So that's it for 4th edition I guess?

[Umbran]

1) you are not one of those people whose entire or the majority of their 4Ed material is not DDI only and/or

2) WotC- and such successors in interest as there may be in the next 30+ years- actually do keep that 4Ed DDI material online all that time.

I don't doubt that there are folks who primarily accessed D&D 4e materials through DDI.

However, if they went into it with the expectation that it would somehow last forever, or even particularly long, I am not sure they have anyone other than themselves to blame for their situation. That editions change was pretty clear. That the Internet is not static that services come and go frequently, is also pretty clear.

 

[Alzrius]

That the Internet is not static that services come and go frequently, is also pretty clear.

Unacceptable. An internet without EN World on it is an internet I do not wish to win.

 

[jbear]

Because it's a logical business decision. 4e fans have nowhere to go after WotC kills 4e. However annoyed they may be, there will be nothing coming out for 4e going forward, while there will be shiny new stuff for 5e. They can count on a fair proportion of them to start buying 5e for that reason alone. Plus, if there are 'brand loyal' D&Ders left, they brand-loyally made the switch to 4e and can be counted on doing the same for 5e. OTOH, to win back the 3.5 set, they not only have to, on some level, start producing 3.5 again and label it "NEXT," but also need to symbolically kill 4e to make things rights. Unless they do, 3.5 fans can just keep buying Pathfinder, and that would represent 'lost revenue' and thus failure.

Yes. I guess they figure it's better than shooting themselves in the head by alienating 3.5 and classic D&D fans again.

In what way are they symbolically killing 4e? Apart from not producing more of it (that we know of)?

When 4e came out the company talk was far more aggressively negative towards 3.5e, promoting that 4e was a better game. WHich of course lead to the alienation of many players who love the game.

They aren't taking that approach. They've explained their decisions to begin a new edition with a completely different proposal and goal, one that specifically includes reuniting the fan base. Alienate another section of your fanbase = Does not compute.

That is the message I have got from what I have read/heard from WotC representatives. Everyone has their own mental models which affect what you hear (we basically hear what we want to hear), so you might have got a different message. But until I hear something different from the horses mouth I'm going to stick with what I think on this one.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't doubt that there are folks who primarily accessed D&D 4e materials through DDI.

However, if they went into it with the expectation that it would somehow last forever, or even particularly long, I am not sure they have anyone other than themselves to blame for their situation. That editions change was pretty clear. That the Internet is not static that services come and go frequently, is also pretty clear.

Well, I know some of the community of ENWorld fall into that category by their own words. And so do some of the guys in my group. (Those guys are not huge fans of 4Ed, though.)

And not only do I agree with you, if you look hard enough, you can probably find me saying something to that effect in 2008 as a reason for why I would not be paying into DDI right before talking about which books I would be buying.

 

[S'mon]

1st Edition AD&D wasn't released OGL, either, and yet there is a thriving ecosystem of retro games and clones without incurring any C&D's from WotC.

It probably helped a lot that Stuart Marshall lawyered up before OSRIC was released, though (and English law discourages frivolous lawsuits). OSRIC set a precedent for the other retro-clones.

My suspicion is that if you released a 4e OGL-based retro-clone right now you might get a C&D unless very careful, but after 5e is released they would not bother, unless they could nail you for trade mark infringement.

 

[pemerton]

My suspicion is that if you released a 4e OGL-based retro-clone right now you might get a C&D unless very careful, but after 5e is released they would not bother, unless they could nail you for trade mark infringement.

Is your thought that the potential breach of copyright, and potentially also breach of contract assuming you're doing it under the OGL, would be too uncertain to be worth pursuing?

 

[S'mon]

Is your thought that the potential breach of copyright, and potentially also breach of contract assuming you're doing it under the OGL, would be too uncertain to be worth pursuing?

Yes, as long as you take the d20 SRD as your starting point then add in non-copyrightable games mechanics from 4e, it's possible to create a non-infringing game. With non-literal copyright infringement it's always very hard to say where the boundary lies anyway, then add the OGL on top and lawyers don't want to go near that mess in court. Framing a C&D letter is of course far far easier than taking a case to court, but with the OGL they're supposed to issue a breach-of-OGL notice, which requires them to state how the OGL has been breached.

 

[pemerton]

Framing a C&D letter is of course far far easier than taking a case to court, but with the OGL they're supposed to issue a breach-of-OGL notice, which requires them to state how the OGL has been breached.

The rest of your post is clear, thanks. On this point, wouldn't you (1) send the C&D letter alleging breach of copyright, and then (2) issue the breach-of-OGL notice alleging that the breach of the OGL consists in purporting to license material which is neither derivative of others' OGL material nor material over which you enjoy copyright permissions that would permit you to declare it (ie a breach of clause 5)?

 

[S'mon]

The rest of your post is clear, thanks. On this point, wouldn't you (1) send the C&D letter alleging breach of copyright, and then (2) issue the breach-of-OGL notice alleging that the breach of the OGL consists in purporting to license material which is neither derivative of others' OGL material nor material over which you enjoy copyright permissions that would permit you to declare it (ie a breach of clause 5)?

That seems right, yes (I just had a look over the OGL). The problem for WotC (or another company using the OGL) would be that the respondent making a retro-clone etc can claim that copyrighted material they used was covered by the OGL, then the claimants have to pick out non-OGL material in the work, show that it's not OGL material nor derived from OGL material by the respondent, show that it's copyright protectable (substantial, not game rules/formulae, etc), and show that it's significant, not a de minimis infringement.

If the respondent just copy/pasted chunks of a 4e D&D rulebook then this is doable, but 4e rules mechanics are not protectable, and most of the fluff can be derived from the SRD, so a non-literal copy based off the SRD using the OGL may not be infringing. And you don't want to spend millions finding out. No games manufacturer wants to sue over game clones in copyright if they can help it (Trade Marks are ok) because of the risk of damaging precedents.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Is there an equivalent to Godwin's Law that states that the probability of any thread about D&D being about copyright law approaches 100%?