I don't know, this seems sort of a petty move. The "less than 20" 3rd parties making more than $750k still don't amount much to WotC's sale figures, it seems just sorta weird to set up a 3rd party revenue monitoring responsibility to staff or contractors when resources could be spent toward, I dunno, designing and selling better quality game products.
The whole unsubstantiated, speculative, baseless rumors and fictional conjecture video designed for manufacturing outrage, really was an unsubstantiated, speculative, baseless rumors and fictional conjecture video designed for manufacturing outrage.
Well...they are charging third parties new royalty fees of an unknown percentage, it's just limited in scope to the larger publishers.
"For the fewer than 20 creators worldwide who make more than $750,000 in income in a year, we will add a royalty starting in 2024. So, even for the creators making significant money selling D&D supplements and games, no royalties will be due for 2023 and all revenue below $750,000 in future years will be royalty-free. "
Are you one of the number of creators that make $50,001/yr. in order to report, or one of the <20 creators that make >$750k?
Then that doesn't apply to you. In fact, it doesn't apply to a massive section of the creator-space.
The whole unsubstantiated, speculative, baseless rumors and fictional conjecture video designed for manufacturing outrage, really was an unsubstantiated, speculative, baseless rumors and fictional conjecture video designed for manufacturing outrage.
Well...they are charging third parties new royalty fees of an unknown percentage, it's just limited in scope to the larger publishers.
"For the fewer than 20 creators worldwide who make more than $750,000 in income in a year, we will add a royalty starting in 2024. So, even for the creators making significant money selling D&D supplements and games, no royalties will be due for 2023 and all revenue below $750,000 in future years will be royalty-free. "
The standard royalty percentage is between 2-15%. And, yeah, 15% of 750K is $112.5K. That's not insignificant. I don't think it'll be anywhere near that, but it could be. And it'll give creators a chance to brace for and alter their business practices. They aren't doing this for 2023.
But as I read it, the first 750K is royalty-free, so on dollar 750,001, they pay. Then, even if its 15%, that means 15 cents, since they only pay on the 1 dollar over 750k. To end up paying the 112, they'd have to earn more like $1.5M. Still a lot of money, but not nearly as punishing.
As near as I can tell, that's just for any 3P making "custom content." That's a specific legal term. The short and simple version is a 3P makes branded content. Now, that can already happen. Sort of. We've seen books that were at least collaborations with the likes of Critical Role and Penny Arcade.
It's possible they're looking at using the OGL to expand such opportunities. But custom content also applies to other products, like books, so it's possible that's not OGL at all.
The whole unsubstantiated, speculative, baseless rumors and fictional conjecture video designed for manufacturing outrage, really was an unsubstantiated, speculative, baseless rumors and fictional conjecture video designed for manufacturing outrage.
Well...they are charging third parties new royalty fees of an unknown percentage, it's just limited in scope to the larger publishers.
"For the fewer than 20 creators worldwide who make more than $750,000 in income in a year, we will add a royalty starting in 2024. So, even for the creators making significant money selling D&D supplements and games, no royalties will be due for 2023 and all revenue below $750,000 in future years will be royalty-free. "
The standard royalty percentage is between 2-15%. And, yeah, 15% of 750K is $112.5K. That's not insignificant. I don't think it'll be anywhere near that, but it could be. And it'll give creators a chance to brace for and alter their business practices. They aren't doing this for 2023.
But as I read it, the first 750K is royalty-free, so on dollar 750,001, they pay. Then, even if its 15%, that means 15 cents, since they only pay on the 1 dollar over 750k. To end up paying the 112, they'd have to earn more like $1.5M. Still a lot of money, but not nearly as punishing.
As near as I can tell, that's just for any 3P making "custom content." That's a specific legal term. The short and simple version is a 3P makes branded content. Now, that can already happen. Sort of. We've seen books that were at least collaborations with the likes of Critical Role and Penny Arcade.
It's possible they're looking at using the OGL to expand such opportunities. But custom content also applies to other products, like books, so it's possible that's not OGL at all.
