Alexander Macris of Autarch has a very grim post on therpgsite
WOTC, SRD, Gettin' Lawyerly
I wish you were right, but unfortunately I believe you are wrong.
By the misfortune of having studied law, I have a wide network of attorneys in my contacts. I already consulted with one of the top IP lawyers in the United States about this issue and the situation is grim. The attorney I spoke to is personally familiar with Hasbro and he said that Hasbro's litigation war chest is absolutely huge and they are out for blood. He said to expect them to litigate to win back their IP rights with a courtroom battle lasting 3-4 years. I asked him if I could fight back with a $100,000 GoFundMe and he literally laughed. He said it would cost $500,000 simply to get through pre-trial motions and $2-3M to see it through to completion. Hasbro will utterly bury any opponent in motions. The expense alone makes it impossible for anyone at all to fight this except the likes of Paizo. He stressed this over and over in the call: It doesn't matter how good my argument is because I will never get to make that argument. I'll be bankrupt before then.
Moreover, Wizards doesn't even need to litigate. It just needs to persuade Kickstarter and DriveThruRPG that the bread is buttered on their side. Then they can simply have my game, Pundit's game, anyone's game they don't like, shut off from the crowdfunding and distribution we need to be viable. They can do the same on YouTube, just as music companies and Nintendo do, on anyone they want to tread on. We already know how platforms behave in the face of corporate bullies. It will happen in our industry, too, if we're not careful.
I asked what my options were, given this dire situation, and he said "try not to let them notice you." Well, they've already noticed me. "Release anything you can before the new license drops." Well, what about my future product? "Never use the OGL and SRD again in the future and hope they don't care enough to sue you anyway."
The attorney I spoke to is a gamer, has impeccable credentials, and is a trusted friend of 20 years; he has no reason to lie to me or dissuade me. So, based on the advice of the best expert I know, I believe the situation is quite dire. I wish it were a case of crying wolf, but there is literally a wolf and it's here to feast.
I wish I had better news but that's the cold splash of water I got in my face yesterday.
If this is accurate, it implies WoTC-Hasbro really are set on the nuclear option, and that they would rather destroy the 3PP ecosystem created by the OGL than see it continue to use 'their IP'. I think this would destroy the RPG industry as we know it and set things back to something more like the 1990s. The reputational damage to WoTC would be even greater than what TSR suffered. I think the actual economic effect on WoTC would be almost as devastating as that suffered by their victims. The parrallel of Russia's invasion of Ukraine comes to mind.
