Delusional Company Wages War Against It's Fans
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- Опубліковано 5 січ 2023
- This is the worst business leak I've ever commentated on. Terrible move. the absolute bad business of all time.
Official sources:
company.wizards.com/en/legal/...
roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/O...
www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-...
Leak sources:
gamerant.com/wizards-of-the-c...
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Thanks to @CritCrab for the edit! - Розваги
I FORGOT TO MENTION. At the end of the leak, WOTC says that they are receptive to criticism they have stated that they “will receive community pushback and bad PR, and We’re more than open to being convinced that We made a wrong decision.”. With that in mind, join me in letting them know this change is unwanted and unwelcome. Apologies for not mentioning that earlier. 🦀🦀🦀
My best guess is that this leak was intentional and they will then reveal a "new" ogl that is only slightly better and say it was a compromise after listening to fan feedback. Would fall in line with behaviors that hasbro has done in the past
Idk y it happens but it rly just seem like no matter wat evrytime anytime somthing hits a certain high point (this high point coming exclusively from fans and community support) evry company makes the decision to go from wats working to the exact opposite direction and it makes zero sense. Evrytime it happens they only succeed in doing the opposite of wat they want there greed tears apart there work tearing apart there communities and in turn kills there revenue. But the few exceptions that have gone the way of the community have made long lasting products that make tons and have ppl that will follow it cause they wontb betrayed but its so rare to see that happening. This is highly disappointing seeing another amazing product start its failure simply cause of corporate greed
You mean the same company that said they're listening to feedback on OneDnD?
Mate, if you buy that, I got a bridge to sell you.
Sadly profits come first for WotC, they only listen to feedback selectively when it says what they want to hear.
Mmm hmm. I'm kinda reminded of South Park. "If there any questions, you may direct them to that brick wall over there."
Announce/leak an "awful change"
Get backlash
Introduce slightly less "bad change"
Community accepts "bad change" because its at least not "awful change"
A tale as old as time
Edit: They completely backed away from it, OGL1.0a stands and the SRD 5.1 is now Creative Commons. Thats a big win!
And then they repeat the cycle until they have exactly what they want
Jokes on them, I still didn't see Sonic. But mostly because I'm lazy.
I hated that "dark and serious" cartoon, too, mind. Give me the "IIII HATE THAT HEDGEHOOOOG!" version any day. I used to watch the hell out of that.
@@worldcomicsreview354 ...what does this have to do with Sonic
Yup. It's the "two steps over the line" strategy.
@@worldcomicsreview354 Hitting the chili dogs a little hard tonight eh?
It’s crazy that the company that charges $50 per book is complaining about profit
A company that made 900 million dollars last year and their next largest "competitor" (Paizo) made 12 million.
Honestly I'm not surprised, it is Hasbro
And has the gall to not offer codes IN said books for their own app
Started noticing this when Square Enix and other video game companies started acting this way too! Instead of making a decent profit they now have the mindset of they want all the money. So they put forward these insane goals and get way too greedy for their own good. It's safe to say that they ended up creating the very problem that they create these insane solutions to solve! Way to cut off your nose to demand everybody pitch in to get you a new nose and an extra makeup to your face as well because they all owe you apparently.. and then no one wants anything to do with you
Bruh now look at GW with their prices WHENEVER THEY MAKE A NEW BOOK. I think it's $70 just for my chaos marine handbook? And do not get me started on figure prices
Greetings from the Warhammer 40k community. We dealt with a very similar issue a couple years ago. It was really rough for a while after Games Workshop literally purged content sites of fan created content then tried to monetize it on their own platform. Our community survived but at the cost of a ton of creators and even revenue for the company. Good luck friends! The Emperor watches over you all!
You know what both communities need right now? A good ol' fashioned WAAAGH!
Also the BattleScribe guy being a scammer didn’t help
Brothers. It's time we finally grant the imperium a chance to find some form of compromise with the xenos. They're in a war just like us. We can work together. And both survive.
@@WolfODonnelfan Now DAT is wut I like ta' hear! GRAB YER SHOOTAS, WE'Z STARTIN A WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH
@@kaden-sd6vb 'ERE WE GO 'ERE WE GO 'ERE WE GO
This has happened before. TSR bankrupted itself and D&D was bought by WotC using their MTG money.
They revived the game in 3rd Edition by creating the OGL under Ryan Dancey.
Hasbro then bought WotC and tried to end the OGL with the creation of 4th Edition.
What they actually created was Pathfinder, as players and creators moved to a game which was open and community driven.
Pathfinder also showed that the way to profit from your game us to make great adventures.
D&D had to relaunch with 5e and get a huge boost from a lucky pop culture moment to save itself, and that included learning its lesson and reinstating an OGL.
Unfortunately, corporate memories are short.
Unless they're trying to do a reboot and re-release for 6E xp
Corporate memories last to last quarter and that's as far as it goes
Good summary.
Yep. Those of us who started prior to 3rd Ed know exactly what happens next. Wizards of the Coast always seems to forget that D&D isn't remotely close to the only pen and paper RPG out there. There are plenty of other options.