Right. My point was any royalty payments only seem to kick in on sales (I’m actually unclear if they mean net or gross, but that’s beside the point) above 750k. So, that first dollar after 750 doesn’t mean a retroactive payment for the whole amount. It means you only pay on whatever you make above 750. For example, if you make 800k, you’ll only pay royalties on 50k of it.
It's honestly at a point where royalties should be expected. The OGL was pretty revolutionary, and incredibly generous to creators. You can't even put a song in a YouTube video without paying for it. A few third party publishers have made some impressive profits from the OGL without some of the costs that creators in any other field have to deal with. This part of the new license affects 20 creators. I imagine they were already aware and have plans. They have a lot of time to adjust as well. And other places like Roll 20 and licensed merchandisers already have agreements in place too. This statement from DnD should put every regular creator and player at ease.
It's honestly at a point where royalties should be expected. The OGL was pretty revolutionary, and incredibly generous to creators. You can't even put a song in a YouTube video without paying for it. A few third party publishers have made some impressive profits from the OGL without some of the costs that creators in any other field have to deal with. This part of the new license affects 20 creators. I imagine they were already aware and have plans. They have a lot of time to adjust as well. And other places like Roll 20 and licensed merchandisers already have agreements in place too. This statement from DnD should put every regular creator and player at ease.
I guess that depends. If you are a regular creator, but you do work also for a larger company (like we've seen many popular YouTubers have a monster or spell or whatever content as part of a larger Kickstarter), you now may be out of work as the larger company needs to cut some costs to afford the royalties.
It is too hard to say right now, as all of the details won't come out until early 2023. But I think royalties will affect more than just 20 creators because those creators are probably not working individuals but have employees that they pay to contribute to their products. And those "employees" may be out of a gig.
It's honestly at a point where royalties should be expected. The OGL was pretty revolutionary, and incredibly generous to creators. You can't even put a song in a YouTube video without paying for it. A few third party publishers have made some impressive profits from the OGL without some of the costs that creators in any other field have to deal with. This part of the new license affects 20 creators. I imagine they were already aware and have plans. They have a lot of time to adjust as well. And other places like Roll 20 and licensed merchandisers already have agreements in place too. This statement from DnD should put every regular creator and player at ease.
I guess that depends. If you are a regular creator, but you do work also for a larger company (like we've seen many popular YouTubers have a monster or spell or whatever content as part of a larger Kickstarter), you now may be out of work as the larger company needs to cut some costs to afford the royalties.
It is too hard to say right now, as all of the details won't come out until early 2023. But I think royalties will affect more than just 20 creators because those creators are probably not working individuals but have employees that they pay to contribute to their products. And those "employees" may be out of a gig.
It's possible, but pretty unclear at the moment. I guess it all depends on the terms of the license and whether they are talking net or gross. If it's net profit, then the contributors are part of the cost. And there might not be a product without them. Well have to see more, and it might come down to individual publishers to decide what's worth it.
It's honestly at a point where royalties should be expected. The OGL was pretty revolutionary, and incredibly generous to creators. You can't even put a song in a YouTube video without paying for it. A few third party publishers have made some impressive profits from the OGL without some of the costs that creators in any other field have to deal with. This part of the new license affects 20 creators. I imagine they were already aware and have plans. They have a lot of time to adjust as well. And other places like Roll 20 and licensed merchandisers already have agreements in place too. This statement from DnD should put every regular creator and player at ease.
I guess that depends. If you are a regular creator, but you do work also for a larger company (like we've seen many popular YouTubers have a monster or spell or whatever content as part of a larger Kickstarter), you now may be out of work as the larger company needs to cut some costs to afford the royalties.
It is too hard to say right now, as all of the details won't come out until early 2023. But I think royalties will affect more than just 20 creators because those creators are probably not working individuals but have employees that they pay to contribute to their products. And those "employees" may be out of a gig.
