OGL-Gate & Mainstream Media: The Guardian Weighs In

With The Guardian picking up the story this morning, here's a list of media outlets covering the Open Gaming Licence controversy.

The initial story came from Gizmodo/iO9, which recieved a leaked copy of the OGL v1.1., and YouTube channel RollForCombat.

• The Guardian: ‘People are leaving the game’: Dungeons & Dragons fans revolt against new restrictions
• Vice: Dungeons and Dragons Is Jeopardizing Its Greatest Strength: Its Ubiquity
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: Beware the Gifts of Dragons: How D&D’s Open Gaming License May Have Become a Trap for Creators
• Comic Book Resources: How New Changes to D&D's Open Gaming License Will Impact Other TTRPGs
• Forbes: What’s Happening With The Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License?
• Ars Technica: RPG fans irate as D&D tries to shut its “open” game license
• NME: D&D content creators outraged over licensing changes, demand the game remain “open”
• Polygon: D&D’s stricter licensing rules might impact some beloved RPGs
• Law Insider: Wizards of the Coast Open Game License
• Financial Times (behind paywall): Dungeons & Dragons & fear & loathing: When Wizards go rogue

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I haven't read it yet, but props to them for that headline.

When wizards go rogue, fans go rouge!

 

[Princessmaker]

According to the message sent by someone claiming to work at D&D Beyond, the top brass are waiting for the fans to calm down. That poured even more fuel on the cancelation of D&D Beyond accounts and now has spilled over into non-gaming and business news. One day, this whole thing will be a business case study.

They'll wait a looong time.

 

[Burt Baccara]

Add Forbes to the pile: What’s Happening With The Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming

 

[darjr]

This is why you don’t do crazy things with a beloved brand and community
And then stay silent during the uproar!

Wtaf!!

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Glad this is hitting world news. Yet some of the articles are kinda ‘dumb.’

The best passage I’ve seen in these new reports is from Vice magazine (boldface added):

“The OGL 1.1 is just one part of a broader strategy by Wizards of the Coast to consolidate D&D into a closed ecosystem, one from which it can extract profit at every possible stage. Wizards of the Coast plans to increase support to their proprietary marketplace, D&D Beyond. The company also plans to release its own virtual tabletop software sometime in 2024, in conjunction with Dungeons and Dragons sixth edition, now called One D&D.

“This strategy resembles that of dozens of failed startups, built on creating a massive user base that you find a way to infinitely monetize. Companies with this approach usually operate at a loss for years, while promising their investors geometric profit at some later date. Wizards of the Coast, however, managed to make a sustainable business model on the way to building a platform—a business model it is now at great risk of destroying, in an industry that has, in every metric but popularity, managed to surpass it.”

 

[Jer]

According to the message sent by someone claiming to work at D&D Beyond, the top brass are waiting for the fans to calm down. That poured even more fuel on the cancelation of D&D Beyond accounts and now has spilled over into non-gaming and business news. One day, this whole thing will be a business case study.

Waiting for fans of anything to "calm down" is like waiting for the heat death of the universe. Technically it's going to happen someday but you're going to be dead before it happens

With what's going on here though if that's actually what they're doing it suggests that they actually don't know what "revoke the OGL 1.0a" means for the industry that they're a gateway to but not really a part of. If they'd intended to set off a tactical nuke to damage the ttrpg industry and were owning it it would be malicious, but it would at least suggest competence - that they know what they're doing and why. But "waiting for fans to cool off" suggests that they don't even understand why people are upset or what it will do to the industry, and that's bad. People aren't going to "cool off" until they know what's happening, and if they leave people in the dark they're going to get hotter, not cool off.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Waiting for fans of anything to "calm down" is like waiting for the heat death of the universe. Technically it's going to happen someday but you're going to be dead before it happens

With what's going on here though if that's actually what they're doing it suggests that they actually don't know what "revoke the OGL 1.0a" means for the industry that they're a gateway to but not really a part of. If they'd intended to set off a tactical nuke to damage the ttrpg industry and were owning it it would be malicious, but it would at least suggest competence - that they know what they're doing and why. But "waiting for fans to cool off" suggests that they don't even understand why people are upset or what it will do to the industry, and that's bad. People aren't going to "cool off" until they know what's happening, and if they leave people in the dark they're going to get hotter, not cool off.

Well said. It’ll be interesting to see how the various motives and threads of Maliciousness and Ignorance/Incompetence come to light and are sorted.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Looks like Hasbro stock is not doing so well today....

View attachment 272430

(Ignore all the portuguese, I'm to lazy to open google in english)

Hasbro's stock has been garbage for months. That has nothing to do with the OGL debacle.

 

[Jer]

Hasbro's stock has been garbage for months. That has nothing to do with the OGL debacle.

I strongly suspect that the OGL debacle and the performance of Hasbro in general have the same hidden variables as their source though.

 

[Yaarel]

I strongly suspect that the OGL debacle and the performance of Hasbro in general have the same hidden variables as their source though.

May well be true, since relating to the devalue of stocks, the Bank of America strongly criticized Hasbro-WotC for its mishandling of the anniversary products for Magic The Gathering. This was a similar tone-deaf attempt at monetizing.