I've been playing more PF, despite how much more complex it can be, and I just spent endless months building up a custom setting with homebrew lore, but using mostly PF content. No third party though. I started tabletopping with D&D 3.5, bought tons of books, mostly items and monsters and magic, because I was never into premade adventure paths.
I'm REALLY hoping that these changes don't remove a bunch of content from d20pfsrd, because I'll probably have a goddamn breakdown if tons of stuff goes missing. My life is not in a good state and I can't afford to go buying tons of books these days. I've been playing PF because there's so much available FOR FREE.
"We don't want big businesses to exploit our rpg" said the corporation trying to exploit the rpg
they own it, they can do what they want. dont like it? should have paid Gygax
@@nhdjoseywales they don't own 90% of DnD content, since it is based on myths and Tolkien's work. It is strange to hear about the problems with the creative interpretation of someone else's content from those who have been doing this for decades.
@@nhdjoseywales But they don't own most of it... And people already paid for their base books, and then mod what ever they want else done on top of that- which the company doesn't have rights to. They can't just do what ever, its why people are fighting back.
@@straightshota6794 They own the ruleset, thats the IP that the other stuff is based on. no one is designing campaigns around Joe's generic norse mythos campaign ruleset.
@@cameoshadowness7757 i must have missed the part where WOTC is coming to your house and taking back books you paid for. can you point to that part in the new agreement?
The dead second they said "D&D is undermonetized" I knew beyond a doubt that we were fucked.
I still remember all the people going "they mean MERCH, guys!"
I knew they didn't mean merch.
@@DoinItforNewCommTech The lengths people will go to so they can be the very first to publicly asskiss a billion dollar company that does not care if you live or die is insanely depressing
Well the guy said it in this video.
He owns like 1 DND book, and countless third party items.
Hasbro isn't getting any money off their biggest IP.
They're a company. They have shareholders. Of course they don't care about the 'community', they see you as a wallet instead of a fan.
@@basedstreamingatcozy-dot-t7126 The response to that is for Hasbro to compete instead of trying to artificially reduce competition.
@@basedstreamingatcozy-dot-t7126 Serves Hasbro right for having the slowest release schedule of any D&D edition before them. Fuckin' half a dozen books a year, and they aren't making any money off of their fanbase trying to fill in the cracks? What were they expecting?
Are we in some kind of wave of anti-fan/audience movement in all creative industries?! This seriously needs to stop and investigated.
Anti-user as well, especially if you're an artist or content creator below corporate level.
I think it's a wave of stupid ceos in every single medium, my theory is all the kids of the old ceos took over and all wanted to get rich quick not understanding how the economy works with thier sheltered life
Feel like the communities evolve so fast now and the CEOs are not part of those communities so they got no fucking idea what to do, and just try to flail around and increase the green number
All companies wanna do nowadays is appease their greasy investors, and those same investors just bark nonsensical orders thinking it'll make them more money
For years now.. And it works. Otherwhise they wouldnt be doing it. Once gaming and this stuff was "nerd" and "nieche". And at the beginning the same "nerd" and "nieche" people were creating games, movies and what not. It got more popular and companies saw the possible money to be made.. well and the rest is history
Another factor that adds credibility to this is the team that done the original ogl are suing wizards for breach of contract as they were told the ogl was to be free to make content always and it wouldn’t be changed to exploit those who make the content
If that's the case, then the new OGL most likely can't be legal.
can you show the source? I need to see this for myself
@@SonicPrimus it's not, it can only have any legal weight if a creator signs it.
You can write a contact and have people sign it then make a new one that says "that old contract is overruled by this one even if no one signs it."
But they want to force big publishers to agree as then 3rd party is basically screwed.
Doesn't matter if a 3rd party didn't agree if they can't use drivethrurpg to advertise and sell their product. Or if an artist can make tokens for roll20 without agreeing. That's the strategy.
@@DivusMagus So what would happen if no creator signs it?
@@SonicPrimus well old content would still be under the ogl 1. But they would not be able to make new content without potential legal action. But they could still make content as long as they don't use and D&D copyright or trademark.
So you could make an adventure and advertise it as "compatible with multiple D20 systems." And have no d&d monsters in it that are free use.
Honestly what baffles me the most about this is that the last time Wizards messed with the game license, they accidentally created a new competition in Pathfinder that almost completely bankrupted them. Talk about not learning from the past...
Pathfinder is going strong and has been attracting a lot of new players from 5e in the last year. I'm really enjoying Blood Lords, and Strength of Thousands.
Pathfinder is still my go to TTRPG for classic medieval fantasy.
I like the crunch.
Unfortunately, Pathfinder relied (and still relies) very heavily on the OGL 1.0A. With the wording that the Old OGL is no longer authorized, they're gonna be hit super hard. Whether they sign on or shift gears, it's gonna cost them a lot.
@@calemr I like that they made a class that is literally just make a avatar the last airbender character.
@@DarkAvengerVIM IIRC, they (Wizards) tried to revoke the OGL at the end of 3.5, and it got shot down by the courts...
Though don't quote me on that. It was quite a while ago, and my memory is terrible.
"We need to make more profit"
"Let's throw legal stuff at our consumers and make them hate us, that'll get them spending"
One of these days the corpies will learn....
I hope.
Probably not though.
Lego does this too. Ppl think they own the right to make bricks, but not anymore.