I don't think this is a reasonable argument. The wording would suggest they're only taking royalties from anything over $750K gross. And quality contractors are always in demand.
If your business venture is at the point where you need more than $750K gross to even meet a profit, I think you shouldn't be engaged with indie publishing. Not when the average cost to self-publish is $2K American.
I'll talk to some people who were a few years ago (that's a mess I'd rather not get into right now) once I'm back from vacation.
It's honestly at a point where royalties should be expected. The OGL was pretty revolutionary, and incredibly generous to creators. You can't even put a song in a YouTube video without paying for it. A few third party publishers have made some impressive profits from the OGL without some of the costs that creators in any other field have to deal with. This part of the new license affects 20 creators. I imagine they were already aware and have plans. They have a lot of time to adjust as well. And other places like Roll 20 and licensed merchandisers already have agreements in place too. This statement from DnD should put every regular creator and player at ease.
I guess that depends. If you are a regular creator, but you do work also for a larger company (like we've seen many popular YouTubers have a monster or spell or whatever content as part of a larger Kickstarter), you now may be out of work as the larger company needs to cut some costs to afford the royalties.
It is too hard to say right now, as all of the details won't come out until early 2023. But I think royalties will affect more than just 20 creators because those creators are probably not working individuals but have employees that they pay to contribute to their products. And those "employees" may be out of a gig.
I don't think this is a reasonable argument. The wording would suggest they're only taking royalties from anything over $750K gross. And quality contractors are always in demand.
If your business venture is at the point where you need more than $750K gross to even meet a profit, I think you shouldn't be engaged with indie publishing. Not when the average cost to self-publish is $2K American.
I'll talk to some people who were a few years ago (that's a mess I'd rather not get into right now) once I'm back from vacation.
$750K/year covers the salary & benefits of ~7-8 skilled employees today. Assuming 50% of revenue goes towards external expenses - i.e. the printing of actual books, creation of merchandise, advertising products, that's a company of 3-4 employees. I'd hardly consider that a massive business.
From what I understand, this is just a minor update to how the Open Game License works and it is unlikely to significantly affect the vast majority of people. Legal permissions evolve and change just as the conditions around them evolve and change too. This seems to be a relatively minor change and it only affects a very small portion of homebrewers; The only reason this is such a big deal is because of the wild rumors that circulated around this.
Unless you make $750,000 as a third-party publisher, then you aren't going to be charged royalties at all. This will likely affect a couple big organizations such as MCDM and Kobold Press, but that is not too surprising: If you are going to build supplements for other peoples game and make money off there content, then they have every right to charge you royalties for that.
$750K/year covers the salary & benefits of ~7-8 skilled employees today. Assuming 50% of revenue goes towards external expenses - i.e. the printing of actual books, creation of merchandise, advertising products, that's a company of 3-4 employees. I'd hardly consider that a massive business.
Well, if you are charging each employee more than a hundred thousand dollars yearly for doing a bit of helping in making third-party D&D products, then I think you are radically overpaying them. Not only that, but companies like this often utilize part time workers and give them cheaper pay. And honestly, I don't see why printing books, creating merchandise, and advertising your product would take up to half your revenue ($325,000+ yearly).
In other words, a company making $750,000+ every year is either a pretty big company or they have terrible management. And though I could be wrong, does the money companies spend on advertising their products really count as "income"? Because if not, then that wouldn't be charged royalties.
$750K/year covers the salary & benefits of ~7-8 skilled employees today. Assuming 50% of revenue goes towards external expenses - i.e. the printing of actual books, creation of merchandise, advertising products, that's a company of 3-4 employees. I'd hardly consider that a massive business.
By RPG standards that's an established and successful business. Most RPG publishers are part-time efforts by one or two people.
Just found something that WotC themselves published about the OGL 18 years ago in their FAQ about it.
Q: Can't Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn't like?
A: Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway.
So to the people saying "WotC could just revoke the older version and force people to use the newer one", you're wrong. WotC themselves said that they can't prevent you from using older versions of the OGL even if they wanted to.
