OGL v1.2 Survey Feedback: 'Hasn't Hit The Mark'

WotC has shared some of the (still ongoing) survey feedback following the release of the Open Game License v1.2 draft last week.

We want to thank the community for continuing to share their OGL 1.2 feedback with us. Already more than 10,000 of you have responded to the survey, which will close on February 3.

So far, survey responses have made it clear that this draft of OGL 1.2 hasn't hit the mark for our community. Please continue to share your thoughts.

Thanks to direct feedback from you and our virtual tabletop partners it's also clear the draft VTT policy missed the mark. Animations were clearly the wrong focus. We'll do better next round.

We will continue to keep an article updated with any new details posted here or elsewhere on the OGL. You can read it here

The linked FAQ (no, not THAT linked FAQ, the one where they say the original OGL cannot be revoked, I think we're supposed to ignore that one!) indicates that recent rumours about $30 subscriptions and homebrew content are false. They also say that they will be revising the 'harmful content' morality clause in the recent OGL draft, which in practice gives WotC power to shut down competitors at will.

You can still take the survey here until Feb 3rd.

 

[Clint_L]

We can't get so holier than thou that we forget that a lot of 3PP rely on a relationship with WotC to make a living. They want D&D to succeed, and they want to keep access to that large, concentrated marketplace. Blowing it all up might feel great for some folks with no skin in the game, but it would be disastrous for a lot of the people that we claim to be supporting.

I would like to focus on solutions that help 3PP, not ones that punish WotC. Let's keep our priorities straight.

 

[Jimmy Dick]

It is all about the money. WotC executives want to force as many people as possible into purchasing the new ONE DND in a relatively short time. They probably have contracts that give them large bonuses for hitting certain benchmarks. Thus, killing off the OGL and replacing it with one that pretty much pushes everyone into ONE DND seems to be a wise move for them. Add in the fact that they are really late to the party when it comes to VTTs and how they see that as a major area of monetization for them, and you get this clusterf*** of a mess they themselves created.

It's clear that WotC has no intention of backing down with a new OGL regarding VTTs and digitization. It's not about WotC making a better product in a VTT. It's about control. WotC doesn't care if their new VTT is good or not. All they care about is that players have to use it and pay for it, with the money going to WotC.

 

[dave2008]

Again. Clause A gives them that protection.

Clause B gives them the right to -directly- use any work I produce in it's entirety. Straight up plagiarize the entire thing, or distributing it as a whole, through any channel they like without royalties. I don't mean "Something close" I mean the book, with my name on the cover, sold under DM's Guild, with me not seeing a penny.

Correct me if I am wrong, but those clauses are not in the OGL 1.2? The only public draft that was released.

 

[Staffan]

it‘s good to hear they acknowledge there are still issues, we’ll see what they come up with. They’ve got their work cut out for them, because I’m not sure that anything short leaving 1.0a or a 1.0b that adds language about being irrevocable will be acceptable to the community at this point.

That's because nothing short of keeping their promises is acceptable.

They’re still offering a free license.

They were tried and executed by the twitter-storm/you-tube crowd in under a week without releasing a single official statement.

It’s very hard for me to see WotC as evil, or untrustworthy in these circumstances.

They are going back on their promise. They tried negotiating in secret with larger 3PPs in order to present the OGL 1.1 as a fait accompli, but the leak and feedback from that stopped that nonsense. They have also recently tried exploiting loopholes in existing contracts in order to get out of them in bad faith, and only stopped that when taken to court.

So no, Wizards don't get any goodwill assumptions anymore.

lets say that tomorrow Disney comes in and buys Piazo... they 5 years from now deiced (as Hasbro has now) to shut down open gaming either some what or all together... what is to stop them from buying that third party?

The idea with ORC is to have custody transferred to a non-profit where it will presumably be safe from being bought.

 

[Steampunkette]

Correct me if I am wrong, but those clauses are not in the OGL 1.2? The only public draft that was released.

Oh, nope. Not in 1.2a. But I don't really care about 1.2a after 1.1a was released.

They showed their cards, showed they were utterly untrustworthy and willing to rewrite the perpetual agreement to steal whatever they could from whomever they could.

After that, the trust is broken. As I said upthread, there's 3 steps to fixing this, and none of them involve releasing 1.2a or 1.4a or 1.8a.

1) Apologize honestly
2) Enshrine the OGL 1.0a, or put the entire SRD 5.1 into Creative Commons
3) Write up a GSL 2.0 that people can sign to produce content for OneD&D

Nothing else is going to actually work.

 

[FoolishFrost]

Correct me if I am wrong, but those clauses are not in the OGL 1.2? The only public draft that was released.

1.1 was NOT a public draft, it was sent out with expected signatures by the 13th of this month. Please fact check that data.

 

[TheSword]

Then how do you judge blowing up a license that they themselves claimed to be forever (until as recently as 2021) that people have built businesses and livelihoods around for 23 years under the good faith assumption that they would keep their word?

You judge this to be a morally upstanding and smart decision?

Morally? The person who wrote didn’t have to live with it.

Forever is a long time and the industry has changed dramatically and if folks were still releasing pdfs and paper books. I don’t think it ever would have come up.

Now we have multi-million dollar corporations selling computer games and copying D&D wholesale and selling it on at a mark up.

Wizards is spending hundreds of thousands of $ on R&D for future iterations of D&D while clones can benefit from that R&D at no cost to themselves.

Morally I think WotC are ok… from what I’ve seen to date. The new deal needs to stand on its own merits. If it’s fair, then morally WotC is covered in my eyes, folks should be focusing on lobbying for as good a deal as possible rather than attacking WotC.

 

[dave2008]

1.1 was NOT a public draft, it was sent out with expected signatures by the 13th of this month. Please fact check that data.

I said 1.2, just check what you quoted. My main point is that it is not in the current draft.

It is a process, and what is important, IMO, is the final draft. Less so, how we got there.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Morally? The person who wrote didn’t have to live with it.

Forever is a long time and the industry has changed dramatically and if folks were still releasing pdfs and paper books. I don’t think it ever would have come up.

Now we have multi-million dollar corporations selling computer games and copying D&D wholesale and selling it on at a mark up.

Wizards is spending hundreds of thousands of $ on R&D for future iterations of D&D while clones can benefit from that R&D at no cost to themselves.

Morally I think WotC are ok… from what I’ve seen to date. The new deal needs to stand on its own merits. If it’s fair, then morally WotC is covered in my eyes, folks should be focusing on lobbying for as good a deal as possible rather than attacking WotC.

Okay, I see there's no agreement to be had here.

I believe that a word once given is to be held to even when inconvenient down the line (especially so if I came up with the terms of that word in the first place).

I don't believe in negotiating with somebody who walks up to me and mugs me. "How about instead of all my money you take just $40 and a picture of my ex-wife and my ugliest kid".

PS. All my kids are equally ugly.

PPS. I don't have any kids.

PPPS. But if I did they would be very ugly.

 

[Rabulias]

The funny thing about this whole debate is that the only company WotC has actually taken to court to try and shut is NuTSR who we actively revile on these boards for being disgraceful.

While WotC may have sued NuTSR eventually, the reason for their current suit is they are countersuing after NuTSR filed a case against WotC. And it is not over the content -- it is over NuTSR claiming ownership of trademarks that WotC rightfully owns.

lets say that tomorrow Disney comes in and buys Piazo... they 5 years from now deiced (as Hasbro has now) to shut down open gaming either some what or all together... what is to stop them from buying that third party?

ORC is proposing management of the license will go to an entity that is not a company and cannot be purchased.