They also have 3d rights on the fig which is dumb, cause the fig lego uses is based on the studs they have to connect to. That kind of technical required stuff usually doesnt fall under the 3d right ownership/Protection, but nobody can afford going to court with lego. They dont have the money. Several different companies exist that actually improved on Legos Original design, but Yeah (joints build in for gestures/poses) and more
Lego lost the rights on their (stolen) bricks and also Lost the rights on the Figs, still now have the 3d rights which basically prevents anyone using human shaped minifigs.
@@kaden-sd6vb All those suits literally don't give a shit about any of us and are only doing this to appease investors, most of them won't even be working for the company in 5 years anyways so all they care about is how this is help them in the short term
brilliant .... BRILLIANT!!!
They care more about losing what they have than gaining potentially more...which will be their downfall.
First it was Games Workshop killing Warhammer Creators’ ability to make content, now Wizards of the Coast seem to be willing to kill fan content. Collaboration always works better than hostile competition with your own fan base.
i swear gw stepped back from that after a year of being boycotted
@@flamingrubys11 They stopped striking the videos because they already had the big creators sign exclusivity deals and removed their content from UA-cam, they got what they wanted out of it, and it killed almost all fan animations.
This is becoming common in other industries as well. Young hotshot CEO comes in like a bull in a china shop. Comes in with a business degree and has no respect for creatives. Wrecks everything in his path and clueless to what the consequences will be.
@@subaru4920Ironic given how that’s the basis of making dnd fun.
"Competition in the form of their own community" is horrible, they're sinking their own company assuming people will now come to them instead
It would go from competition to cooperation. When there is a royalty both parties benefit from a sale instead of just one. WotC brings some IP and someone else brings their IP and together you can make something good and both benefit.
It reminds of how restaurant chains try to squeeze their franchisees sometimes. The fan community evangelizes for the brand in all the times and spaces that advertisements can't reach. Attacking them is shooting themselves in the foot.
This is the scariest DND horror story you’ve shared to date
But at any time, we can chose to wake up, and use another one of dozens of systems. :)
@@Casey093 Ah, but let me use the dreaded words, "yes, but"
There's other systems, but D&D is The de facto system for tabletop games. Changes made to D&D are extremely likely to have downstream effects on other games.
@@Casey093 A lot of TTRPG systems use the OGL, even quite a few of PC games, a recent example is Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous or Solasta and these are just some examples on the top of my head. If the change goes trough there will be a huge ripple effect in most markets that use it.
I'm sorry 445
already quaking in my boots
When outside people are doing a better job than your own company at creating content for your brand, you don't have to waste time and energy alienating your players to crush those people. You can just hire them instead.
I wouldn't work for em anyways!!
Yeah, the problem is that Hasbro crushes the souls out of its people. I wouldn't wish that on any of our creators.
Hold on now, you're using good business sense instead of greed and petulance. You can't do that!
@@AF-tv6uf Isn't it illegal as well?
But they aren't woke, WoTC can't hire them.
As a Warhammer fan, I feel your pain. Just know it can get worse
What happened to Warhammer?
@@iriswav7379 price hikes, total ban on fan animations, that sort of stuff, in store games are pretty much done for
@@guyman91 Don't forget also how Codexes became *vastly* more restrictive and sparse to shit on third-party bits manufacturers.
@@CteCrassus and rules bloat from codesies
@@guyman91 that sucks, so low attacking the fan animations
Seems like it's time to create a new open source, decentralized, community created game, and leave these archaic, predatory, publicly traded companies in the dust where they belong.
MIT and GNU for the win
The best creators in the world banding together to compete, instead of supplement dnd? What has wizards done?
@@ghb323 what are mit and gnu?
Raise the Black Flag!
People: making dnd content bc they like the game
Dnd: and I took that personally
It worked so well for Capcom...
And taking that, literally.
Well no they didn't take it personal.
They're personally your money 😭😭😭
@@lXedalinlI still haven’t recovered from buying the dmg
People: This is a fun game, I think I will release a little book that can be used to enhance the game for players!
DnD: You took all our money, we're going bankrupt
This wasn't leaked, it was released. They just wanted feedback BEFORE it's officially released. Screw these guys.
Well hopefully they actually listen to the very loud and Unified feedback they are getting.
And dont sneak it in after 3 months when the heat dies off.
@@tanith117 You forget, this is the same exact company who made $1000 proxies, and didn't even give enought of a shit to make it a full set
Company: Tries to collect from community creations
Community: Introducing the new table top rpg "Labyrinths and Lizards"
Ah yes "IBM PC compatible" approach
Creators: "I thought I was going to be able to create content that makes DnD successful."
Wizards of the Coast: "I am altering the deal, and pray I don't alter it any further."
Creators: "This deal is getting worse all the time. Screw this, I'm creating for something different."
"Wait no you're in possession of my money"
it's amazing how deliberately greedy and nasty the new terms are. the "this licence was never meant to breed competitors" is absolutely wild
esepcailly when 99% of what the terms seem to indicate is that their biggest sources of free advertisement like critical role are what they are consitering "competitors". this reeks of ivory tower greed handed out by people who dont even know the very media they are selling or how their own market works.