Just found something that WotC themselves published about the OGL 18 years ago in their FAQ about it.
Q: Can't Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn't like?
A: Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway.
So to the people saying "WotC could just revoke the older version and force people to use the newer one", you're wrong. WotC themselves said that they can't prevent you from using older versions of the OGL even if they wanted to.
Thank you for finding that. This is a big reason there was never anything to get too worried about. The OGL we are used to will always exist. If the new OGL and the 1DnD SRD isn't good for people, then 1DnD just won't see the same 3rd party support that 5e did. Which is worse for WotC than it is for any of us.
Some people have brought up that the OGL was partially motivated by the financial burden that printing all those sourcebooks themselves put on DnD. That was part of it. But there was another aspect too. They realized that a lot of DnD just could never be owned in the first place. And rather than fight the details in court with every solo publisher for eternity, it was better just to give up some of it. Define what they were okay with anyone using, and everyone wins. There's no more confusion. Here's the SRD. Have at it.
If a 3rd party creator really doesn't want anything to do with the new license, they can just keep making 5e material. Or leave it vague enough to work with 1DnD based on the old SRD. Or get creative with the sales aspect. But I suspect that most of the creators in that top bracket already understand what's going on and how they will approach it. And they aren't raising the alarms.
So to the people saying "WotC could just revoke the older version and force people to use the newer one", you're wrong. WotC themselves said that they can't prevent you from using older versions of the OGL even if they wanted to.
That's only semi-true. You can use materials with any version of the OGL that they were released under. That means you can make use of the 3e and 3.5e SRDs under version 1.0 of the OGL, and you can make use of the 5e SRD under version 1.0a (but not under 1.0). If One D&D is released under version 1.1 of the OGL, you can't use 1.0 or 1.0a with it.
That said, if version 1.1 is too restrictive, it's likely to split the creator community, which will be a problem for Wizards (see Pathfinder), which Wizards probably wants to avoid.
So to the people saying "WotC could just revoke the older version and force people to use the newer one", you're wrong. WotC themselves said that they can't prevent you from using older versions of the OGL even if they wanted to.
That's only semi-true. You can use materials with any version of the OGL that they were released under. That means you can make use of the 3e and 3.5e SRDs under version 1.0 of the OGL, and you can make use of the 5e SRD under version 1.0a (but not under 1.0). If One D&D is released under version 1.1 of the OGL, you can't use 1.0 or 1.0a with it.
That said, if version 1.1 is too restrictive, it's likely to split the creator community, which will be a problem for Wizards (see Pathfinder), which Wizards probably wants to avoid.
That's incorrect. Section 9 of the SRD says that if something is published under a version of OGL, you can use it with any version of the OGL.
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That's incorrect. Section 9 of the SRD says that if something is published under a version of OGL, you can use it with any version of the OGL.
You mean section 9 of the OGL. And that assertion is not actually true, because it ignores one simple thing Wizards can do: they can delete or modify section 9 in OGL 1.1.
That won't affect anything released under prior versions of the OGL, so the statement "License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version" is absolutely true, but is irrelevant to 1D&D as it has never been released under any version of the OGL. If the 1D&D SRD is released under a license that deletes section 9, or modifies it to something like "You may use any authorized version of this License with a version greater than X" you will not be able to make use of the 1D&D SRD under the original OGL (though you will be able to use the 5e SRD).
>if you are charging each employee more than a hundred thousand dollars yearly for doing a bit of helping in making third-party D&D products, then I think you are radically overpaying them. Not only that, but companies like this often utilize part time workers and give them cheaper pay. And honestly, I don't see why printing books, creating merchandise, and advertising your product would take up to half your revenue ($325,000+ yearly).
$100k in costs to the company = ~ $50-65 k salary for the employee when benefits are included assuming a full-time employee and not an underpayed contract worker. Sure you can hire paid-by-the-piece contractors but then you'll get trash content. I mean why do you think DnDBeyond blog posts are so trashy and shallow? (Or why so many movie scripts and TV adaptations are so awful).
