Honestly, "this is what they meant to release but they didn't" isn't actually evidence of doubling down. It's evidence that someone thought that doubling down was a good idea, but I'd lay odds that there's internal conflict at WotC about what to actually do (and the existence of leaks is pretty strong evidence for this being true).
The person or faction who originally came up with this idea are likely in favor of doubling down, because if it doesn't work, they've cost Wizards a whole bunch of PR problems for no gain, and that's the kind of thing that gets executives fired. Meanwhile, there's probably another faction that thinks an executive's head on a pillow is the perfect sacrifice to calm things down.
100% there is clearly internal disagreements within WotC, the leaks are definitely proof of that. And the company statement is still full of corporate euphemisms ("our drafts included royalty language") and quite disgustingly arrogant and self-congratulatory :
Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we.
And note that the WotC statement makes no mention of whether OGL1.0a will continue to be supported the only mention of OGL1.0a is:
Content already released under 1.0a will also remain unaffected.
Which was already the case for leaked OGL1.1 (it would absolutely be illegal for them to retroactively make already released content a violation of a license), so the silence is deafening on this subject. I would rate it 8:1 that the next version we see either from a leak or from an official release will still invalidate OGL1.0a.
You can almost see the two sides of WotC arguing with each other in the release, with the apology at the end from the pro-community faction vs the we just wanted to solicit opinions excuse paragraph in the middle from the pro-corporate faction.
100% there is clearly internal disagreements within WotC, the leaks are definitely proof of that. And the company statement is still full of corporate euphemisms ("our drafts included royalty language") and quite disgustingly arrogant and self-congratulatory :
Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we.
And note that the WotC statement makes no mention of whether OGL1.0a will continue to be supported the only mention of OGL1.0a is:
Content already released under 1.0a will also remain unaffected.
Which was already the case for leaked OGL1.1 (it would absolutely be illegal for them to retroactively make already released content a violation of a license), so the silence is deafening on this subject. I would rate it 8:1 that the next version we see either from a leak or from an official release will still invalidate OGL1.0a.
You can almost see the two sides of WotC arguing with each other in the release, with the apology at the end from the pro-community faction vs the we just wanted to solicit opinions excuse paragraph in the middle from the pro-corporate faction.
That "excuse paragraph" in the middle comes straight from the leaked draft.
We’re aware that, if We somehow stretch Our decision of what is or is not objectionable under these clauses too far, We will receive community pushback and bad PR, and We’re more than open to being convinced that We made a wrong decision.
So, let's take a moment and assume everything commentators have said so far is true: the NDAs, the attached contracts, and the leaks. All of it is 100% accurate.
The attached contracts are not people agreeing to the terms of the 1.1 draft. First off, it's a draft. It's not the final, enforceable license with all the power of the law behind it. Because a person or company does not get the license. The license attaches to the individual work. So even if there were contracts, they'd be for third party works that are not custom agreements. And they'd be actively switching to an incomplete draft during either mid- or pre-production. That's just a logistical headache for everyone involved. And WotC has no way of knowing every third party book out there.
The NDAs are the attached contracts. Because WotC was actually circulating that draft among select third parties. Think of it like alpha and beta testing. They wanted creator feedback from trusted entities to work out any kinks before a public release. In which case, this all could have worked itself out on its own, and we'll never know. We'll just have to live with the fact that we may have lost out collective minds over nothing. Because it might not even have been an issue anymore by the time the document(s) were leaked. And WotC really wants that feedback because they don't want to alienate their partners. Yes, partners. The other companies might be smaller, but a new edition of Tyranny of Dragons is releasing Tuesday. Kobold Press gets a share of that. Penny Arcade gave us Acquisitions Incorporated (which I think was given out for free a while back), and they do not need WotC. And Critical Role has two official works─a setting book and an adventure─never mind their brand which has basically become the biggest ambassador the company has.
I have zero doubt that some arrogance was at play. Of course, there was. I'm also confident that cooler heads can and would prevail. I look at that official statement and see another mea culpa. It isn't wrong of them to say listening to pushback and making changes means everyone wins. This isn't a zero-sum game. The last thing the company wants is to alienate its players, its fans, and drive them somewhere else. It could hurt the film, which hits theatres the spring. It could result in a massive drop in feedback for their OneD&D surveys. They want engagement, because engagement is how they make money.
It seems silly to me to nitpick over every scrap of news that comes out. And my background is in journalism. I graduated with my degree 15 years ago and freelanced in the DMV. Take the time to really investigate and think it over.