Imo that shows a bit just how aware the old school business people at WotC/Hasbro that ttrpg is a consumer's market. The go at it with the same mindset as car manufacturers would. Now picture what would be going on if buying any car would also give you the tools and resources to build and sell your own with comparatively little effort and possibly much higher quality.
Trouble (for WotC/Hasbro) is, having fun at a ttrpg table isn't a physical product, that can be locked away behind physical resource costs.
What I find really really scummy is the fact they pretend they can enforce the change retroactively...also DND if they aren't careful could actually end up in the public domain in its entirety.
The terms set for the last however many years basically said it was public domain anyway and the name DND is synonymous with tabletop to the same degree that bandaids are with bandages. That bandaids thing is what sets the legal president btw cause back in like the 90s band-aid brand had to change its name to have the - and brand cause there product "bandaid" had become so widely spread.
Anyone who they tried to sue with these new terms could probably start a class action and get DND in the public domain whole cloth if they wanted to.
@@thecreatorofthedark They'll also run into serious trouble in Germany at least. Retroactively chaqngeing a license here is very much illegal to prevent the exact situation where someone first is allowed to use a product or IP in a stated manner and then gets retroactively charged for it.
Also, thanks for the bandaid info! I didn't know that!
How is this greedy? This is how most businesses operate these days (and in the past) I think it's quite foolish that they basically gave everyone free reign with the license in the first place.
I believe history has proven that waging war on those who pay you leads to self destruction
sadly it is self destruction and taking as many innocent victims with you as possible without caring and without learning any lesson ! If it stops making money then abandone it and take the next money-train to ruin for your own pleasure ..
Wish it had happened to Nintendo.
Idk, EA and activision have been going strong for years despite how horribly they treat their employees and consumers.
I think their "taxes" are too high but as you can see from the money 100-150 million of a more than one billion pie is not much honestly.
"Let them eat cake"
DND is just a framework for imagination.. You can just create your own work with a new non-dnd ruleset and remove copyright names and such. I hope some big creators do this and head the campain to untangle the community from the Hasbro copyrights.
I thought they were copyrighting the entire system though, d20 or something
@@poot-poot The oldest 20 sided die to be found is over 2000 years old, good luck to them when they have to show anteriority.
@@poot-poot they can try but it won't work. There is already court precedent that you can not copyright game rules or mechanics, only characters, stories and art is copyrightable.
Then you can trademark protection which only protects the name of the system and other tools. (Dungeons and dragons, DnDbeyond, Wizards of the coast)
It's pretty much mathematics you can't copyright it
Coming from the Magic community I can tell you that this is business as usual for Hasbro. The simple answer to that is to entirely boycott them and stick to what's already out there or (speaking about creators) switch to something that gives them the creative freedom they deserve. If you give them one finger they'll take your arm and then all of the rest, let them rot as they deserve, we don't need them, they need us.
What are alternatives to MtG?
@@dicariel en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectible_card_game?wprov=sfla1
@@dicariel I am a fan of Force of Will and the Final Fantasy TCG. Though there are plenty of other less weeb card games out there,
@@dicariel, in my case, I might abandon TCGs and focus on the wargames I like.
Reminds me of something Jim Sterling said about game companies.
"They're not satisfied with some of the money they have to have ALL the money."
"And all the money NOW". They have the business mentality of Veruca Salt."
Gotta love Jim Steph Sterling
They go by James Stephanie Sterling now, in case you haven't heard
Screw Jim sterling. What a joke of a person.
That's Jim "Jim Fucking Sterling, Son" Sterling to you, whippersnapper!
My theory is that they leaked this draconian license on purpose so that in a month or so they can realize the official one that is not as bad (but still horrible) and say “look at what a good company were are for listening to the fans” I have been told that WotC has already done this more than once for MTG.
You have been told correctly
Good thing is it seems most of the community are aware of this so any change to the OGL is now going to be seen as toxic and a PR disaster by the community, anything that not OGL 1.0 will lead to backlash.
1.0 or Bust imho
either way they can go F themselves because they can't revoke 1.0a.
More than a few live service video games have done the same with things like loot progression and monetisation.
@@procrastinatinggamer Pokemon did it too. They cut most of the Pokemon from one of their last games, there was community backlash, and they added a handful back in subsequent patches--but not all of them. And now the latest games have even less, because it was always about monetizing people's access to those characters.
Hasbro and WOTC just made everyone's favorite class be the Pirate.
Saddest part is that there is nobody at the company(ies) that will go to bat for the fans. Hasbro wants money, Wizards of the Coast want to justify their existence to Hasbro, and the employees will enjoy sending take down notices to every fan project made by someone they don't personally like (if how often they get into spats on social media over anything is any indication).
Honestly, I imagine this was pitched to the staff as a way to better take down 'toxic trolls' or something. The idea of taking away the livelihood of someone with the wrong opinion on something probably gets them off.
There's a decent chance all of this OGL stuff was only in the hands of execs and corporate lawyers at WotC and the people actually working on the game were left out of the loop. If you're the guy in charge of squeezing more money out of the franchise and you have Hasbro breathing down your neck, why involve your writers and game designers? I wouldn't be surprised if they were left in the dark just as much as us players, or even if one of them had stumbled upon the 1.1 draft, got pissed and leaked it.
