We All Won – The OGL Three Years Later

[Scribe]

NM. I’m not gonna argue the OGL War again though. It was 3 years ago. Time to move on.

Indeed!

Wizards screwed up.
Creators looked at what they could do that was not beholden to Wizards.
We got a bunch of great games, and we no longer need Wizards at all.

We all won!

 

[mamba]

When WotC proposed the original version of the OGL that started the uproar three years ago, did it actively threaten the ability of ENWorld Publishing, Draw Steel, Kobold Press, Darrington Press, Arcane Library and the like to publish their games?

possibly, getting a cut of the revenue is a problem when your profit margin is slim. There were certainly some that said that this would be a problem for those 3pps / KS that got big enough to fall under that clause.

This obviously only affects games / products that use the OGL, so Draw Steel and Daggerheart are probably safe, the others not so much

Were those publishers satisfied with the changes that came after that uproar?

not to my knowledge, unless by ‘changes’ you mean the move to CC rather than tweaking the conditions of the proposed OGL.

I don’t think we ever got a version of that after the uproar though, by then WotC realized that anything they had thought of offering would not cut it and jumped ship

 

[Artamo]

I can't speak for the publishers, and would be interested to hear specific perspectives, but as a general principle, yes it did threaten publishers.

There were several different vectors of harm.

First off, WotC was trying to push the idea that they could deauthorize the existing OGL, I think 1.0a. Now, legally, the consensus from people who weighed in (including actual lawyers) was that WotC probably couldn't do that, because the OGL was explicitly designed to prevent that, but that they could cause significant legal problems for publishers that might dissuade them from using it. WotC was particularly keen on this seemingly legally nonsensical idea that no new products could use the OGL 1.0a, and existing products couldn't be updated.

So that by itself was basically an existential threat.

Second off, even if you agreed to OGL 1.1/2.0, there were a lot of extremely threatening and problematic provisions being suggested by WotC. Two of them were:

1) WotC will take a cut of your revenue (not profits, revenue, so could easily turn profit into loss) if your revenue was above a certain amount. Most smaller/solo publishers would have been safe, but a significant number of publishers (including many of the ones you name) would have been caught by this, and as well as just the money going, it complicated running a company quite significantly, and opened you up to potential legal disputes with WotC as to whether they were getting what they were owed. And they wanted this for basically nothing in return. The only "consideration" offered in this contract was "We let you keep using our licence", which yeah not really mate.

2) WotC can cut you off at any second for any reason. They were very clear on this, offering a paranoid vision that some Nazis might make a D&D product and it would be terrible for them (guess what, WotC, that already happened, nobody cared - and there are tons of weird and bigot-y D&D 3PP guys out there, and just they sell what they sell to who they sell, and the papers aren't like "D&D is for Nazis now!!!"), so they had to have the ability to instantly de-authorize you and stop you making/selling any new OGL products, oh and importantly, you had to send all your stuff to WotC to REVIEW BEFORE PUBLISHING, which like hell no. Even if they weren't going to rip it off, that's a huge extra delay and anyone whose task is to find fault, is going to find fault. Presumably if they did find fault, you'd have to go back and forth with them until they were happy. This is not something existing publishers were typically equipped to handle (certainly not those who didn't work with licenced products), and it means that like, if say, anti-trans views in the US hardened, WotC might decide your trans-friendly D&D product was not acceptable and cut you off (that's just an example, of course, not something I regard as likely).

There was a lot more bad stuff too but even just that was all existential.

Thank you for the overview! I remember some of these details like the revenue cut but not all of them. There’s definitely a difference between whether I feel like we as a community of fans won versus how third party publishers may feel, and I think they’re the ones who matter the most. They have skin in the game. I really don’t. I’m a fan but I’m not talking about lost livelihood in my case.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean, WotC doesn't even have to go crazy, they can just design a new edition that doesn't jive with what Kobold is making. But yeah, pre-baking your own branch of 5E is simply good from a future stability point, as it means you don't have to completely depend on what Wizards will do when it comes to making things.

The Paizo model. Fifteen years on, there are still people who are playing 3.75 (maybe 3.85 at this point) and not having to worry about WotC. Pathfinder is probably never going to threaten D&D for dominance ever again, but they've got a happy community doing their own thing and are likely to do so for years or decades to come.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's .. kinda weird when my memories of the early emails was it was about offloading the production of loss-producing products onto third parties so WotC only had to produce the evergreens...

There can be multiple goals, especially when you need different arguments to sway different stakeholders.

