[Gleemax]Another thing not to like.

[Kem]

So you agree, that it's a shady dealing that is going to take advantage of hundreds of fans who won't get compensated for their hard work.

You just don't think that WotC *should* compensate people for their hard work, right?

Say what?

Its not shadey, its TYPICAL and they are being UP FRONT about it. And where do I say people shouldn't be paid for their work?

Y'know, that actually supports my argument against Kem even better than my own argument. If true, WotC doesn't NEED any protection against fans who come up with the same idea that they do, and the ToS for Gleemax effectively amounts to them blatantly admitting to be taking your stuff for their own use and giving you nothing for it (though letting you retain the ability to publish it other places...which, IMO, is of extremely dubious benefit).

Actually it doesn't. Because you don't need to have a valid lawsuit in order to sue.
Companies don't like to be sued. And being sued for this will only be bad press.

Which basically means that Kem's argument that WotC needs to be able to use people's stuff for free or they'll be in trouble is....bunk.

Never said they had to use anybodies crap for free where are you getting this from?

I'm fairly neutral on the Gleemax idea, but what I don't like is the idea that by putting something on Gleemax, I'm basically donating it for free to WotC. If they're going to profit off of my work, I should profit off of it, too.

You want to profit off of their work, why should you be paid for their work?

 

[I'm A Banana]

No, WotC needs the protection because it is one thing for WotC to develop a product and claim they did it independently, and were not aware that the same product existed on some other website, but that arguement becomes much more difficult to make when it is their own website where their own people post.

In which case, wouldn't the smart thing be to confess to using Gleemax to get ideas for products, and then negotiate with the posters of those ideas for WotC to get those rights, if they use them? You know, like when they pay their own writers to come up with ideas for books?

I personally think that this is a CYA statement, rather than a justification for stealing IP, but I can understand how people who are trying to publish for their own profit would be concerned by the statement and be inclined to not post anything to Gleemax just in case.

I think you're right, but I think if they were going to go with a CYA approach, they could offer to *actually* buy the works from people, rather than claiming some sort of intellectual feudalism, where all the crops you grow on their soil are really theirs.

 

[Kem]

In which case, wouldn't the smart thing be to confess to using Gleemax to get ideas for products, and then negotiate with the posters of those ideas for WotC to get those rights, if they use them? You know, like when they pay their own writers to come up with ideas for books?

Who says they are getting the ideas from a random poster on Gleemax? Are you familiar with what Independant Developement actually is?

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I think you're right, but I think if they were going to go with a CYA approach, they could offer to *actually* buy the works from people, rather than claiming some sort of intellectual feudalism, where all the crops you grow on their soil are really theirs.

But if they say they'll buy it, then they might still get themselves caught by someone who posted something similar to what they developed independently. It puts them right back in the same place when someone comes knocking claiming they weren't paid for their work.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Can somebody point me to where they said it was for all games and all gamers? From their press release, I got the impression when they talked about "all kinds of games," they were talking about all kinds of games (board games, RPGs, collectible card games, computer games etc.) which WotC has rights to. I never saw WotC implying that Mattel should drop on by and enjoy a place for some free marketing.

From the Randy Buehler interview on ICv2 (part 2)
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/10728.html

In terms of letting the competitor set up shop in the network, we're not going to charge for that at all. The idea is that this is a home for gamers, so if somebody wants to create a personal page around a game that they're publishing, great, they should, this is the space where that's supposed to happen. Just like we're not charging the retailers to set up their pages, we're not charging the competitors to set up their pages. We're not going to go out of our way to call attention to a competitor's page, but it's there if the players want to rate that game highly, review that game highly, then they have the right to do that.

and part 3
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/10727.html

We're not going to limit the board game portal to just our own stuff. We're interested in working with other board game publishers and other developers to potentially have other board games on that portal. I don't have any of those relationships in place right now. We'll probably launch with mostly Avalon Hill games, because we're launching end of the year, first of next year. That said, I'm imagining a world where we've got other board games up and that board game description is driving traffic to their Website. Did you enjoy this game, well why don't you buy a copy, or go to this store where they play it every Wednesday night or go buy it here, or search for people who want to play it in real life, or go to GenCon and hang out in the board game hall. By recruiting people in with this digital experience that's convenient, we then get the opportunity to make them aware of the social real world experience that's also available to them.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

So you agree, that it's a shady dealing that is going to take advantage of hundreds of fans who won't get compensated for their hard work.

You just don't think that WotC *should* compensate people for their hard work, right?



Y'know, that actually supports my argument against Kem even better than my own argument. If true, WotC doesn't NEED any protection against fans who come up with the same idea that they do, and the ToS for Gleemax effectively amounts to them blatantly admitting to be taking your stuff for their own use and giving you nothing for it (though letting you retain the ability to publish it other places...which, IMO, is of extremely dubious benefit).

Which basically means that Kem's argument that WotC needs to be able to use people's stuff for free or they'll be in trouble is....bunk.



I'm fairly neutral on the Gleemax idea, but what I don't like is the idea that by putting something on Gleemax, I'm basically donating it for free to WotC. If they're going to profit off of my work, I should profit off of it, too.

I find it quite ironic you are worrying about not being compensated for your work (not paid for work you post to a message board) when you have a link to a word doc of a Planescape treatment in your sig line. Funny, I don't remember us licensing out that setting.

 

[Scribble]

I kind of feel this is just, once again, gamers getting worked up about nothing...

I guess gamers are creative people, and because of this they find it easy to invent evil plots of corruption...