I’ve read it’s happening at top-level WotC, no Hasbro or creative team involvement. MBA types with no passion or real involvement for the game getting put in place. The VP in particular I’ve read came from the old “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” Microsoft before the company became a bit less hostile…
I highly doubt the employees will enjoy it. Even if they hate this new OGL, at the end of the day, the employees who have absolutely no say in this gotta eat. It's the higher ups you should hate, not them.
@@Canadish But why? Why are they like this?
Can we go ONE DAY without a giant company performing massive sleezy acts that make me question living only to try to wring out as much money from their fanbase as possible?
no. welcome to late stage capitalism.
@@SteveAkaDarktimes Sadly, yes. This is late stage capitalism. Where every product a company makes is sold at ridiculous prices, which ruins their projected profits, which then the only commodity you can monetize is the creative fanbase's ideas that you have to steal (think Thomas Edison) by using a patent and a license because you are a CEO, not an enjoyer of said game, and any original ideas are too hard to make reality, so take take take. Then abandon and repeat the moment people boycott you without a care for anyone or anything that is now left to rot. :D :D :D
@@keitaro373 Which leads to people replacing the old, bloated corpse of a company that is clearly not fit for purpose anymore with a new one or new ones. It's a cycle, and we're either hitting the "hard times" that make the good men, or Hasbro gets a thorough legal shafting, and it's going to go somewhere completely different.
Not the first time, not the last time. If there's any straight line projection here, it's the more conventional transfer of geek culture from the geeks and freaks that made it to the normies that want in on it. That's where a big corporation like Hasbro even gets the inclination to be here in the first place.
welcome to capitalism.
Man I hate Late Stage Capitalism so much
I at least understood what they were doing and why they were doing it, all the way up to that 30 day notice bit. That is just evil. "This contract is valid and we're held to it as well, unless we decide we don't want to be"
It's just legal boilerplate. They are probably going to terminate the existing license with 0 days of notice. They are just being more explicit, being able to terminate the agreement isn't a new thing.
It's almost like greed ruins everything...
"Wizards can modify or terminate this agreement for any reason..." has a "I Am Altering the Deal, Pray I Don’t Alter It Any Further." feel.
WotC, doing what they can to drive away players and look like the villain while they do it.
parasitic producers will hate it... reciprocity is good, greedy 3rd party leeches will howl about loss of profits.
the new OGL is very fair.
Fixating on that quote is just making a mountain out of a molehill for dramatic effect to lend support to his argument...it's clearly just standard legal bumfluff that you can find in EVERY single ToS or EULA.
And with how often WotC employees get into Twitter fights I see no way for this to be abused by them to headhunt people they personally don't like, no siree.
@@vallejomach6721 They made it into a mountain when they decided to pull the rug out from under people that have been working in a space for 20+ years. This will have a very detrimental impact on the community of creators and players.
@@vallejomach6721 inhaling a little too much paint are we?
I feel like this is just one of those things where they present this horrible thing, knowing it will get backlash, then make a big show over being apologetic and reducing it to something more reasonable to make fans feel "heard." While the reality of the situation is that the fans are still getting the short end of the stick, it's just longer than it could have been.
Yeah. This is legal shock and awe tactics/the classic Big Ask negotiation tactic. The OGL is everywhere and it's been around unaltered for over 20 years, and that's not good for Hasbro's case. Why I hope that the more legal-minded members who play can get together and figure out what, exactly, we should all be doing about this.
OGL 1.0 or Bust imho
@FishQueen Agree! No one budge on this. As a DM (and thus, a member of their 80% majority consumer base) I am NOT paying another dime more for their imagination racket. Either be grateful for what we do still pay ya, or kiss what ya got goodbye!
"The Big Ask"
Yeah, I mean that's common practice to do. Come up with whatever you actually think you might get away with, dial it up to 11, anounncing the dialed up version, then act all "oh, we heard you, we are so nice and will settle for less because we are sooo nice", then do whatever you initially intended to do. Only that it's likely gonna be worse in this case, since a significant portion of people think they are totally right with the current announcment already, so they'll likely settle for more than they initially intended to since they now see that they actually can get away with more than they thought already.
A WAY better idea would've been to collaborate with prominent DnD creators to get profit.
Offering to sell people's DnD-related books, adventures, etc. as official merchandise and content (while still crediting the original creators) and take a small cut like 5% per sale.
They could have a Homebrew DnD store on DnDBeyond for crying out loud.
But that would take effort and Wizards of The Coast doesn't like doing that.
Lawyers at this point are saying it would be highly unlikely that they can enforce the license change over unless you agree to it or you violated the old license terms as long as you don't go into the new D&D system so anything 5.0 and earlier will be fine so long as you stick to the letter of the old OGL.
retroactively applying the new licence is the kicker for me, tbh - it's one thing to demand royalties from new things made by the community, but some people will have been making things for YEARS and are gonna be punished for being long-term fans of something they love. i wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if dnd community sharing sites just went underground and started their own 'black market' of sorts just to spite wotc
They don't want Paizo to kick their ass again
Only a really corrupt judge would allow such a thing. You can't retroactively apply fees that weren't agreed upon. That's literally against consumer protection laws.
