D&D General WotC's Dan Ayoub talks OGL mistakes--"we're recovering from loud public missteps"

In an interview with Wargamer, Dan Ayoub--head of Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast--talked about the trust the company lost when it tried to rescind the Open Gaming License back in 2023. Ayoub took over at WotC in 2025, two years after the crisis, and said of the events "But I don't want to skirt the focus of your question. It was a rug pull, right? A lot of people and businesses were built up around a specific thing. Trust was given to the brand, and people rightly felt the rug was pulled from under them. In some cases, it's caused damage we are still trying to fix today."

He also spoke about D&D's new franchise model, reconnecting with classic D&D creators like Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Bob Salvatore and Luke Gygax, and bringing on new partners. Check out the interview here.

 

[Dire Bare]

IMO, that has no value as the OGL can't be revoked. WotC can posture all they want, but they don't have the power to do it.

Whether or not the OGL can be revoked would have to be determined by a court of law.

The original authors of the OGL, the folks working for WotC in the late 90s (Dancey, et al) certainly intended the OGL to be irrevocable and structured it that way. But WotC in 2023 certainly seemed to think they had the ability to do so. The discussions here at the time had folks pointing out the OGL wasn't as irrevocable as it could be, based on the specific language used, lawyerly folks who to some degree knew what they were talking about.

And of course, there are folks who well tell you that legally, we don't need the OGL or the CC at all, as "you can't copyright game mechanics" . . . something also not fully tested in court as of yet, at least not for tabletop RPGs.

The benefit of the OGL was largely a "safe harbor". You could publish under the OGL and feel confident WotC wouldn't sue you with their big legal team. Because being "right" doesn't mean you always win in a court of law, unfortunately. And legal battles are always expensive and often pyrrhic in victory.

When WotC attempted to weaken the OGL, they shattered that "safe harbor", they broke that trust. Putting 5E in to Creative Commons was an attempt to rebuild that trust . . . and it worked for some, not for others.

For the industry going forward, the OGL is functionally dead. Sure, a lot of companies still sell digital copies of their back catalogs released under the OGL, and a few actually still use it for new projects . . . but the OGL is now history. WotC isn't going to try to kill the OGL again . . . because it is already dead.

My only concern when the leadership at WotC and Hasbro eventually changes is that some future version of D&D will not be "open", will not be released into the Creative Commons. But we're probably a decade away from that even being an issue.

 

[pawsplay]

I think WotC's claims during the OGL Kerfuffle have a snowball's chance in a courtroom. However, would a small RPg publisher prefer to spend two or three years tied up in court proceedings, or making games?

 

[bsss]

I think WotC's claims during the OGL Kerfuffle have a snowball's chance in a courtroom. However, would a small RPg publisher prefer to spend two or three years tied up in court proceedings, or making games?

Right, that's the crux of what I care about in the crisis. Them abandoning use of an open agreement (OGL v1.0a) and only entertaining a bad one (whatever it was their greed farted out under an OGL label) in the future --- fine, let new D&D openness rot for all I care; them implying they can just undo every agreement under the OGL v1.0a made to this point --- that's one step from open war against the community from a position of power and won't be forgotten, and needs some real corrective actions to be forgiven.

They could remove the ambiguity of OGL v1.0a with a statement, but they don't, because it doesn't suit them to strengthen the community. They could follow up on their promises, but now it's just an expense to avoid putting on their books. This says a lot to me. They could be trying and failing miserably and it'd at least show they still kind of care. Instead, they prefer to leave that courtroom threat dangling over publishers' heads. They don't care about the community's well-being, so I respond in kind.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'll let you know the next time I care about impressing you.

Thanks! I'm always interested in reading takes that go against one's personal preference because at least then I can see they are looking at the thing objectively. Rather than when the person's take just coincidentally coincides with their own needs and desires.

It's like the takes posters make when they insist WotC needs to do something to "make it easier for the newbs!"... that also just happens to be exactly what they (as an experienced roleplayer) wants for the game as well. No one ever seems to care about helping new players when the change would actively make their experience lesser but they are willing to go along with it for the greater good of the community... nope, it's only if they want the change personally that they use the idea of helping new players as the cudgel with which to hit WotC over the head to justify their desires taken care of.

 

[Burnside]

IMO, that has no value as the OGL can't be revoked. WotC can posture all they want, but they don't have the power to do it.

There's value in just removing any confusion and anxiety about WotC ever attempting to do it, both from the perspective of customers and third party publishers. Even if a legal battle seems unlikely to go WotC's way, just the prospect that there could be such a battle creates PR havoc and discourages third party publishers from using the OGL to create content.

