My thoughts on the new OGL v1.2 draft

[mamba]

So assuming that’s accurate, Paizo as a whole (PF1E, PF2E, Starfinder, APs, etc) is still less than 1/2 the size of D&D. Paizo is 39% the size of D&D, to be exact. And that’s the next closest competitor.

that might be changing apparently PF2e is now sold out pretty much everywhere

 

[mamba]

Yeah. Real bad.

Also. Wait…so D&D as a whole made $100 million last year…and they bought D&D Beyond for $150 million. So was Beyond itself worth more than the D&D brand itself? That can’t be right.

no, revenue of 1 year is not the valuation of a company. That would be maybe 20 or 30 times profit (or more, if you show fast growth / potential...)

 

[Morrus]

no, revenue of 1 year is not the valuation of a company. That would be maybe 20 or 30 times profit (or more, if you show fast growth / potential...)

In the case of WotC/Hasbro, it's a publicly traded company. Hasbro's value is a matter of record.

 

[mamba]

In the case of WotC/Hasbro, it's a publicly traded company. Hasbro's value is a matter of record.

I am talking about just the D&D part, not Hasbro

 

[Morrus]

I am talking about just the D&D part, not Hasbro

The D&D part’s value isn’t some thing we can know. It’s part of a synergistic whole.

 

[mamba]

The D&D part’s value isn’t some thing we can know. It’s part of a synergistic whole.

that is why I was estimating it based on commonly used metrics

 

[Aspirinsmurf]

no, revenue of 1 year is not the valuation of a company. That would be maybe 20 or 30 times profit (or more, if you show fast growth / potential...)

You could do a very crude estimate:

Take Hasbro’s market cap and multiply it by the proportion of annual revenue that you know derives from D&D. If all Hasbro’s assets were fungible and identical in the eyes of a potential buyer, this would be the market value.

But until someone buys the IP, we can’t actually know what it’s worth. The value of anything is just the amount that the last sucker was willing to pay for it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Where is section 9 of the existing OGL mentioned in the draft 1.2 document?

Here is the whole text of the notice of "deauthorisation":

The Open Game License 1.0a is no longer an authorized license. This means that you may not use that version of the OGL, or any prior version, to publish SRD content after (effective date). It does not mean that any content previously published under that version needs to update to this license. Any previously published content remains licensed under whichever version of the OGL was in effect when you published that content.​

What is the legal effect of this? And what is the legal basis on which it purports to operate? I don't think it's clear.

For instance, it says that "Any previously published content remains licensed under whichever version of the OGL was in effect when you published that content." What is meant, in that sentence, by the verb "licensed"? What permissions are part of that licence?

To me, the most obvious way of understanding that notice is that it is a withdrawal of the offer to license the SRD on the terms set out in the OGL v 1.0a. This means, in terms of section 2 of the OGL v 1.0a, that the SRD is not "Open Game Content that contains a notice indicating that the Open Game Content may only be Used under and in terms of this License." What effect does that have on existing grants of permission under section 4? I've conjectured some possibilities in the PSA thread, and you've read my posts. One possible construction is that it means the SRD is no longer the subject matter of the section 4 grant, as that grant is (on the conjectured construction) confined to OGC to which currently contains a section 2 notice.

I don't know if the preceding is the argument that WotC is relying on. They may have several in mind. It's the best argument that I know that gives WotC the result it wants - it confines the previous permission granted very narrowly, allowing existing works to continue to be sold but brining all future licensing of SRD OGC (including by way of sub-licences) to an end.

If this is your interpretation of section 9, I don't agree with it. I can't see any plausible construction of section 9 on which it contains a power of revocation.

And? This has been discussed to death in many threads including the lawyer-PSA thread. I don't see how it bears on the point I was making, which is that WotC in its FAQ never said that the offer to license would not be withdrawn.

If you don't publish anything under the 1.2, in what way does the de-authorizstion clause apply to you?

 

[overgeeked]

If you don't publish anything under the 1.2, in what way does the de-authorizstion clause apply to you?

Because it's not a clause of the 1.2 license. It's a general announcement.

 

[LordRuyn]

If you don't publish anything under the 1.2, in what way does the de-authorizstion clause apply to you?

IANAL, but to my understanding it's a notice outside of the license with an effective date that is TBD. When the license is published the "de-authorization" goes into effect on the date stated.