Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="madelf" data-source="post: 4183972" data-attributes="member: 15415">Can they really though? Or rather, yeah, they could do it (and it would prevent new d20 product obviously), but would it actually mean much relating to previously existing product? Even assuming the license can be terminated (which I imagine it can  - at least as far as producing new work under it) can it really be, in effect, terminated retroactively?I honestly have trouble believing that WotC could force someone to agree to a revised STL. Certainly they could make them abide by it if they wished to keep producing d20 product (which is pointless because WotC doesn't want people to produce new d20 product anyway), but I'm not sure they could make them abide by the new STL if the publisher chooses not to use it - meaning the publisher ceases to produce any further d20 product after the date the revision (or termination) goes into effect. In that case, the publisher simply isn't a party to the revised license, and has ceased going forward with the old license. I don't see how that could be construed to effect existing products that they produced while they were operating under the old version, unless WotC could show that they were in breach of the old version.I'm no lawyer, so I'm just speculating... but this sounds like the same sort of situation credit card companies have with the terms they can change "at will", the card-holder has no obligation to accept the new terms, or to pay off the balance if they don't (except as outlined under the old terms they did agree to, of course), unless they keep using the card after they've been notified of the changes. So... if someone doesn't keep using the STL to produce new product, their old product should not be effected. Or so it seems to me - I know if I were a publisher with a large backstock of d20 stuff, I'd at least be looking into it. I think the word from WotC (after consultation with the lawyers) is going to be that pre-existing d20 product will still be allowed to be sold. I'm sure it will be spun as "we're doing this out the kindness of our hearts" of course, because that's just good PR, but I suspect they won't have much choice (unless they put a clause in the GSL about pulping d20 product, but that would only effect those who go forward with that).[/idle speculation] <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification