were sure that couldn't possibly hold up, but the Dog Owner had really expensive lawyers, and they knew it would be impossible to go to trial against him, even if they were in the right. The Dog Owner, good friends with the local paper, announced that after many year, he had finally 'taken back the dogs stolen from him by his community', but unfortunately the papers were mostly delivered to people from whom he had taken the dogs from, and so his lies were only believed by the few people who had recently moved to town, or who worked for the Owner, or had some strangely overt political views that they always seemed to bring up, regardless of their relevancy to any conversation. And so, most of the community banded together, and decided to buy some cats instead, and the Dog Owner shat himself, and tried to lie his way out of it, offering to only take 1 in 100 puppies, and claim it was all a misunderstanding."
I cannot lie, I rather enjoyed writing that, resulting quality notwithstanding.
3.3 I see that you are presenting this (whether in good faith or not) as a question of morality rather than of legality. i.e. "You might not like it, but they are following the law." If you would refer to 2.2, you can see that the legality of their actions are actually quite debatable, as the interpretation of the OGL1.0a in regards to irrevocability, and the misrepresentation of the same license as such, is something that holds a great deal of water, legally.
3.4 You apply the "it's not unfair, because it could have been more unfair" fallacy, when you refer to only demanding royalties of 20 companies. You fail to grasp a number of things here, so let me lay these out for you:
i. The potentiality of a worse outcome does not justify or mitigate the harm of the actual outcome. e.g. "It wasn't wrong to beat you up, because I could have murdered you, but didn't".
ii. The OGL1.1 stated that WotC had the right to, at any time, alter the conditions of the license without a given reason. That means that, amongst other things, the only thing stopping that 20 would-be royalty-paying companies becoming 200, or 2000, would be the whims of Hasbro.
iii. You have forgotten to mention the fact that ANY company that signs up to OGL1.1 would have to provide sales data to Hasbro, free of charge. This marketing data very valuable, as it allows a company to direct their marketing towards the most profitable directions. Companies often sell their sales data to other companies for profit, as it is a valuable commodity, or choose to keep it private, either for the sake of their customers privacy, or preventing their competition from gaining advantagious insight into their business. Hasbro is demanding valuable data, in exchange for nothing. As a result, every company that would sign up to it is losing an avenue of making money.
3.5 Your "don't you realise the people at WotC have probably been working really hard to prevent a worse deal" approach is classic emotional manipulation, and stands out quite a bit from the "legal rights" approach. If you think people should focus on what's legal and not on morality, then why are you suddenly preaching empathy for a hypothetical subsect of the corporate entity that is currently performing extremely anti-consumer moves. It's not illegal to stop supporting an anti-consumer brand, just because some of the workers might feel bad, right? So, isn't that the right action to take? That is assuming those people exist because, let's not forget, you just made them up. You imagined them. You don't know any of them, couldn't tell me where they are, or what "help" they've given us, but you're just comfortably "sure" they exist.
As for your assessment of the plagerism angle, I must once again point out something from my previous reply that was overlooked. Refer, if you would, the excerpts from Section XII, A and B. Now, I too would say that subsection A would easily cover them against plagerism, and if it were the only reference to use of IP, I would find it believable that the potential abuse it provides to have been something overlooked. But subsection B. Now that, my friend, is the silver bullet. There is (as I already said, but it seems to have been overlooked) no possible reason to include this claim to right, unless they had written it specifically to be used for, well, exactly what it says. It isn't convoluted legalese that is part of a standard document. That is extemely clear in what it is demanding, and so shockingly one-sided that no-one with any semblance of IP rights and intent to profit would agree to. That clause is not confusing. It's not realistically possible for it to have been accidental. To suggest otherwise, is either unparallelled naivety, or active attempts at obscuring its blatancy. So, to answer your question: No. It is not a realistic possibility that WotC accidentally included a clause that just happens to give them "a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose."