You're also assuming the employees are the ones generating the content which is unlikely. Most big content producers, the employees are managerial staff that organize and interact with the various contractors for: preparing and reading legal documents and contracts, managing finances preparing financial statements and tax documentation, interfacing with advertising companies tracking advertising effectiveness and identifying opportunities in the marketplace for new products, managing social media presence across various platforms enforcing the copyright of their published materials by issuing DMS take down orders to digital platforms where their content has been shared....
> In other words, a company making $750,000+ every year is either a pretty big company or they have terrible management. And though I could be wrong, does the money companies spend on advertising their products really count as "income"? Because if not, then that wouldn't be charged royalties.
50% profit on any product is extremely high. Most industries are lucky to see 20% profit on their products, and many see far-far less. Royalties are paided on gross revenue or gross income not on net profits, and they are why branded products are frequently routinely much more expensive (or way lower quality) than non-branded equivalents.
$100k in costs to the company = ~ $50-65 k salary for the employee when benefits are included assuming a full-time employee and not an underpayed contract worker. Sure you can hire paid-by-the-piece contractors but then you'll get trash content. I mean why do you think DnDBeyond blog posts are so trashy and shallow? (Or why so many movie scripts and TV adaptations are so awful).
For one, I don't think DDB's blog posts aren't trashy or shallow at all. A lot of them have cool ideas, and I've yet to see one I thought was terrible. Also, paying employees $50,000 to 60,000 per a year gives you around 15 full time employees. If you half that for some miscellaneous costs, then that's still 7 to 8 employees. So yeah, $750,000 is a pretty successful homebrew corporation.
You're also assuming the employees are the ones generating the content which is unlikely. Most big content producers, the employees are managerial staff that organize and interact with the various contractors for: preparing and reading legal documents and contracts, managing finances preparing financial statements and tax documentation, interfacing with advertising companies tracking advertising effectiveness and identifying opportunities in the marketplace for new products, managing social media presence across various platforms enforcing the copyright of their published materials by issuing DMS take down orders to digital platforms where their content has been shared...
Weren't you just saying that these weren't big companies or content producers?
Royalties are paided on gross revenue or gross income not on net profits, and they are why branded products are frequently routinely much more expensive (or way lower quality) than non-branded equivalents.
Keep in mind that we don't know how big the royalty will be yet, so it could be something very small that doesn't affect any of the companies losing money by it much at all.
You could be right, but a source for big number-based statements like this would really be nice.
It's kind of hard to find a source as much of that info are company secrets, but here's an article with Games Workshop (Warhammer) an overall profit margins of ~40%, and Alphabet (Google) at 25%.
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I don't know, this seems sort of a petty move. The "less than 20" 3rd parties making more than $750k still don't amount much to WotC's sale figures, it seems just sorta weird to set up a 3rd party revenue monitoring responsibility to staff or contractors when resources could be spent toward, I dunno, designing and selling better quality game products.
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Are you one of the number of creators that make $50,001/yr. in order to report, or one of the <20 creators that make >$750k?
Then that doesn't apply to you. In fact, it doesn't apply to a massive section of the creator-space.
So nothing to worry about.
No matter where you go, there you are.
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As near as I can tell, that's just for any 3P making "custom content." That's a specific legal term. The short and simple version is a 3P makes branded content. Now, that can already happen. Sort of. We've seen books that were at least collaborations with the likes of Critical Role and Penny Arcade.
It's possible they're looking at using the OGL to expand such opportunities. But custom content also applies to other products, like books, so it's possible that's not OGL at all.
Right.
My point was any royalty payments only seem to kick in on sales (I’m actually unclear if they mean net or gross, but that’s beside the point) above 750k. So, that first dollar after 750 doesn’t mean a retroactive payment for the whole amount. It means you only pay on whatever you make above 750. For example, if you make 800k, you’ll only pay royalties on 50k of it.
