Lyandelill
Explorer
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Last edited:
I think I know how the morality clause acceptable(+)
The thing is that wotc has demonstrated that they can not be trusted to act in good faith WRT their goal of terminating the OGL so everything needs to be read assuming the worst possible motives as plausible concerns. Heck 1.2 even included a section that tries to kneecap current VTTs to clear a path for the it still in production VTT & did so in a way that allows them to change those restrictions without having to change OGL1.2 itself.
MGibster
Legend
Oh, yeah. I remember Roger Ebert complaining about this in the late 1990s or early 2000s. There was a film about two adolescent British boys that was given an R rating despite containing almost no violence, relatively minor swearing, and no explicit sex. But the boys were gay, so it wasn't appropriate for children under the age of 17 I guess. And for those who think that might not be a big deal, here in the United States, when a movie is rated R, it makes it a lot more difficult for anyone under the age of 17 to see it. Theaters
So imagine how destructive an organization could be if someone deliberately weaponized the process to exclude content they don't approve of. That's a valid concern, and you can't just think about what people might do in 2024, you have to consider what they might do in 2034. If the MGibster Gaming Company publishes a book that passes moral muster in 2024, is that same book still going to pass muster in 2034? Will the governing organization be able to prevent the use of the OGL at that point?
I've always found it interesting that I could walk into any
FormerLurker
Adventurer
So rather than WotC dealing with it through a license people sign with them, they should deal with it through a license people sign with DriveThru and Kickstarter?
Isn't that worse because WotC is avoiding any blame and doesn't have to get their hands dirty? They don't have to take any personal responsibility over banning content as they can shift the responsibility to DriveThru...
No license.
Just like nobody signed a license for Amazon to refuse to host bad content.
Nobody else is responsible for Some Author writing something bad except for that author. There's nothing to blame WotC for unless WotC accepts royalties off of said bad work, then you could blame them for passively condoning the project.
FormerLurker
Adventurer
You literally have to sign Amazon's seller Terms of Service to sell content on their platform.
Dragonblade
Adventurer
Hate clauses are unacceptable in any open license.
I won't reiterate all the valid concerns raised by others (its vague, can be re-defined on a whim, concerns that it would be fairly arbitrated even by "3rd parties", etc.). Perhaps the biggest of all is that a license that can be revocable for such a subjective reason is not truly an open license.
However, it also would be weaponized against YOU the game publisher, in multiple ways. Here are two other huge risks I have not seen mentioned:
First, given the viral nature of games created with a true open license (the original OGL, and maybe ORC. The new WotC proposed 'OGL' is NOT an open license at all), how do you disentangle your content from 2nd and 3rd generation open games? And is that even feasible?
You release game content X, someone else comes along and tweaks and releases content XY, and then someone comes along and releases content XYZ. If you deem XYZ is offensive, and demand they remove your content, why can't they claim they didn't pull it from you, they pulled it from XY so you have no authority to revoke their use of it? I'm using simple letters in my examples to illustrate the point, but real intermingling of multiple sources of open game content is going to be much murkier than this, and is going to make such claims dubious and difficult to enforce.
Also, if a publisher can claim a perpetual revocation clause against any material ever derived from their material, how could that be possibly adjudicated? There is a very real risk that even adjacent publishers, or publishers at different levels of this generational hierarchy get caught up in such a dispute. 100 years from now, can someone with the stroke of a pen nullify generations of products across the board because of one dispute with one publisher somewhere in this chain?
Think about that for a second. Both from the perspective of the original publisher, and from the Nnth generation descendant product publisher. You may not even be the publisher of a product in the crosshairs but you could pulled into this battle totally against your will and it could break your business.
Lastly, and perhaps the darkest issue of all is having the ability to revoke hateful content implicitly makes you responsible for it and forces you to be involved possibly against your will.
If someone releases a 'hateful' product and your content is cited within it, there will be tremendous activist pressure on you to take a stand and revoke their use of your content. Since you have the ability to revoke it, those activists won't come after them, they will also come after you. If there is no hate clause, you can wash your hands of the whole thing. You can condemn it or not, but it doesn't affect your or your business. After all, its open content. But if you have reserved the power of revocation it will come back on you. Guaranteed.
Now you may think, well fine. If someone is making racist stuff, I do want to cancel it. Sure, that's one simple case. But given the viral nature of open gaming, are you going keep someone on staff full time to monitor these things? If you are someone like Paizo, whose content will drive a significant portion of the open game community, you are going to get pinged ALL the time.
Non-stop. On social media, via forum posts, etc. It will be a never-ending succession of cancellation requests for all sorts of reasons both legitimate and spurious because someone somewhere dislikes a product or a publisher and your name is cited in their copy of the open license and somewhere along the way they derived something from you. You will be forced to take sides on EVERY issue, because inaction is also taking a side. And if you miss one incident that turns out to be an actual bad case of real hate, then you will be the one criticized for not acting quickly enough, not condemning it soon enough, not revoking it immediately etc. So it pretty much forces you to monitor this stuff constantly.
Now combine this scenario with the first scenario and you can see how crazy things will get. How unworkable it becomes.
One last thought to ponder. Since having a hate clause implicitly forces you into being responsible for derived content, there is another darker scenario. I won't go into politics, but say someone publishes something that incites an extremist group. They could be extremists from the left, or the right, or religious extremists.