People in trench coats selling bootleg copies of dnd books and self-published works
@@nukeman4048 Selling? You jest. The whole series'll be up on various sites for free. Yo ho, yo ho a pirate's life for me~ will be the tune that echoes in their ears if they go through with this. Like, talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
@@7thlittleleopard7 probably but thats the image i think WoTc has in their mind about this issue and it amuses me.
As a magic player (wizard's other, lesser known but more lucrative game) you should be really afraid. Fight back, don't let it happen, they made ruinous changes to magic and they will do the same to you.
Magic is not lesser known or a smaller IP than D&D. It's more like they slaughtered the cow and are coming after the chickens... Mr. Crabby's edit at 3:46 proves that...
Never been into MTG and I don't really know about any of the stuff you're referencing. Would you mind giving some examples?
@@lkriticos7619 magic got pushed to go online (very Long history but a bunch of things that hit brick&mortar shops and lower card value) and once it did a bunch of mechanics in arena(the online magic) pushed to "balance" the game but however were there to keep you in check from being too good/bad.
If you win a lot but lose to one type of deck you will be put against people playing that deck all the time, if you keep winning past that then they will start having you miss cards that give you resources to play the high cast cards. The same in reverse if you keep losing.
But the biggest and most recent was the reprinting of some of the most expensive cards in the game, costing $1000s of dollars each for a pack that costs $1000...
But the catch is due to restrictions on card rulings if you have a new version of a Black Lotus (example card that costs $10000 at the cheapest) BUT DONT HAVE AN "AUTHENTIC" VERSION, we'll then you can't use it as it can only be used as a proxy/substitute for the real card. This goes for all of them. $1000 for you to get cards you can't play that you could get the same effect for $50 on Etsy
Ahem... let me answer that with... its a private company, they can do whatever they want with their IP, you dont own D&D WOTC does and they answer to their shareholders
@@lelagrangeeffectphysics4120 As if THAT would make it any better.
As MMO players are intimately aware, the only thing that can kill a leviathan of a game like this is the game itself. FFXIV in the background of this video is a nice touch.
Yup look at WOW for years thrre were rumours of the wow killer and every mmo failed. Instead blizzard alienated its hard core fans for normies...
Wizards share price falls were due to messing up on magic the gathering which is their biggest earner ahead of dnd. They have now doubled down and destroyed their relationship with fans and the rest of the rpg world by attempting to rule the entire infrastructure and give them power to demand whatever they want from competitors in return for allowing them to stay in business.
The thing that stuck out to me the most was the clause that says if you use the license, you have to pay them royalties. But if they use what you make, they don't have to pay you anything.
They can also revoke your license and sell your work. Sweet deal! 😃
Gurps is here for you.
Why shouldnt they. Idiots still keep buyimg their products anyway
@@steelmongoose4956 They took obvious theft, put it in the license and legalized it!
parasitic producers will hate it... reciprocity is good, greedy 3rd party leeches will howl about loss of profits.
the new OGL is very fair.
This is why copyright law needs to be fixed after Disney destroyed it. We should have public domain editions of D&D at this point
I didn’t even know D&D was owned by anyone, until this video.
I always just assumed it was some game people started playing and it managed to get popular.
To be clear, I’ve never really been interested in playing it, so I’ve never bothered looking into it beyond the occasional random UA-cam video.
I think if Wizards goes through with this, other independent trpgs will begin to be more successful because more people will go to them for a creative outlet that isn't strangling them
I think this is going to give Pathfinder a new burst of life. I could easily see, and I'd still watch, the major content creators going to Pathfinder.
I just hope that people go to original PF, and not PF2, as I witnessed a vid of Paizo admitting they made 2 compatible with D&D 5e so they could join the hype train and make bank.
PF1 still has absolute masses of content though, and it's my preferred system.
You can never go wrong expecting the absolute worst from a corporate entity.
Except Pfizer, right? They are life saving altruists. Never mind the criminal fines
This is just capitalism. Nothing new
@@foreignfat6009 corporationism is not capitalism. I would even argue that more centralised governments (so less capitalism supporting ones) benefit corporations even more than the free market.
@@Marunius Huh? But do you, that with restriction by government, like protecting from complete buy outs. And not allowing monopolies.
Monopoly is pretty much dictatorship. And now imagine that happening with food and water.
Capitalism is self-devouring system. Which easily makes intrusion into political system, unless it is restricted.
This is why you need socialism and capitalism together, so it restrict itself by design.
And every country has it, just some are more far away from one of them.
@@foreignfat6009 corruption and lobbying will always outsmart regulations to the detriment of the smaller players and regular people.
Games Workshop: The Scum of the Earth, I believe?
Hasbro: The bloody assassin of one's own fanbase, I presume?
Why do you think the rogue's got such a good capstone ability hmm?
Self-insert.
I didn't get the part about GW
I remember that cartoon from my history book.
@@TheDimir GW not too long ago passed a policy that essentially states that any fanmade content would be a copyright infringement. This was in tandem with the launch of an officially licensed platform to make and present Warhammer content that varies in quality level.
The results of this move were the legal acquisition of a fanmade product called "Astartes" and the creator of "Warhammer 40k but if the Emperor had a Text to Speech device" straight up quitting that series and moving on to other things out of fear of legal repercussions.