As far as I read the statement, they still do not say that they will not try to retroactively revoke OGL 1.0a. It's totally fine to use a new license for OneD&D, but the OGL 1.0a was not made to be revoked. The rules for releasing content for the old system (5e) must remain the same. There's so much content based on old content already in the making that would be forced under the new licence otherwise. The idea of the license was to separate the barebone game rules from the creative lore and artwork part that makes a TTRPG what it is.
As long as WotC's new licence tries to somehow claim that OGL 1.0a can no longer be used for new material based on old Open Game Content I will not support any new material using that licence. If the new licence only applies to content using the OneDND Open Game Content, not the 5e stuff, that's a different story. Then everyone can choose for which system to release compatible supplemental content. Although I personally would be very reluctant to do so, if the new licence remains as easily revokable as the 1.1 draft. But if WotC manages to make such a great new version of the game that the incentive to use open game content released under the new license is there - good for them! Then people know what they're getting into from the beginning.
Either way, the statement has been very careful not to say anything that would imply that OGL 1.0a will remain usable. Quite the opposite. So I'm very concerned for D&D's future. With each new day no clear statements are made about the core issue of the licence trying to invalidate the old one for future releases based on old Open Game Content, more people will leave this system and specifically this platform behind for good, which greatly saddens me. It didn't have to be this way WotC. Congratulations on shoveling your own grave. :(
This new update is obviously just damage control, lies, and an easy PR stunt cop-out. Y'all know darn well it was never about "addressing discriminatory and hateful conduct," out of all the communities on earth, us D&D are probably some of the LEAST in need of that and they know it. Do not believe for a moment their claim to promote inclusivity, the new OGL is designed to do just the opposite.
Another thing HEAVILY undermining the credibility of their excuses is the fact that they said
"Our plan was always to solicit the input of our community before any update to the OGL; the drafts you’ve seen were attempting to do just that"
despite the fact that the document was not published nor announced, it was LEAKED, we weren't supposed to see this thing yet, they did not solicit any input from us.
Also, the paragraph towards of the end comes off as INCREDIBLY snarky and definitive. I guarantee this will not be the final word Wizards will make on this, this is FAR from over. It's funny how wrongly Wizards predicted the response to this document- we are not so naïve to believe this backhanded apology, nobody is saying "we won," as it is painfully clear this apology is inadequate.
A couple of last thoughts. First, we won’t be able to release the new OGL today, because we need to make sure we get it right, but it is coming. Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we.
Unfortunately, their incredibly optimistic assertion is wrong. We lost- and so did Wizards.
Wizards, I love your game, but this announcement is just digging yourself deeper into this hole. Please make another, actually meaningful announcement soon, I really don't want this community as we know it to die because of your bad decisions.
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Life is very busy unfortunately, gone from most Pbp's indefinitely. If you'd like to contact me, I am on Discord at GreatAxeblade#7595, always happy to chat :)
My fallbacks are usually Paladium and GURPS, but then I'm old so it's older editions of those games than what is current. :) Both systems are very crunch-heavy for building characters, but their various supplemental worldbooks are fascinating reading if nothing else.
Palladium has historically been notoriously litigious (as in, worse than TSR about fan stuff), GURPS is not as obnoxious but is most certainly not open or anything close.
Oh yea, I didn't mean these would be a good replacement for D&D 5e, or that they were good companies or anything, I was just answering the question as to what systems *I* personally have in my library to use, and is still in print, when my gaming group wants a break from D&D. I have a bunch of other things too, but they're all out-of-print now and otherwise hard to get... and nearly all of those are sci-fi rather than fantasy. I just noticed that, glancing at my gaming shelves. Huh. Odd.
The main problem is, that they even entertained those thoughts in earnest. No one will ever trusth them ever again and just enter into a contract in good faith.
So the only avenue for WtoC that I see to get out of this is:
Join the ORC initiative and pledge to republish all OGL content under the ORC from your side.
The only way forward is to publicly get your fingers off the Open Game Content for good. Make sure that you yourself don't have any way to meddle with this like you attempted here. That's the only way to regain any level of trust.
Any new OGL you publish will be suspect. Any clause that gives you any backdoor to control anything will be viewed with the utmost suspicion. Any way you give yourself to censor people will be met with resistance, because we can not trust your intentions not to abuse this power. You are not the ones to decide what is bigoted, racist, etc. The buyers of that content can make a judgement of that, not you. We don't trust you enough to not just fabricate accusations to further your agenda at this point.