 

[Morrus]

1) WotC will take a cut of your revenue (not profits, revenue, so could easily turn profit into loss) if your revenue was above a certain amount. Most smaller/solo publishers would have been safe, but a significant number of publishers (including many of the ones you name) would have been caught by this, and as well as just the money going, it complicated running a company quite significantly, and opened you up to potential legal disputes with WotC as to whether they were getting what they were owed. And they wanted this for basically nothing in return. The only "consideration" offered in this contract was "We let you keep using our licence", which yeah not really mate.

2) WotC can cut you off at any second for any reason. They were very clear on this, offering a paranoid vision that some Nazis might make a D&D product and it would be terrible for them (guess what, WotC, that already happened, nobody cared - and there are tons of weird and bigot-y D&D 3PP guys out there, and just they sell what they sell to who they sell, and the papers aren't like "D&D is for Nazis now!!!"), so they had to have the ability to instantly de-authorize you and stop you making/selling any new OGL products, oh and importantly, you had to send all your stuff to WotC to REVIEW BEFORE PUBLISHING, which like hell no. Even if they weren't going to rip it off, that's a huge extra delay and anyone whose task is to find fault, is going to find fault. Presumably if they did find fault, you'd have to go back and forth with them until they were happy. This is not something existing publishers were typically equipped to handle (certainly not those who didn't work with licenced products), and it means that like, if say, anti-trans views in the US hardened, WotC might decide your trans-friendly D&D product was not acceptable and cut you off (that's just an example, of course, not something I regard as likely).
.

They do all that now anyway just with a carrot rather than a stick. It’s called D&D Beyond and any publisher would kill to be invited in.

 

[bedir than]

They do all that now anyway just with a carrot rather than a stick. It’s called D&D Beyond and any publisher would kill to be invited in.

please don't kill anyone

 

[Reynard]

From the lawsuits of the '80s to the OGL, D&D has been actively hostile towards other games for decades. "Trickle-down gameonomics" may or may not be a thing. I'd need to see some numbers, honestly. Even if it did turn out to be true, it'd have to be an awful lot of gamers to offset the bad practices of D&D as a brand.

Give some examples of actively hostile to other games.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Thank you for the overview! I remember some of these details like the revenue cut but not all of them. There’s definitely a difference between whether I feel like we as a community of fans won versus how third party publishers may feel, and I think they’re the ones who matter the most. They have skin in the game. I really don’t. I’m a fan but I’m not talking about lost livelihood in my case.

I feel like accidentally spurring the creation of a bunch of D&D-likes was at least a short-term win for us and loss for WotC. Whether it'll work out in the longer-term remains to be seen. I think the biggest issue D&D faces right now is that 2024, whilst seemingly selling okay, also doesn't really seem to have revitalized D&D 5E in the way WotC hoped (I think for the very obvious reason that it's just not very exciting and seemed slightly dated by the time it came out, given what else was happening) and the flood of D&D-likes has caused a degree of disunity perhaps reminiscent of the 4E era.

I mean, super-anecdotal but the RPG chat on WhatsApp with my friends used to chock-full of people going "Look at this Kickstarter" for 5E-compatible products, but in the last two years? It's all been non-compatible RPGs and their products, and these aren't like, super-serious RPG-heads, it's just they're not excited about D&D now.

I don’t think we ever got a version of that after the uproar though, by then WotC realized that anything they had thought of offering would not cut it and jumped ship

Not an official one, but both multiple versions of the original OGL 1.1 and at least one of the OGL 2.0 leaked, and were awful in different ways. I think by 2.0 they'd dropped the revenue cut stuff, but were like, doubling down on the "we need to be able to review your stuff and cancel your licence whenever we feel like it" and adding some other shady stuff.

They do all that now anyway just with a carrot rather than a stick. It’s called D&D Beyond and any publisher would kill to be invited in.

Yes, almost all the evil, none of the blowback. Not great

Even at the time of the OGL 1.1/2.0, people were surprised WotC was taking such a stick-based approach and actively suggested "Why not offer a guarantee of being on D&D Beyond if you meet these requirements?", even though I think no 3PP was on it back then except kinda-Critical Role/Darrington. I guess WotC listened to that (or was always planning this, more likely I think). Now we kind of have the worst of both worlds in a sense where you can be an extremely well-behaved company but if WotC don't want to invite you on to Beyond, you're not getting on, and there is no (AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong) way to get in a queue or on a list to join.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, almost all the evil, none of the blowback. Not great

I don't think it is nearly the same thing.

The toxic parts of the new OGL they were pushing applied no matter how you published.

Instead, they went to CC, so in traditional channels you can do anything you want. It is only within D&DB that there is control.

You figure that folks who run stores and adapt things to their electronic platforms shouldn't have the right to curate what is on their platforms? It is "evil" for them to do so?