@@Historyfan476AD I figured someone would, lol
The old license stated its permanent so it cant be superceded automatically by the new one. Thats not how contracts work. They of course can attempt to persuade creators to 'upgrade' but the old contract has as much force as the new one when it states its permanent.
History is repeating itself. D&D (TSR) crushed Judges Guild in the late 70ies early 80ies. Judges guild had some kick ass dungeons and I was sad to see them get crushed. I really suspect Hasbro it attempting to make D&D big to maximize a larger SALE to someone out there. Like EVE ONLINE was purchased by Pearl Abyss.
Id suspect the OGL is a perceived as an albatross to the typical corpo suit, unaware of the context and how its likely been one of the brand's biggest boons.
The speed of this does suggest a certain level of corporate desperation/frustration so I'd say *something* happened, could have been a failed sales pitch.
TSR did not renew their license in 1982, love judge's content, their new owner is exceptionally problematic also when the ogl was established in the early 2000's they were putting out content with necromancer games under the ogl, I used the book to run wilderlands in 5e converting on the fly, I know I sound like an ass but you gotta feed the beast somehow and doing so in such a way that an independent creator on a meaningful level, businesses with multiple employees have a higher threshold to operate, but its not different from how a game console or cellphone monetization works in that the producers of the ecosystem gather a portion of revenue from it, I don't buy third party books these days. The portion of claiming rights I speculate is more of a legal protection in case someone says but I did this first to something they implement, rather than taking Ideas I believe there is a desire for a lack of resistance. Judges Guild doesn't see the light of day now because of the antisemitic comments of the current owner Bob Bledsaw jr. I'd restate for context but I wouldn't want anyone attributing those comments to me, including Holocaust denial
One DnD to rule them all, One DnD to find them,
One DnD to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Hasbro where the Shadows lie.
Nice!
Coming from the Magic community I have to say this is just the beginning. Wizards has once again made an absolutely atrocious decision that will and already is starting to cause major backlash from the community. First it was the insult that was 30th anniversary edition for Magic and now its with this change to D&Ds OGL. All I can say is, don't give these guys an inch of ground on this and fight back if you can. Dont be complacent and try to convince yourself that it'll all work out in the end because it won't, Magic players did that and all it did was allow Hasbro's greed to fester and grow into a massive monster. If this kind of thing is accepted, it will only lead to far worse decisions from WOTC in the future and will only hurt the awesome people in this amazing community. Don't let them suffocate D&D like they are Magic.
That's what I've been telling people. I was in both communities but I jumped the Magic ship a while back, originally for personal reasons but now just the money grubbing is really gross. Now I'll be jumping ship from D&D back to Pathfinder (I started with Pathfinder actually), as long as Paizo manages to survive without selling their souls to Hasbro.
The only lever the community can actually pull is to pivot to similar kinds of content but for other IPs, or create their own IPs, or otherwise.
If enough people make it clear that they are _already_ pivoting and not just considering it, WotC will shit their pants and backtrack. (And worse for them, the damage will have been done and they won’t try again for a long while.)
And with that termination for any reason, after you grant them a complete license to do whatever they want, every creator should, for their own stability and sanity.
I too am an MTG player, and warned all my DnD friends to buckle after the Wizards Hasbro "Fireside Chat"
I'm glad i'm not the only one that feels this way about MTG. Too many people still defend the shitty practices and I feel like this titan just needs to fall so it finally realizes that this is not the way to go about things.
Came here to more or less say the same thing. I laugh at the idea of them listening to fans. A good chunk of the player base was complaining of the frequency of releases, the rising costs of those releases, and even the content. Even Bank of America recognized their drive for increased profits above all else, was potentially harmful to the long term stability of the company. It comes as no surprise, but this just further concretes the issue for me.
I am kind of at the point of saying that's it for MTG again. I played for several years, but took a long break and just got back into it. So I don't really feel like I a have this huge sunk cost that I need to keep playing or keep up with it. But what is bad, the guy who got me into MTG never quit playing and estimates having probably $10,000 in cards has even started talking about being done with MTG.
I never played D&D, but it looks like it may be sealed to the same fate MTG seems doomed to suffer if Hasbro continues down this path.
The new OGL reads like an archdevil’s contract, complete with small print and everything
They want 25% of the pay for none of the work. This is why I hate companies being able to own IPs and copyright. They want to get perpetual payments just for owning something.
What about all the work they did creating dnd and growing the brand to give you the framework to make your own third party content in the first place and giving you a huge consumer base to sell too? Hardly anyone makes over 750000 dollars from dnd content and those that do should pay royalties your making huge profit off someone elses ip. Especially when you consider that if you do make 750000 dollars and pay worc their 25% you still gross over half a million dollars. Im not saying this ogl change is perfect but why do we act like ip protection that everyone wants for their own art, music, and creativity shouldnt extend to big companies when ip protection is how little creators get to be as big as wotc in the first place? As a small time creator of my own ips i know i wouldnt want everyone on earth entitled to profit off my work. If i get copyright protection so does wotc we dont get to say this person or company is too big so they dont get it but these little creators do.
Wizards killed it's relationship with the Magic community and now it's gonna do it with the dnd community as well.