Y'all know darn well it was never about "addressing discriminatory and hateful conduct," out of all the communities on earth, us D&D are probably some of the LEAST in need of that and they know it.
See I 'kinda' believe them on this one, because of the debacle with NuTSR. But this is totally an overreaction to one blatantly objectionable incident which was either ignored by or rejected by the community. And it feels much more like they wanted to change the OGL to destroy their competitors first, and threw in the "stop people selling hateful versions of our game under our logo" as an side thought.
The NFT excuse is even worse IMO, if that is in anyway an honest reason for any of the new OGL then WotC needs to hire new lawyers. Because using any copyrighted material to mint and NFT is already illegal (see DeviantArt's action against NFTs) and minting an NFT doesn't give you any claim to copyright of the content within the NFT (50 people can mint different NFTs and attach the exact same picture or text content to them). The blockchain tracks boxes with serial numbers on them, it doesn't care what is inside that box.
Y'all know darn well it was never about "addressing discriminatory and hateful conduct," out of all the communities on earth, us D&D are probably some of the LEAST in need of that and they know it.
See I 'kinda' believe them on this one, because of the debacle with NuTSR. But this is totally an overreaction to one blatantly objectionable incident which was either ignored by or rejected by the community. And it feels much more like they wanted to change the OGL to destroy their competitors first, and threw in the "stop people selling hateful versions of our game under our logo" as an side thought.
The NFT excuse is even worse IMO, if that is in anyway an honest reason for any of the new OGL then WotC needs to hire new lawyers. Because using any copyrighted material to mint and NFT is already illegal (see DeviantArt's action against NFTs) and minting an NFT doesn't give you any claim to copyright of the content within the NFT (50 people can mint different NFTs and attach the exact same picture or text content to them). The blockchain tracks boxes with serial numbers on them, it doesn't care what is inside that box.
Exactly. Almost certain the NFT part is probably just to try to appeal to the majority of people online who have a distaste for NFT's
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Life is very busy unfortunately, gone from most Pbp's indefinitely. If you'd like to contact me, I am on Discord at GreatAxeblade#7595, always happy to chat :)
Y'all know darn well it was never about "addressing discriminatory and hateful conduct," out of all the communities on earth, us D&D are probably some of the LEAST in need of that and they know it.
See I 'kinda' believe them on this one, because of the debacle with NuTSR. But this is totally an overreaction to one blatantly objectionable incident which was either ignored by or rejected by the community. And it feels much more like they wanted to change the OGL to destroy their competitors first, and threw in the "stop people selling hateful versions of our game under our logo" as an side thought.
The NFT excuse is even worse IMO, if that is in anyway an honest reason for any of the new OGL then WotC needs to hire new lawyers. Because using any copyrighted material to mint and NFT is already illegal (see DeviantArt's action against NFTs) and minting an NFT doesn't give you any claim to copyright of the content within the NFT (50 people can mint different NFTs and attach the exact same picture or text content to them). The blockchain tracks boxes with serial numbers on them, it doesn't care what is inside that box.
Exactly. Almost certain the NFT part is probably just to try to appeal to the majority of people online who have a distaste for NFT's
Even if that is the only thing they try to push through at this point, who would trust them to judge what is bigoted, racist etc? Who would rely on their good will in that? Who would trust them not to abuse that power and just fabricate something? It is so easy to latch on to an out of context sentence or word and point a finger. Any backdoor is unacceptable. WotC just demonstrated that they are willing to abuse their power in the worst way. No matter how the control mechanism is veiled in benign language, no one will trust it. And we have all eyes on the OGL now, we won't miss any backdoor.
The main problem is, that they even entertained those thoughts in earnest. No one will ever trusth them ever again and just enter into a contract in good faith.
So the only avenue for WtoC that I see to get out of this is:
Join the ORC initiative and pledge to republish all OGL content under the ORC from your side.
The only way forward is to publicly get your fingers off the Open Game Content for good. Make sure that you yourself don't have any way to meddle with this like you attempted here. That's the only way to regain any level of trust.
Any new OGL you publish will be suspect. Any clause that gives you any backdoor to control anything will be viewed with the utmost suspicion. Any way you give yourself to censor people will be met with resistance, because we can not trust your intentions not to abuse this power. You are not the ones to decide what is bigoted, racist, etc. The buyers of that content can make a judgement of that, not you. We don't trust you enough to not just fabricate accusations to further your agenda at this point.
