The Scythian
Explorer
It seems like you don't remember (or never actually understood) what WotC tried to pull. If you haven't read it in a while (or haven't read it at all), Linda Codega's article is a good starting point.
WotC circulated a version of the new OGL (which was an OGL in name only) to larger creators at some point before November 10th, 2022. They later tried to claim that this was a draft that they put out to get people's opinions, but there's no evidence that this was the case, and we know that those creators were also given contracts to sign, so it seems unlikely. WotC's original plan was to release the new agreement on January 4th, 2023 and require licensees who had been using the original OGL to sign it by January 13th, at which point they intended to "deauthorize" the original OGL, giving licensees just seven business days to decide whether to agree to the new terms or stop publishing OGL material (and it wasn't clear what the legal status of already published products would be).
At no point is there any evidence that WotC asked anyone anything. There was no negotiation. They weren't even upfront with the majority of people using the OGL, as the plan was to keep the new agreement secret from all but the largest creators until just one business week before the OGL would have been revoked, forcing licensees using the OGL to make a very difficult decision in an unfairly short period of time. We're talking about an ultimatum here, not a request.
In that light, your landlord and tenant hypothetical makes no sense, as there's a whole legal framework that exists to keep landlords from doing what WotC attempted to pull on its licensees. A landlord would of course be way out of line if they attempted to "ask" in that way and would almost certainly be sued.
A better example would be negotiated licensing agreements, like the ones Marvel signed with Sony and 20th Century Fox before being acquired by Disney. Those agreements allow those companies to make films on certain properties as long as they actually made and continued to make films within a certain timeframe. When Disney acquired Marvel, they couldn't just say, "Well, you made these licensing agreements with Marvel, but we just bought Marvel and we've decided to revoke those agreements, so now you only have seven business days to agree to these new licenses that our lawyers drew up without your knowledge or input and we're not even going to be clear about whether we expect you to take your already existing Spider-Man and X-Men movies off the market."