Anyway... I think as others have said, it's simply a way to cover their own butts for one, and two:

For the most part, if you have a great new idea for a product/article, or you're an independent writer/company do you really think you're going to be posting that idea/product on a message board before you publish? Does ANYONE do that now???

Most people posting things like feats or "articles" on a message board are people who either don't care about being published, or taking WOTC's advice about getting better at writing for dragon.. (write for anything, even the message boards...)

If someone posts something that WOTC likes, and they put it in the magazine or official rules, that person should be happy. Either they get to be cool to all their gamers friends, or if they want to write they now have added fuel in their future submission letters ("Hey I'm the guy who wrote the rules for x... If you liked that, you might like my idea for...")

I think really it's just jiving with what the whole digital initiative seems to be about... No longer just a few select game designers... It'll be closer to games designed for/by gamers.

Aside from that, I remember what they told us in all the writing classes I took..

1. You actually have to copyright something for it to be copy written... (IE that whole send it to yourself and don't open it poor mans copyright is bogus... It won't stand.)

2. If it really IS good enough to steal, the chances that someone will actually steal your project instead of just doing the much easier thing and just buying it are pretty slim...

3. In the end proving someone copied your work is tough... Usually just ends up costing everyone a lot of money and the challenger loses... Obviously with actual rules involved it's a little different... but with OGL not too much...


So I say, relax... Save the evil corporation bent on world domination idea for your next cyberpunk campign.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If they wanted too, WotC could already be doing this, by reprinting material published under the OGL. With very few exceptions, they prefer to write the stuff themselves.

It's pretty simple- if you're doing something you think somebody might want to pay you for, don't post it on Gleemax.

That still leaves the majority of fans, who are doing it for fun and just want to contribute to the community, and would be thrilled in the unlikely event that something of their's is used in a WotC product.

This is all very likely the situation they want, but it has a very chilling effect on the community. A lot of fans don't give two shakes if WotC uses something they did, in fact, they'd be happy for it. Most probably feel this way. But this kind of thing turns me from neutral toward Gleemax to "mildly hostile." Which is fine, but they're driving away some potential fans, and I certainly have a right to say that I think they're being horribly mercenary about it, and could do it in a different way that wouldn't drive at least me away.

The easiest way to avoid having the possibility that WotC would "rip you off" is simply not to post something that you think they might ever use on Gleemax. Problem solved.

Yes, but that does limit the community's power where it doesn't need to be limited, and it still means that WotC is kind of taking advantage of the fans in this light, milking them for their creative juices without giving back to them. Smart, definitely. But much more like the Evil Corporate Entity that WotC really isn't.

Never said they had to use anybodies crap for free where are you getting this from?

From the TOS, which says that the information you post to Gleemax is free for WotC to use in their books.

From the OP:

The one thing you do grant to us by posting your content onto our site is the right to use it as we please. So, if you post (for example) an awesome Magic card or a D&D feat that we think is cool, we're allowed to put it into one of our books, card sets, etc.

What part about that is ambiguous? Or, even more to the point, what part about that suggests that the reason for this is so that they can avoid legal trouble? It seems pretty expressly designed to harvest other's creations.

Wikinomics goes into this, and it's something that a lot of forward-thinking companies like WotC are experimenting with. I think WotC is going about it in a bad way.

You want to profit off of their work, why should you be paid for their work?

Just because I have a slight problem with WotC bottom-feeding off of the fan design without giving back doesn't mean I want to profit off of Gleemax in any way.

Who says they are getting the ideas from a random poster on Gleemax? Are you familiar with what Independant Developement actually is?

You read the OP, right?

Where it says that one of the purposes of the new ToS is that if you post an awesome D&D feat, that WotC can use it?

 

[Brown Jenkin]

I find it quite ironic you are worrying about not being compensated for your work (not paid for work you post to a message board) when you have a link to a word doc of a Planescape treatment in your sig line. Funny, I don't remember us licensing out that setting.

While I appreciate your posting on the boards here I would rather it was in response to the questions and issues rather than pointing out someone elses possible IP violation.

From someone who does not have a link to any IP violations and is working towards setting up a game company to publish some games we have solely come up with that are entirely our own IP and rule systems I would like some answers before I decide to use Gleemax to even mention anything about our games.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I find it quite ironic you are worrying about not being compensated for your work (not paid for work you post to a message board) when you have a link to a word doc of a Planescape treatment in your sig line. Funny, I don't remember us licensing out that setting.

....which quite obviously falls under what WotC has long upheld as valid fan use?

Or do you see somewhere where I expressed ownership of any of WotC's IP in those documents anywhere?

Or anywhere where I asked for payment for them?

The thing with the Gleemax arrangement is that WotC asks for money for stuff that I did and just shared with my buddies over the gaming networking site. As a paranoid citizen of the DMCA and grandma-suing RIAA era, I'm quite hyper-sensitive to people co-opting my IP. Gleemax obviously doesn't want to be a home for gamers like me, and I'm certainly allowed to gripe about that fact here at ENWorld.

Certainly, if WotC wanted to send me a Cease and Desist for my little PSNPC thread, or if Square-Enix wanted to shut down my fan FFZ project, or if WotC wanted to close down all discussion of D&D on the web except at WotC's own boards, they might be able to. WotC has generally shown a lot more savvy than that, however. Which makes this move all the more surprising to me.

I haven't been a hater on Gleemax or on WotC, but I can't help being critical of this stance. It's better than the old ToS for Gleemax, yeah, but it's still not what it should be.