I had a ton of requests to cover this one. While not strictly videogame related, the situation with Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons & Dragons is a perfect example of everything this show talks about. So let’s talk about how Wizards and Hasbro tried to become some D&D landlords.
#WizardsOfTheCoast #DungeonsAndDragons #Hasbro #Controversy #Money #Tabletop #TabletopGaming #Backlash #Capitalism #JimSterling #Jimquisition #JamesStephanieSterling #CommanderSterling #Games #Gaming #Videogames
The response is bullshit by the way. It wasn’t a draft, they sent the shitin thing to people under NDA along with a binding contract. And “You own the content, we don’t” yeah, of course. But to be able to make that content you’re forced to give them royalty free permission to use it. You own it… But we can steal it scot free
They didn’t walk back much of anything. Their weasely apology is just a bunch of flowery language that doesn’t actually take back anything.
Story time! The original OGL destroyed the tabletop RPG industry! See, before the OGL, local game stores had shelves full of all sorts of RPGs, from all manner of publisher. However, the OGL opened the floodgates for cheap shovelware based on D&D. This caused said shelves to become choked with shit. This led to a situation similar to the video game crash of ’83, except, unlike the crash, there was one brand that consumers felt they could trust, that being D&D. This basically meant that all of D&D’s competition wound up massively downsized or knocked out of business entirely. Then, Wizards didn’t apply the OGL to 4e, which caused the parasitic, opportunistic OGL authors to, themselves, go under, with only Paizo continuing to thrive, by tapping into bitter nerds’ refusal to move on from 3.5, by making Pathfinder as “more 3.5 so you never have to grow or change”.
Some years later, the industry was starting to recover, but then 5e dropped, bringing back the OGL with it, as well as adding the DM’s Guild, to further encourage lazy, uncreative writers to make shitty OGL content and nip their potential competition in the bud. Now, they’re once again pulling the plug on the OGL writers. This is what they do. Stop supporting D&D. Stop it. No more, regardless of what they do regarding the OGL. Because the OGL exists to stop any other RPG system from ever becoming successful enough to ever possibly rival Wizards.
“easily bagged with a bottle of coke and some positive attention.”
i felt this hard
Priscilla queen of the ring sounds like porn.
WotC hasn’t walked anything back. They are still trying to kill OGL 1.0a and force everyone into the new OGL 1.1. They’ve haven’t backed down an inch.
I’ll be honest, I missed all 17 mins and 59 seconds of information in this vid cause I couldn’t get over how adorable Steph is
I still haven’t bought an Xbox one because of that BS
OMG! Thank you for this!
Capitalism is the institutionalization of narcissism, and the corporation the narcissist’s ideal being.
“Goblin-esqe” as a proud Kobold enthusiast I am offended madam!
bigoted homebrew is just not at all an issue, so WotC suddenly “worrying” about in in the OGL 1.1/2 is very suspicious to me. I think they just want to be able to strike down any homebrew they want, and used anti-bigotry as an excuse
One can only hope this will prompt the creation of (or adoption of an existing one) open source alternative, that would replace D&D on the top. That would be nice to see the greed blow in the face of those corporations.
I wish I could see you wrestle in person but I’m in another country!
Given they were telling their investors only a few months ago that they considered the DnD brand ‘under-monetised’ and were seeking to ‘fix’ that, the new OGL shouldn’t surprise us. Disappoint us, yes, but not surprise. We’ve seen it so many times before.
I believe LegalEagle did a video on this too and my big take-away from it is that the OGL doesn’t actually matter. It doesn’t change legal rights you have always had in terms of making content based on or compatible with D&D- it only becomes an issue if you use trademarked D&D branding or start directly reproducing large sections of their books. A method (such as a recipe, or a set of rules for playing a game) cannot itself be copyrighted.
You’ve always been able to make D&D-compatible content and would have been able to do this even if the OGL had never existed. There is nothing inherently illegal about selling a book of your own original characters and monsters, with a 5e stat block next to them. What the OGL does do, however, (and what this revision entirely undoes) is reassure and encourage the community to use their work as a foundation and not worry that they’ll try to pull the foundation out from under you if they aren’t happy about it.
This is kind of like if Microsoft said you weren’t allowed to make programs run on Windows without giving them a cut; Entirely unenforceable, probably doesn’t affect your actual rights and ability to make something, but it *does* do a lot to crash your confidence in them as a platform and would probably make you think twice about whether developing for their platform is really what you want to build your entire business around.
In short, all WotC are doing here is threatening their own monopoly as the default TTRPG people play. Watch as everything from Pathfinder to Shadowrun to Magical Kitties Save the Day steps up to fill the void with friendly reminders that you can also create and market content that works with *their* rules systems.
Don’t forget that Hasbro is also selling NFTs right now. Which is still somehow less disturbing than that fucking pony.
Something of interest that you might want to follow up on is competitor company Paizo’s response to all this. They were formed from employees of WotC back when WotC last tried to pull this shit. Furthermore, Paizo’s owner, their president, and their lawyers were the ones that originally drafted the original OGL that allowed 3rd party creators to thrive, because that kind of free access allowed the hobby and community to thrive. Paizo is willing to go to court with WotC to prevent these greedy updates, even though they themselves have already stopped needing it for their own system.
Additionally, Paizo and several 3rd party creators like Kobold Press, Green Ronin and Legendary Games are working together to make a system agnostic Open RPG Creative (ORC) license that will better protect independent creators. They will get it set up, and then look for a non-profit to hand over ownership to so that multiple people can benefit from it, but no one with a vested monetary interest can ever control it. They are trying to make sure that if they ever fall like WotC did, they will have already cut themselves off from their own greed.
Steph looking like a damn snack this week