Bardsandsages
First Post
To be fair though, it is also a royalty-free licensing contract.
It stands to reason that the criteria for deciding what constitutes "reasonable" contract terms are probably slightly different when comparing a royalty-free contract to one where the licensee is actually paying money for the licensing rights (such as in your Batman example).
Whether it is free or not is not the point. Any license that allows one party to change the agreement at will and forces the other to either submit or lose their investment in a product is a bad one. Even if you aren't paying one dime for it, a publisher still has expenses. And I don't know how comfortable I am as a publisher investing in paying writers, artists, marketing and production costs for a product that WoTC at any time can make obsolete.
Yes, it is their IP. Yes, they have a right to do what they want. NO, that doesn't make this a good license.
I don't think WoTC is 'evil' or deliberately out to screw people. But I do believe they often suffer from a bad case of legalitis, and do things because their legal department tells them so without really thinking through the ramifications for their license partners. Its like the old saying "never ascribe to malice where ignorance will suffice."
Let's be honest. Did the license get changed because WoTC was really taking the concerns of 3pp to heart, or because so many were successfully creating 4e compatible material legally without a license? Or because so many were successfully continuing to use the existing OGL to produce sellable, quality product?
And like the folks at Paizo said, for many publishers it is too little too late. I've no interest in 4e material. Our 3.5 products are still selling, and our own Karma system is starting to grow. Do I now spread my resources thin to jump on the 4e bandwagon, not knowing what WoTC might change in the license tommarrow? Do I risk resources, in this economy no less, on trying to build a third product line of game materials when that entire investment is at the whim or whether or not some lawyer at Hasbro decided the license needs to be changed?