Honestly, you seem to be, consciously or not, willing to go to great lengths to invent justifications to defend Hasbro/WotC, yet dismiss any legitimate concern with equally invented "anti-rich biases" and other imagined constructs. It seems extremely obvious that you have a great deal of investment, emotional or otherwise, in defending Hasbro/WotC from the consequences of their own actions, and I feel you could really benefit from a more objective review of your own biases.
Do you think you could, too?
The core philosophy of the OGL is that it allows IP owners to state what IP they are comfortable sharing with 3PP and what they are not comfortable with sharing. If Hasbro wants to either have some control over or profit off of the IP 3PP providers are using in their product, then they shouldn’t use OGL 1.0a. Release 6.0 under some other licensing agreement that isn’t open. It’s that simple.
Hasbro has the horrible problem though of also wanting 6.0 to be backwards compatible with the 5.1 SRD, which was released under OGL 1.0a. They specifically created, with their past actions, a scenario where they are unable to achieve both goals. OGL 1.0a combined with SRD5.1 allows for 3PP to release content compatible with 6.0 through the backwards compatibility.
Faced with this conundrum, Hasbro recognizes that their only chance to achieve both goals is the somehow disconnect all of the D&D SRD from OGL1.0a. This is why they are trying to replace, unauthorize and cancel OGL1.0a with OGL2.0.
OGL2.0 is open in name only, and is named Open Gaming License only because it needs to serve as a replacement for OGL1.0a.
You are so unfamiliar with the TTRPG industry it's laughable.
25% profit margin is the absolute BEST that can be expected. What your beloved WotC was doing was insuring NO company could make more than $150,000 net income per year, making sure there could never be a direct competitor.
And your statement that anything under the OGL must have WotC original content is even more false. Because WotC STATED UNEQUIVOCALLY that the OGL 1.0a could NEVER be revoked and would EXIST FOREVER, other game companies released the mechanics of their rules under OGL1.0a, content that had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with WotC and was NEVER WotC content, and somehow under their new licensing scheme, WotC would end up owning all of that.
So you really need to educate yourself about the past 23 years of history of this industry, not to mention the 25 years of history that went before it.
I lived it.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
Immaterial.
Hasbro has to cancel in some way OGL1.0a in order to both a) regulate and profit from 3PP content that is compatible with 6.0 and b) have 6.0 be backwards compatible with the 5.1 SRD.
OGL 2.0 is their attempt to do this.
The saddest part of all of this is "has to" is incorrect. They want to.
Historical evidence and the broad popularity of past versions of Dungeons and Dragons overwhelmingly suggests the best move for them financially would have been go move forward under 1.0a and tolerate third parties succeeding and contributing to the value of the DnD brand.
Instead, they chose to shoot themself in the face and set fire to their own house.
I think I like Penny Arcades summary and commentary on it best, which ends with -
"I can't really make heads or tails of your apology, but let me say this: you have entered treacherous waters entirely of your own volition. Literally just turn around, and walk back out."
Paizo and other 3pp are prepared to fight any such attempt to "cancel" OGL 1.0a in court. They will likely win since the leadership of Paizo were a part of the team that created OGL 1.0a and they have the receipts to PROVE it is irrevocable.
Good luck with that WotC. Your best bet is to make 6E a completely new animal, slap the D&D logo on it and license it however you want. Of course, things didn't go so well for WotC in 2008 when they did the same thing with D&D 4E.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
100% agree, and Paizo has even stated that they will fight this in court. I don’t think its a guaranteed win for Paizo (it’s the courts, so you never know), but based on everything I’ve read and listened to, it’s still highly likely Paizo wins. Hasbro’s best option was to try and strong arm their competitors in accepting the unauthorization as a fait accompli, and we saw how that worked out.
I would imagine you’ll see groups like EFF join the case as well, given the implications that unauthorizing OGL1.0 will have on the larger open license community.