Hands off, that's the only way you have left.
This, join the ORC Horde.
If they want to gain some extra money off the 3rd party publishers easy way. Offer 3rd party publishers the ability to publish on DnD Beyond. Take 25% of DnD Beyond sales, but only DnD Beyond sales. And make a terms of service that your work can be removed from DnD beyond for inflammatory language.
Charging 3rd party makes sense then because you are offering a service to them, and being able to remove their content doesn't give you copyright over it or allow you to make money on removed content it simply lets you remove things that you feel hurt the overall community and brand.
It doesn't stop them from making, just they wouldn't be able to put it here.
It would make big money for all involved and make DnD Beyond THE place for DnD content.
"It was just a draft" (but we sent it to people to sign)
Yeah it wasn't a draft it was a contract where they accepted that there would be counter proposals. Drafts say DRAFT on them all over the place. The header the footer, in the background across the page DRAFT. And there are no lines for signage.
You know, word of contracts attached to the 1.1 leak have been circulating for what seems like weeks. This is the first time I've seen anyone offer up anything close to specifics on just what that meant.
You know, word of contracts attached to the 1.1 leak have been circulating for what seems like weeks. This is the first time I've seen anyone offer up anything close to specifics on just what that meant.
Having seen this report just confirming what us old guard players and DM's have layed witness to over the decades of the game's history, and watching the events of the last month, the signs of all this became clearer as more developed.
I get corporations want to protect themselves, but when the community becomes meat-shields and cash cows for slaughter, don't be surprised if they turn and fight to survive.
"It was just a draft" (but we sent it to people to sign)
Based on the CNBC story, they were sending people a Wonderful Opportunity to get in ahead of the official deal, and get a better bargain. Which does indicate that the intent was pretty close to the leaked text, but is not technically incompatible with it being a draft.
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Honestly, "this is what they meant to release but they didn't" isn't actually evidence of doubling down. It's evidence that someone thought that doubling down was a good idea, but I'd lay odds that there's internal conflict at WotC about what to actually do (and the existence of leaks is pretty strong evidence for this being true).
The person or faction who originally came up with this idea are likely in favor of doubling down, because if it doesn't work, they've cost Wizards a whole bunch of PR problems for no gain, and that's the kind of thing that gets executives fired. Meanwhile, there's probably another faction that thinks an executive's head on a pillow is the perfect sacrifice to calm things down.
Huh, this came out after the official statement by the company. Maybe he should have held off to respond appropriately.
More and more, I'm seeing YouTubers doing this for clout than out of genuine concern. They want traffic, and they know this is how to get it.
100% there is clearly internal disagreements within WotC, the leaks are definitely proof of that. And the company statement is still full of corporate euphemisms ("our drafts included royalty language") and quite disgustingly arrogant and self-congratulatory :
And note that the WotC statement makes no mention of whether OGL1.0a will continue to be supported the only mention of OGL1.0a is:
Which was already the case for leaked OGL1.1 (it would absolutely be illegal for them to retroactively make already released content a violation of a license), so the silence is deafening on this subject. I would rate it 8:1 that the next version we see either from a leak or from an official release will still invalidate OGL1.0a.
You can almost see the two sides of WotC arguing with each other in the release, with the apology at the end from the pro-community faction vs the we just wanted to solicit opinions excuse paragraph in the middle from the pro-corporate faction.
That "excuse paragraph" in the middle comes straight from the leaked draft.
Which was also in the Gizmodo article dated 8 days ago.
So, let's take a moment and assume everything commentators have said so far is true: the NDAs, the attached contracts, and the leaks. All of it is 100% accurate.
The attached contracts are not people agreeing to the terms of the 1.1 draft. First off, it's a draft. It's not the final, enforceable license with all the power of the law behind it. Because a person or company does not get the license. The license attaches to the individual work. So even if there were contracts, they'd be for third party works that are not custom agreements. And they'd be actively switching to an incomplete draft during either mid- or pre-production. That's just a logistical headache for everyone involved. And WotC has no way of knowing every third party book out there.