It's honestly at a point where royalties should be expected. The OGL was pretty revolutionary, and incredibly generous to creators. You can't even put a song in a YouTube video without paying for it. A few third party publishers have made some impressive profits from the OGL without some of the costs that creators in any other field have to deal with. This part of the new license affects 20 creators. I imagine they were already aware and have plans. They have a lot of time to adjust as well. And other places like Roll 20 and licensed merchandisers already have agreements in place too. This statement from DnD should put every regular creator and player at ease.
I guess that depends. If you are a regular creator, but you do work also for a larger company (like we've seen many popular YouTubers have a monster or spell or whatever content as part of a larger Kickstarter), you now may be out of work as the larger company needs to cut some costs to afford the royalties.
It is too hard to say right now, as all of the details won't come out until early 2023. But I think royalties will affect more than just 20 creators because those creators are probably not working individuals but have employees that they pay to contribute to their products. And those "employees" may be out of a gig.
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It's possible, but pretty unclear at the moment. I guess it all depends on the terms of the license and whether they are talking net or gross. If it's net profit, then the contributors are part of the cost. And there might not be a product without them. Well have to see more, and it might come down to individual publishers to decide what's worth it.
Royalties are usually on gross revenue from something as there are plenty of accounting tricks to reduce profits on something.
I don't think this is a reasonable argument. The wording would suggest they're only taking royalties from anything over $750K gross. And quality contractors are always in demand.
If your business venture is at the point where you need more than $750K gross to even meet a profit, I think you shouldn't be engaged with indie publishing. Not when the average cost to self-publish is $2K American.
I'll talk to some people who were a few years ago (that's a mess I'd rather not get into right now) once I'm back from vacation.
$750K/year covers the salary & benefits of ~7-8 skilled employees today. Assuming 50% of revenue goes towards external expenses - i.e. the printing of actual books, creation of merchandise, advertising products, that's a company of 3-4 employees. I'd hardly consider that a massive business.
From what I understand, this is just a minor update to how the Open Game License works and it is unlikely to significantly affect the vast majority of people. Legal permissions evolve and change just as the conditions around them evolve and change too. This seems to be a relatively minor change and it only affects a very small portion of homebrewers; The only reason this is such a big deal is because of the wild rumors that circulated around this.
Unless you make $750,000 as a third-party publisher, then you aren't going to be charged royalties at all. This will likely affect a couple big organizations such as MCDM and Kobold Press, but that is not too surprising: If you are going to build supplements for other peoples game and make money off there content, then they have every right to charge you royalties for that.
Well, if you are charging each employee more than a hundred thousand dollars yearly for doing a bit of helping in making third-party D&D products, then I think you are radically overpaying them. Not only that, but companies like this often utilize part time workers and give them cheaper pay. And honestly, I don't see why printing books, creating merchandise, and advertising your product would take up to half your revenue ($325,000+ yearly).
In other words, a company making $750,000+ every year is either a pretty big company or they have terrible management. And though I could be wrong, does the money companies spend on advertising their products really count as "income"? Because if not, then that wouldn't be charged royalties.
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HERE.By RPG standards that's an established and successful business. Most RPG publishers are part-time efforts by one or two people.
Just found something that WotC themselves published about the OGL 18 years ago in their FAQ about it.
So to the people saying "WotC could just revoke the older version and force people to use the newer one", you're wrong. WotC themselves said that they can't prevent you from using older versions of the OGL even if they wanted to.
Source: https://www.enworld.org/threads/ogl-faq.694028/
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Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Thank you for finding that. This is a big reason there was never anything to get too worried about. The OGL we are used to will always exist. If the new OGL and the 1DnD SRD isn't good for people, then 1DnD just won't see the same 3rd party support that 5e did. Which is worse for WotC than it is for any of us.
Some people have brought up that the OGL was partially motivated by the financial burden that printing all those sourcebooks themselves put on DnD. That was part of it. But there was another aspect too. They realized that a lot of DnD just could never be owned in the first place. And rather than fight the details in court with every solo publisher for eternity, it was better just to give up some of it. Define what they were okay with anyone using, and everyone wins. There's no more confusion. Here's the SRD. Have at it.