Now the interesting question. Paizo and Hasbro go to court, and the court rules that Hasbro cannot unauthorize OGL1.0. Does Hasbro release 6.0 under OGL1.0, or do they remove the backward compatibility of 6.0 with 5.1? Because if the court rules against them, they can’t have both.
Also, this question makes it obvious why Hasbro needs to decide this question now. Whatever path they take will impact the future development of 6.0.
And the ironic part? They could have avoided all of this if they had just worked with the 3PP more. Given them a platform to publish on DDB and integrate with their own material. They would have essentially made DDB the go-to for anything D&D related, homebrew or official. They could have taken a cut for publishing it, hell they could have pulled a steam/apple and and done a 70/30 cut if they posted it to the marketplace and it most likely would have been accepted because of DDB popularity and the freedom / lack of overhead needed to publish on the 3PP side of things. Not to mention it would have been widely accepted as it would not have been mandatory.
Master Tier Subscription cancelled:
I loved D&D Beyond. I would like to stay. The actions of WotC made that impossible. Should WotC wish to put a better offer on the table, I would renew my Master Tier subscription. Please be aware that through their actions WotC has changed the value proposition. A better offer than the previous status quo must be made. #OPENDND - #ORC
We moved on to Pathfinder 2E back in Aug. Way more fun combat!
And the CR system scales way better. My local table switched years ago.
YES! As the forever DM, the balance in PF2E is so nice. I finished a level 1-20 campaign in 5E and it was a nightmare building encounters after about level 8.
I don't have a business relating to D&D or TTRPG, but 25% is in no way a small cut, and $750k a year is not a large company. My friend's company, also not related to this, makes 3.5 million a year. After expenses, he's lucky to have 10% to put back into the company to improve or try to grow. In any industry, 25% of the revenue is ridiculous. This is not a license of their Intellectual Property. It is about their impressions, the IP is and always has been separate and protected. You seem to think revenue and profit are the same things, but they are not. It's not 25% of the last 250K it's 20% to 25% of all qualifying revenue. For tiny companies that make 750k a year, their only investors are friends and family. How anyone would think 750K a year is a large corporation is not in touch with reality. Then if they make 50K a year they have to register? What do you consider a 'company' making 50k a year in revenue? Not profit revenue! That's not a company that's a hobby.
Impressions are NOT IP! This license does not give ANY rights to use the IP, nor does the OGL1.0a. It is about using the rules as they laid them out and the stats they assigned to various not copywritten races and monsters. This covers their wording impressions of non-copyrightable material. Creatures completely made up by WotC are copywritten and can not be used.
Something that has been raised a few times, but seems to have been lost in the noise about this subject is that OGL1.0a itself is not a contract: it is an offer. When a 3rd party publishes under the OGL, they agree to the terms and it becomes a contract. In essence, each piece of content published under the OGL is a separate contract between the content creator and WotC.
This is an important distinction and what this means is that WotC have almost no prospect of revoking the OGL with respect to content already published under it. To do so would be them breaking the contract with all the legal ramifications that would entail.
However....
WotC are under no legal obligation to continue to offer OGL1.0a into the future. Any offer can be rescinded up until the point at which it is accepted by the parties. Acceptance of the OGL by a 3rd party for a particular piece of content does not mean they can continue to publish new works ad infinitum under that licence if WotC no longer offer it. WotC cannot be legally forced to continue to offer the existing OGL for new content.
Don't get me wrong....Wizards brought this situation upon themselves by not sitting down with content creators and trying to negotiate an updated OGL that would address the concerns they had. Hell, if they had done this they may well have got some compromises in their favour. Instead they blew it and antagonized their customers and partners.
Ah, man I'm happy to hear that. Currently learning the rules for Pathfinder as a possible system to transition to, and I've always struggled to make encounters a fair challenge for my group. I'm a fan of the whole "3 Actions" system, so far :)
Gotta get better with quoting...
I had to really pull back when I switched! Turns out a few CR 2 zombies was a huge challenge for my party of 1st levels.
It's a great system. Easy to transition to