The NDAs are the attached contracts. Because WotC was actually circulating that draft among select third parties. Think of it like alpha and beta testing. They wanted creator feedback from trusted entities to work out any kinks before a public release. In which case, this all could have worked itself out on its own, and we'll never know. We'll just have to live with the fact that we may have lost out collective minds over nothing. Because it might not even have been an issue anymore by the time the document(s) were leaked. And WotC really wants that feedback because they don't want to alienate their partners. Yes, partners. The other companies might be smaller, but a new edition of Tyranny of Dragons is releasing Tuesday. Kobold Press gets a share of that. Penny Arcade gave us Acquisitions Incorporated (which I think was given out for free a while back), and they do not need WotC. And Critical Role has two official works─a setting book and an adventure─never mind their brand which has basically become the biggest ambassador the company has.
I have zero doubt that some arrogance was at play. Of course, there was. I'm also confident that cooler heads can and would prevail. I look at that official statement and see another mea culpa. It isn't wrong of them to say listening to pushback and making changes means everyone wins. This isn't a zero-sum game. The last thing the company wants is to alienate its players, its fans, and drive them somewhere else. It could hurt the film, which hits theatres the spring. It could result in a massive drop in feedback for their OneD&D surveys. They want engagement, because engagement is how they make money.
It seems silly to me to nitpick over every scrap of news that comes out. And my background is in journalism. I graduated with my degree 15 years ago and freelanced in the DMV. Take the time to really investigate and think it over.
As far as I read the statement, they still do not say that they will not try to retroactively revoke OGL 1.0a. It's totally fine to use a new license for OneD&D, but the OGL 1.0a was not made to be revoked. The rules for releasing content for the old system (5e) must remain the same. There's so much content based on old content already in the making that would be forced under the new licence otherwise. The idea of the license was to separate the barebone game rules from the creative lore and artwork part that makes a TTRPG what it is.
As long as WotC's new licence tries to somehow claim that OGL 1.0a can no longer be used for new material based on old Open Game Content I will not support any new material using that licence. If the new licence only applies to content using the OneDND Open Game Content, not the 5e stuff, that's a different story. Then everyone can choose for which system to release compatible supplemental content. Although I personally would be very reluctant to do so, if the new licence remains as easily revokable as the 1.1 draft. But if WotC manages to make such a great new version of the game that the incentive to use open game content released under the new license is there - good for them! Then people know what they're getting into from the beginning.
Either way, the statement has been very careful not to say anything that would imply that OGL 1.0a will remain usable. Quite the opposite. So I'm very concerned for D&D's future. With each new day no clear statements are made about the core issue of the licence trying to invalidate the old one for future releases based on old Open Game Content, more people will leave this system and specifically this platform behind for good, which greatly saddens me. It didn't have to be this way WotC. Congratulations on shoveling your own grave. :(
TL;DR: Not convinced at all.
Also interesting to note that they say they welcome feedback but disabled comments on the official OGL update blogpost. :/
This new update is obviously just damage control, lies, and an easy PR stunt cop-out. Y'all know darn well it was never about "addressing discriminatory and hateful conduct," out of all the communities on earth, us D&D are probably some of the LEAST in need of that and they know it. Do not believe for a moment their claim to promote inclusivity, the new OGL is designed to do just the opposite.
Another thing HEAVILY undermining the credibility of their excuses is the fact that they said
despite the fact that the document was not published nor announced, it was LEAKED, we weren't supposed to see this thing yet, they did not solicit any input from us.
Also, the paragraph towards of the end comes off as INCREDIBLY snarky and definitive. I guarantee this will not be the final word Wizards will make on this, this is FAR from over. It's funny how wrongly Wizards predicted the response to this document- we are not so naïve to believe this backhanded apology, nobody is saying "we won," as it is painfully clear this apology is inadequate.
Unfortunately, their incredibly optimistic assertion is wrong. We lost- and so did Wizards.
Wizards, I love your game, but this announcement is just digging yourself deeper into this hole. Please make another, actually meaningful announcement soon, I really don't want this community as we know it to die because of your bad decisions.
Life is very busy unfortunately, gone from most Pbp's indefinitely.
If you'd like to contact me, I am on Discord at GreatAxeblade#7595, always happy to chat :)
Homebrew races: ~Otterfolk! Play as a otter!~ Playable Dryad! (Literally just the monster sheet ported to player race)
Sauce Archpriest!- Join the Supreme Court of Sauces! Join the Cult of Cults! EXTENDED SIGNATURE Tooltips
Oh yea, I didn't mean these would be a good replacement for D&D 5e, or that they were good companies or anything, I was just answering the question as to what systems *I* personally have in my library to use, and is still in print, when my gaming group wants a break from D&D. I have a bunch of other things too, but they're all out-of-print now and otherwise hard to get... and nearly all of those are sci-fi rather than fantasy. I just noticed that, glancing at my gaming shelves. Huh. Odd.