If a 3rd party creator really doesn't want anything to do with the new license, they can just keep making 5e material. Or leave it vague enough to work with 1DnD based on the old SRD. Or get creative with the sales aspect. But I suspect that most of the creators in that top bracket already understand what's going on and how they will approach it. And they aren't raising the alarms.
That's only semi-true. You can use materials with any version of the OGL that they were released under. That means you can make use of the 3e and 3.5e SRDs under version 1.0 of the OGL, and you can make use of the 5e SRD under version 1.0a (but not under 1.0). If One D&D is released under version 1.1 of the OGL, you can't use 1.0 or 1.0a with it.
That said, if version 1.1 is too restrictive, it's likely to split the creator community, which will be a problem for Wizards (see Pathfinder), which Wizards probably wants to avoid.
That's incorrect. Section 9 of the SRD says that if something is published under a version of OGL, you can use it with any version of the OGL.
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You mean section 9 of the OGL. And that assertion is not actually true, because it ignores one simple thing Wizards can do: they can delete or modify section 9 in OGL 1.1.
That won't affect anything released under prior versions of the OGL, so the statement "License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version" is absolutely true, but is irrelevant to 1D&D as it has never been released under any version of the OGL. If the 1D&D SRD is released under a license that deletes section 9, or modifies it to something like "You may use any authorized version of this License with a version greater than X" you will not be able to make use of the 1D&D SRD under the original OGL (though you will be able to use the 5e SRD).
>if you are charging each employee more than a hundred thousand dollars yearly for doing a bit of helping in making third-party D&D products, then I think you are radically overpaying them. Not only that, but companies like this often utilize part time workers and give them cheaper pay. And honestly, I don't see why printing books, creating merchandise, and advertising your product would take up to half your revenue ($325,000+ yearly).
$100k in costs to the company = ~ $50-65 k salary for the employee when benefits are included assuming a full-time employee and not an underpayed contract worker. Sure you can hire paid-by-the-piece contractors but then you'll get trash content. I mean why do you think DnDBeyond blog posts are so trashy and shallow? (Or why so many movie scripts and TV adaptations are so awful).
You're also assuming the employees are the ones generating the content which is unlikely. Most big content producers, the employees are managerial staff that organize and interact with the various contractors for: preparing and reading legal documents and contracts, managing finances preparing financial statements and tax documentation, interfacing with advertising companies tracking advertising effectiveness and identifying opportunities in the marketplace for new products, managing social media presence across various platforms enforcing the copyright of their published materials by issuing DMS take down orders to digital platforms where their content has been shared....
> In other words, a company making $750,000+ every year is either a pretty big company or they have terrible management. And though I could be wrong, does the money companies spend on advertising their products really count as "income"? Because if not, then that wouldn't be charged royalties.
50% profit on any product is extremely high. Most industries are lucky to see 20% profit on their products, and many see far-far less. Royalties are paided on gross revenue or gross income not on net profits, and they are why branded products are frequently routinely much more expensive (or way lower quality) than non-branded equivalents.
For one, I don't think DDB's blog posts aren't trashy or shallow at all. A lot of them have cool ideas, and I've yet to see one I thought was terrible. Also, paying employees $50,000 to 60,000 per a year gives you around 15 full time employees. If you half that for some miscellaneous costs, then that's still 7 to 8 employees. So yeah, $750,000 is a pretty successful homebrew corporation.
Weren't you just saying that these weren't big companies or content producers?
You could be right, but a source for big number-based statements like this would really be nice.
Keep in mind that we don't know how big the royalty will be yet, so it could be something very small that doesn't affect any of the companies losing money by it much at all.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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HERE.It's kind of hard to find a source as much of that info are company secrets, but here's an article with Games Workshop (Warhammer) an overall profit margins of ~40%, and Alphabet (Google) at 25%.