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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8882401" data-attributes="member: 7006">At this point WotC already has their "5E equivalent" to the Game System License-- the DMs Guild.  Anyone who uses that does so by agreeing to terms that are outside the OGL.  In return for having more of "WotC's D&D stuff" to use in their products (and thus being potentially more enticing to consumers), they pay a fee back to OneBookshelf and WotC to do so.This seems to me to be the only real way for WotC to go forward and make a higher percentage of money off of the products other people make using their stuff... have their own place for those people to sell their stuff and have that place be even more enticing for people to use over the OGL and DMs Guild.  And as we've all theorized before... D&D Beyond is probably that place.  But it's up to WotC to make using D&D Beyond THE place for people to sell their stuff-- to make it financially worthwhile for people to do so (moreso that DMs Guild or just through the OGL.)At the end of the day... the negotiations back in Washington by people on both sides are probably going something like this:"We should get a cut of all these products that are making money hand over fist using the bones of our game system!  Here are the changes to the OGL so we can get a percentage of all of it!""The changes you are proposing to the OGL are assuring people to NO LONGER actually make anything using the bones of our system anymore.  So you're basically changing things so we get a percentage of ZERO.  While at the same time reducing the size of the gaming pool, and thus potentially reducing the number of our own products we sell.  I don't see how your changes make financial sense.""But that's OUR STUFF they are making money with!""Yes.  But their use of our stuff is what is contributing to the number of people growing the size of the D&D pool.  And we are making more money on our stuff then we otherwise would be by the size of the pool growing.  You basically are asking to cut the pool in half before then taking a percentage of what's left.  Well, the money we would make from that is still less than the money we were already making from the larger pool, so what you're proposing isn't actually going to benefit us."***I'm sure it probably feels weird to the money people at WotC/Hasbro that there's no licensing fee to allow other people to use their game system-- after all, licensing is one of the biggest money-makers a company has.  And so they are thinking there SHOULD be a fee for everyone to use the OGL and SRD to make money off of WotC's owned material.  They do currently get that fee from everyone who uses DMs Guild (with the perks that come with doing so)... but right now there's no way to funnel people off of the OGL and into using DMs Guild (where WotC can then get that fee).  The question will just then be whether there ends up being a way to extract that fee without actually forcing people to stop using WotC's material at all?  Because we saw it with the 4E GSL... people WILL just stop-- either because they go out of business, or because they pivot if they have the capital to do so.</blockquote>

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