The main problem is, that they even entertained those thoughts in earnest. No one will ever trusth them ever again and just enter into a contract in good faith.
So the only avenue for WtoC that I see to get out of this is:
Join the ORC initiative and pledge to republish all OGL content under the ORC from your side.
The only way forward is to publicly get your fingers off the Open Game Content for good. Make sure that you yourself don't have any way to meddle with this like you attempted here. That's the only way to regain any level of trust.
Any new OGL you publish will be suspect.
Any clause that gives you any backdoor to control anything will be viewed with the utmost suspicion.
Any way you give yourself to censor people will be met with resistance, because we can not trust your intentions not to abuse this power. You are not the ones to decide what is bigoted, racist, etc. The buyers of that content can make a judgement of that, not you. We don't trust you enough to not just fabricate accusations to further your agenda at this point.
Hands off, that's the only way you have left.
"It was just a draft" (but we sent it to people to sign)
#OpenDnD
See I 'kinda' believe them on this one, because of the debacle with NuTSR. But this is totally an overreaction to one blatantly objectionable incident which was either ignored by or rejected by the community. And it feels much more like they wanted to change the OGL to destroy their competitors first, and threw in the "stop people selling hateful versions of our game under our logo" as an side thought.
The NFT excuse is even worse IMO, if that is in anyway an honest reason for any of the new OGL then WotC needs to hire new lawyers. Because using any copyrighted material to mint and NFT is already illegal (see DeviantArt's action against NFTs) and minting an NFT doesn't give you any claim to copyright of the content within the NFT (50 people can mint different NFTs and attach the exact same picture or text content to them). The blockchain tracks boxes with serial numbers on them, it doesn't care what is inside that box.
Exactly. Almost certain the NFT part is probably just to try to appeal to the majority of people online who have a distaste for NFT's
Life is very busy unfortunately, gone from most Pbp's indefinitely.
If you'd like to contact me, I am on Discord at GreatAxeblade#7595, always happy to chat :)
Homebrew races: ~Otterfolk! Play as a otter!~ Playable Dryad! (Literally just the monster sheet ported to player race)
Sauce Archpriest!- Join the Supreme Court of Sauces! Join the Cult of Cults! EXTENDED SIGNATURE Tooltips
Even if that is the only thing they try to push through at this point, who would trust them to judge what is bigoted, racist etc?
Who would rely on their good will in that?
Who would trust them not to abuse that power and just fabricate something? It is so easy to latch on to an out of context sentence or word and point a finger.
Any backdoor is unacceptable. WotC just demonstrated that they are willing to abuse their power in the worst way. No matter how the control mechanism is veiled in benign language, no one will trust it. And we have all eyes on the OGL now, we won't miss any backdoor.
Who was asked to sign what?
This, join the ORC Horde.
If they want to gain some extra money off the 3rd party publishers easy way. Offer 3rd party publishers the ability to publish on DnD Beyond. Take 25% of DnD Beyond sales, but only DnD Beyond sales. And make a terms of service that your work can be removed from DnD beyond for inflammatory language.
Charging 3rd party makes sense then because you are offering a service to them, and being able to remove their content doesn't give you copyright over it or allow you to make money on removed content it simply lets you remove things that you feel hurt the overall community and brand.
It doesn't stop them from making, just they wouldn't be able to put it here.
It would make big money for all involved and make DnD Beyond THE place for DnD content.
Yeah it wasn't a draft it was a contract where they accepted that there would be counter proposals. Drafts say DRAFT on them all over the place. The header the footer, in the background across the page DRAFT. And there are no lines for signage.
CNBC report: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/13/hasbro-delays-new-dungeons-dragons-licensing-rules.html
You know, word of contracts attached to the 1.1 leak have been circulating for what seems like weeks. This is the first time I've seen anyone offer up anything close to specifics on just what that meant.
Having seen this report just confirming what us old guard players and DM's have layed witness to over the decades of the game's history, and watching the events of the last month, the signs of all this became clearer as more developed.
I get corporations want to protect themselves, but when the community becomes meat-shields and cash cows for slaughter, don't be surprised if they turn and fight to survive.
Based on the CNBC story, they were sending people a Wonderful Opportunity to get in ahead of the official deal, and get a better bargain. Which does indicate that the intent was pretty close to the leaked text, but is not technically incompatible with it being a draft.