It doesn't matter and I'm not taking a side. But someone's content offended them and they demand punishment and revocation. It may not even be 'hateful' content by your standards at all. You may not even really have a problem with it, but for some reason it triggered this group.
Are you, the big publisher everyone will look to, going to stand firm in not revoking their use of your content in the face of threats that could range from financial, to even physical violence against you and your employees? Or are you going to revoke that content under pressure. And of course, you risk causing an equal outcry on the other 'side' of the issue, whatever it is.
There is no good or right answer here. It would be a terrible situation all around.
But its a situation that can be entirely avoided by never having a license with this type of revocation clause. Not having such a clause will protect you, your business, and your employees from ever being placed in such a terrible position. All consequences will fall solely on the publisher who posted such controversial content in the first place. As it should be.
I won't reiterate all the valid concerns raised by others (its vague, can be re-defined on a whim, concerns that it would be fairly arbitrated even by "3rd parties", etc.). Perhaps the biggest of all is that a license that can be revocable for such a subjective reason is not truly an open license.
However, it also would be weaponized against YOU the game publisher, in multiple ways. Here are two other huge risks I have not seen mentioned:
First, given the viral nature of games created with a true open license (the original OGL, and maybe ORC. The new WotC proposed 'OGL' is NOT an open license at all), how do you disentangle your content from 2nd and 3rd generation open games? And is that even feasible?
You release game content X, someone else comes along and tweaks and releases content XY, and then someone comes along and releases content XYZ. If you deem XYZ is offensive, and demand they remove your content, why can't they claim they didn't pull it from you, they pulled it from XY so you have no authority to revoke their use of it? I'm using simple letters in my examples to illustrate the point, but real intermingling of multiple sources of open game content is going to be much murkier than this, and is going to make such claims dubious and difficult to enforce.
Also, if a publisher can claim a perpetual revocation clause against any material ever derived from their material, how could that be possibly adjudicated? There is a very real risk that even adjacent publishers, or publishers at different levels of this generational hierarchy get caught up in such a dispute. 100 years from now, can someone with the stroke of a pen nullify generations of products across the board because of one dispute with one publisher somewhere in this chain?
Think about that for a second. Both from the perspective of the original publisher, and from the Nnth generation descendant product publisher. You may not even be the publisher of a product in the crosshairs but you could pulled into this battle totally against your will and it could break your business.
Lastly, and perhaps the darkest issue of all is having the ability to revoke hateful content implicitly makes you responsible for it and forces you to be involved possibly against your will.
If someone releases a 'hateful' product and your content is cited within it, there will be tremendous activist pressure on you to take a stand and revoke their use of your content. Since you have the ability to revoke it, those activists won't come after them, they will also come after you. If there is no hate clause, you can wash your hands of the whole thing. You can condemn it or not, but it doesn't affect your or your business. After all, its open content. But if you have reserved the power of revocation it will come back on you. Guaranteed.
Now you may think, well fine. If someone is making racist stuff, I do want to cancel it. Sure, that's one simple case. But given the viral nature of open gaming, are you going keep someone on staff full time to monitor these things? If you are someone like Paizo, whose content will drive a significant portion of the open game community, you are going to get pinged ALL the time.
Non-stop. On social media, via forum posts, etc. It will be a never-ending succession of cancellation requests for all sorts of reasons both legitimate and spurious because someone somewhere dislikes a product or a publisher and your name is cited in their copy of the open license and somewhere along the way they derived something from you. You will be forced to take sides on EVERY issue, because inaction is also taking a side. And if you miss one incident that turns out to be an actual bad case of real hate, then you will be the one criticized for not acting quickly enough, not condemning it soon enough, not revoking it immediately etc. So it pretty much forces you to monitor this stuff constantly.
Now combine this scenario with the first scenario and you can see how crazy things will get. How unworkable it becomes.
One last thought to ponder. Since having a hate clause implicitly forces you into being responsible for derived content, there is another darker scenario. I won't go into politics, but say someone publishes something that incites an extremist group. They could be extremists from the left, or the right, or religious extremists.
It doesn't matter and I'm not taking a side. But someone's content offended them and they demand punishment and revocation. It may not even be 'hateful' content by your standards at all. You may not even really have a problem with it, but for some reason it triggered this group.
Are you, the big publisher everyone will look to, going to stand firm in not revoking their use of your content in the face of threats that could range from financial, to even physical violence against you and your employees? Or are you going to revoke that content under pressure. And of course, you risk causing an equal outcry on the other 'side' of the issue, whatever it is.
There is no good or right answer here. It would be a terrible situation all around.
But its a situation that can be entirely avoided by never having a license with this type of revocation clause. Not having such a clause will protect you, your business, and your employees from ever being placed in such a terrible position. All consequences will fall solely on the publisher who posted such controversial content in the first place. As it should be.
FormerLurker
Adventurer
So.... your argument is that if someone makes a hateful and racist D&D product and WotC says "sorry, not our book, we can't do anything" the angry activists exerting tremendous pressure will just stop and say "oh, okay, sorry to bug you" and drop the issue?
Argyle King
Legend
Yeah, and, if you were on the panel, what would your criteria be?
GMforPowergamers
Legend
wait so you trust DriveThruRPG, KickStarter, Amazon, Ebay, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, but not WotC...
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