Can WotC be forgiven?

[TheAlkaizer]

You can forgive an individual. Forgiving a business that's owned by an hyper-capitalist entity is foolish in my opinion.

What we've seen is what that corporation is and will be. It has reached that point. It is beyond it. The CEO and the executive might change, but the shareholders will still be there and be asking for for revenue to buy another yacht; whoever they are.

Your relationship with a corporation like that should strictly be one of exchange. You buy what they offer if it is of value to you, and if their actions don't go against your values or beliefs.

In my case, their product is not precious enough, or not better enough, than other products that I can't live without it. I must prefer give my money to more ethical businesses and grow the industry that way.

 

[Arilyn]

The 1.1 OGL was restrictive and completely untenable. They attempted to bully companies into signing and are now pretending it was negotiable all along.

They seem to be walking back some of the problems but are still planning to kill the OGL 1.0a. Their statement today is not a true admission of error. It is actually insulting our memories and intelligence.

I understand if some companies will stick with WoTC for survival and I'd support their products, but not WoTC. I'd much much rather give my cash to to 3pp who still care about the game and are producing amazing and imaginative content.

And of course there are a ton of excellent "not D&D" games on the market that could use some more exposure.

So I will not be supporting One D&D or anymore WoTC products.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Forgiveness is not the same as trust.

Assuming (without deciding) that I could forgive them, I will never trust them again.

"Never" is a Big Word; I do not use it casually.

 

[Parmandur]

@Cadence checked last year's books.

• Call of the Netherdeep: Printed in the USA.
• Monsters of the Multiverse: Printed in China.
• Radiant Citadel: Printed in the USA.
• Shadow of the Dragon Queen: Printed I'm China.

So, hit and miss.

 

[pemerton]

They do not like the Open Gaming license. Last time they did this we used the License against them, and it hurt them. This time they're going** for the License itself. With their comments today, they've shown me that they are going to revoke the Open Gaming License 1.0(a).

I agree "forgive" isn't the best term to use here. In my case it's "can I ever trust them not to try and pull the OGL in the future" - and until the license text includes the word "irrevocable", that's just not ever going to be true, there will always be threat of that Sword of Damocles attached to the OGL because of what's happened recently.

Even if the OGL did include the word "irrevocable", WotC could still purport to revoke its existing licence agreements (or some elements of them). Contractual terms don't exercise agency - they can't stop a party from trying to break the contract by acting in ways they promised not to do.

If X's business model depends upon a contractual licence from W, X is always vulnerable to W changing its mind about what they think (or what to present themselves as thinking) the agreement does or does not permit.

As @Matt Thomason knows, I think the better view is that WotC lacks the legal power to revoke existing agreements under the OGL v 1.0/10.a. But if no one is prepared to defend their contractual rights, that proposition will not be put to the test! An agreement in similar terms but including the word "irrevocable" might be clearer or less clear in this respect - @see's suggested draft not far upthread both contains a statement of irrevocability and establishes a possibility of termination, and so in my view is not free of interpretive complexity. But it likewise would not provide any protection against WotC's purported exercise of conjectured contractual powers unless parties to it were prepared to defend their rights under it.

At least, this is how it seems to me.

 

[Matt Thomason]

Even if the OGL did include the word "irrevocable", WotC could still purport to revoke its existing licence agreements (or some elements of them). Contractual terms don't exercise agency - they can't stop a party from trying to break the contract by acting in ways they promised not to do.

If X's business model depends upon a contractual licence from W, X is always vulnerable to W changing its mind about what they think (or what to present themselves as thinking) the agreement does or does not permit.

As @Matt Thomason knows, I think the better view is that WotC lacks the legal power to revoke existing agreements under the OGL v 1.0/10.a. But if no one is prepared to defend their contractual rights, that proposition will not be put to the test! An agreement in similar terms but including the word "irrevocable" might be clearer or less clear in this respect - @see's suggested draft not far upthread both contains a statement of irrevocability and establishes a possibility of termination, and so in my view is not free of interpretive complexity. But it likewise would not provide any protection against WotC's purported exercise of conjectured contractual powers unless parties to it were prepared to defend their rights under it.

At least, this is how it seems to me.

Yeah, at this point I honestly think even if I felt the OGL was revised to be absolutely ironclad, I'd still don't think I could trust them to never look for a way out - after all we thought it was ironclad 20 years ago - or to never again throw their weight around on the premise nobody will face them down.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, at this point I honestly think even if I felt the OGL was revised to be absolutely ironclad, I'd still don't think I could trust them to never look for a way out - after all we thought it was ironclad 20 years ago - or to never again throw their weight around on the premise nobody will face them down.

I don't want to comment on your own circumstances, for all the obvious reasons.

But I can say I've been a bit surprised to see how widespread the view seems to have been that what makes the OGL work is not legal rights but rather an assumption that WotC won't try to exercise legal rights. (Which include the right to commence for copyright infringement, thus requiring licensees to defend themselves by reliance on their contractual rights.)

 

[rcade]

But I can say I've been a bit surprised to see how widespread the view seems to have been that what makes the OGL work is not legal rights but rather an assumption that WotC won't try to exercise legal rights. (Which include the right to commence for copyright infringement, thus requiring licensees to defend themselves by reliance on their contractual rights.)

I think publishers using the OGL had pretty strong confidence in their legal rights after 23 years in which Hasbro continued to use the OGL on SRDs and never threatened to sue anybody that used it.

 

[Matt Thomason]

I don't want to comment on your own circumstances, for all the obvious reasons.

But I can say I've been a bit surprised to see how widespread the view seems to have been that what makes the OGL work is not legal rights but rather an assumption that WotC won't try to exercise legal rights. (Which include the right to commence for copyright infringement.)

I think a lot of that was interrelated - the document appeared, 20 years ago, to have no loophole they could use, and for 20 years they didn't. Trust in both the OGL and WotC was formed together, at least for me, and 20+ years of working with it left me very confident that it was solid ground to be on. That ground turned to mush for me over the past week, I'm still reeling somewhat from it, and I'm still having a bit of difficulty separating any possible loopholes in the OGL from possible future action by WotC in my head.

The very idea of a challenge that could result in all the OGL 1.0a material no longer being OGL 1.0a material simply didn't exist in my head after all that time (although I do recall there was quite a bit of discussion about it at the time it was written, as I was something of a lurker on Ryan Dancey's OGL-L mailing list), outside of people occasionally doing stupid things that it didn't actually permit them to do.

All of that said, with something the size of WotC it's still very much about being able to trust that you won't need to defend your legal rights against them, but that still stems from being confident enough that you've stayed within the licence terms and therefore are quite safe (as well as that 30-day remedy clause making it act as a safe harbor) so I really do find it very hard separating the two concepts. Plus it's now nearly 4am for me so my brain is barely working properly anyway...

 

[pemerton]

I think publishers using the OGL had pretty strong confidence in their legal rights after 23 years in which Hasbro continued to use the OGL on SRDs and never threatened to sue anybody that used it.

And so why not have the same confidence now?

If the confidence in legal rights only lasts until they're put to the test, it doesn't seem that confident to me!

To put it more plainly: a lot of this discussion is focused around discussions of legal manoeuvrings with licences etc. My view is that a lot of the legal conjectures are under-informed and in some cases just wrong.

Whereas, if the real issue is that WotC has decided to throw its weight around to try and pressure its competitors and its licensees, then no amount of legal manoeuvring seems apt to change that. And the focus on OGL vs ORC therefore seems misplaced.