 

[bsss]

Hell, thinking again about how easy it'd be to truly start making good re: the OGL, could they not just release OGL v1.0b that, regardless of whether or not it was a true risk without it, now includes the word "irrevocable" to section 4 (as was alleged to be the problem) and let any OGL v1.0a users elect to upgrade to v1.0b at their leisure (as per section 9). (Ref: So WHY Didn't The OGL Contain The Word 'Irrevocable'?)

Stronger than the mere statement I hypothesized earlier, and not as much effort as the CC BY change (as good of an idea as it also is). Seems like a meager legal fee, if they bothered to care.

 

[Burnside]

Hell, thinking again about how easy it'd be to truly start making good re: the OGL, could they not just release OGL v1.0b that, regardless of whether or not it was a true risk without it, now includes the word "irrevocable" to section 4 (as was alleged to be the problem) and let any OGL v1.0a users elect to upgrade to v1.0b at their leisure (as per section 9). (Ref: So WHY Didn't The OGL Contain The Word 'Irrevocable'?)

Stronger than the mere statement I hypothesized earlier, and not as much effort as the CC BY change (as good of an idea as it also is). Seems like a meager legal fee, if they bothered to care.

I think the best and smoothest thing to do at this point would just be to honor their commitment to review the 3rd edition SRD and move it into Creative Commons. I personally have no dog in that fight and would never use it, but the fact remains that three years ago they said they would do that, and they haven't done it, and the reason is pretty clearly that their feet aren't being held to the fire about it like they were about the 5E SRD.

Until they do it, it remains a pretty valid stick for critics to beat them with. Just do what you publicly committed to doing, folks. Or if you have discovered that you can't, explain why not. It's well over three years now.

 

[bsss]

I think the best and smoothest thing to do at this point would just be to honor their commitment to review the 3rd edition SRD and move it into Creative Commons. I personally have no dog in that fight and would never use it, but the fact remains that three years ago they said they would do that, and they haven't done it, and the reason is pretty clearly that their feet aren't being held to the fire about it like they were about the 5E SRD.

Until they do it, it remains a pretty valid stick for critics to beat them with. Just do what you publicly committed to doing, folks.

I still think the CC is a great target, but only doing the activity of releasing the 3e SRD under CC only directly helps material that could inherit from the 3e SRD in the future; existing works inheriting from the 3e SRD under the OGL are only theoretically helped, with cascading work, because each copyright holder in the chain would have to go through their own effort to change to the CC. Since the OGL v1.0a allows for updates at the licensee's discretion, a v1.0b would immediately be available to all OGL v1.0a users. WotC could authorize a v1.0b adding that one word and strengthen the OGL.

Updating the 3e SRD to CC also doesn't do anything for the parts of the community that used OGL v1.0a because they thought it was a solid license (and to be clear, I believe the people who think it still is a solid license, WotC's 800-pound gorilla state aside).

They didn't promise to make the OGL stronger, I'll admit, but I consider their actions to weaken it in the first place a different betrayal of the community. Their "apology tour" is pretty empty if they're not doing anything to address the damage they did other than apologize and remind us to buy their stuff.

 

[pawsplay]

CC can be ported into other works. All you have to do, if you (voluntarily) want to contribute more under this license, is indicate what parts can and are licensed. The CC-BY license does not require you sub-license.

 

[kenmarable]

Hell, thinking again about how easy it'd be to truly start making good re: the OGL, could they not just release OGL v1.0b that, regardless of whether or not it was a true risk without it, now includes the word "irrevocable" to section 4 (as was alleged to be the problem) and let any OGL v1.0a users elect to upgrade to v1.0b at their leisure (as per section 9). (Ref: So WHY Didn't The OGL Contain The Word 'Irrevocable'?)

Stronger than the mere statement I hypothesized earlier, and not as much effort as the CC BY change (as good of an idea as it also is). Seems like a meager legal fee, if they bothered to care.

Yep, exactly! (Also, I think removing "authorized" from "authorized version" would kneecap their original legal argument in OGL 1.1.)

There are ways they could release a OGL v1.0b that would make the license clearly irrevocable and not orphan off 20-something years of OGC from a TON more publishers than just WotC. CC-BY and ORC both don't address that pre-existing commons of open gaming content at all. They are entirely future-facing.

I would absolutely love if they did that, however, but they haven't even hinted at it, unfortunately. It'd be an awesome surprise and great way to show and not merely claim they won't try more OGL shenanigans, but unless they do, I guess it's just each new exec does an apology tour about earning back trust until the next new exec does their apology tour about earning back trust and hopefully somewhere in there doing things better going forward even if it cuts off a central part of the open gaming past.