Hasboro demanding (as most corporations do) ever increasing profits is squeezing every last drop of blood from these stones, and will ultimately kill both games.
What happened to the Magic community and Wizards? I'm not into Magic so I want to know
@@grantdaily9662 Hi, long time mtg player, 2 power creeps in a row and a tird coming. a set that was reprints+new cards for a format (modern) that was kinda stable, was powercreep too and a cash grab. Pandemic come and make imposible to play paper and the (standard) rotating format got more atention in arena but at the end of lockdown people got no phisical decks so lgs got fucked. then changed focus to a more casual format (commander) and saturated it with 2 decks per set and upped its price to 50 bucks the price for once a year products so to speak. Big flop and that make lgs lose more confidence in the products. The only format that at the time was treated ok (pioneer) was recognised by the company and get a set of precon decks every year, but there is not enough suport for it at almost any local tornament level. and then the 30 aniversary were 4 boosters of olds sets but proxy at 999 bucks. also they saturated the secret lair products controversial becase were imposible to get at LGS. this is kinda the tip of the iceberg
@@godi8628 that's just the start of it all?! Jeez man I feel bad for magic players
@@grantdaily9662 they just had their 30 year anniversary, and to celebrate, they were selling three packs of Magic cards for $1,000. They're all reprints of original cards, but they also printed them in such a way as to identify them all as not legal for play in any sanctioned format.
Additionally once they picked up on Commander being the most popular format, they went from printing one product per year for players of it to printing new cards directly into the format every single set release, many of which are blatantly over powered, and some printed specifically for the format had to be banned by the rules committee (which is not a part of Wizards of the Coast)
They also started selling reprints of cards direct to consumers as part of the Secret Lair series, but more often than not, these maybe have one card of value (if any) and the rest are just bulk. In some cases the entire product is full of cards worth very little.
The actual card stock they're printing on has massively dropped in quality. I have cards from 2013 that still look perfectly fine, but cards I bought from a set released just a month or two ago will be incredibly curled, even if they're sleeved up.
I mean I get the caution after this video, but with all they're doing to Magic, it's sad, but I look at the idea of "you have to pay us royalties if you make over a quarter a million dollars off our IP" as a kind of "that's it?" moment.
My biggest gripe with the new OGL is mainly how they can decide to change everything on you as long as they give you a 30 day warning and the fact that they can just take anything you make as their own. They did something like this in 4th Ed and it completely backfired on them.
Except that's a standard clause in any kind of open license contract. They had it under 3.5 as well, and I believe there was a similar clause in the old 5e OGL (I could be wrong though, it's been a couple of months since I looked over it). It's basically a way to cover their asses if something has to change because someone found a loophole to exploit in a way that can seriously hurt the brand.
What did they do with 4th Edition? You would think they would’ve learned their lesson by now.
@@solosynapse Yes, you are wrong. Only 4e had a exclusive "OGL", all others are under OGL 1.0, that by the way is irrevocable.
it's an extremely common clause in contracts, actually.
Pretty much every insurance policy has a similar clause, so do most if not all contracts with electricity companies, cable providers, ISPs, etc. etc.
Mostly it's there to allow the company to change their rates or to adjust their contracts to changing legal requirements, but there have been cases where it's been used to reduce services while increase prices on a captive audience, pretty much what WOTC seems to be intending here.
OGL 1.0 Section 9 actually does not have any sort of time limit regarding announcing changes: it says that Wizards or its Designated Agents are able to publish updated versions at any time... they did not have to announce they were working on OGL 1.1 until the moment they announced the release of a new version.
"We are disgustingly greedy and we're not ashamed" - WoC
I don't think Hasbro understands how petty fans can be.
Especially gamers. Particularly roleplayers.
Well you can see the posts here, so.
I just want a great Baldur's gate 3.
@@bernardoheusi6146 it will be a great game... I hope Hasbro hasn't touched it
its the first time hasbro has dealt with a actual community because anything hasbro has owned was dead within a few years and considering how the toy industry is in a free fall hasbro was most likely looking for life support
Very important.
Please submit support requests to WotC. You can email in a ticket, and there is an option for "Feedback" Keep it Curt, and don't be rude. But please lament all that is happening.
Having worked in customer relations, any change we made received backlash, but if we didn't get enough people emailing in, we didn't bother fixing it.
Please, for the community, scream, cry, and moan over the fact that what we have built may be taken away from us.
Sent a ticket under feedback. Kept it formal and pointed out that OGL 1.1 is stupid idea.
This is very true. Legit if the support desk get too many complaints of the same issue, they will make changes
@@Mekcanikel Where did you do this? I can't find it on Wizard's support site.
It's funny because you think that will work. These companies don't care about you. The only way they'll respond is a boycott, because numbers will drop, which angers the fat cats. Sending in strongly worded letters does fucking nothing.
This is the chance fo the community to show they DESERVE better, or really just got what they deserve.
If they would just approach the creators in the community like " hey, you have great ideas! Help us flesh this out and make an official resource with us. We give you access to a narrative advisor and help you out with advertisement, distribution and Art if need be for a 30% cut. Interested? " a lot of creators would gladly take that. But no, they rather go heavy-handed. Hasbro is the bane of D&D. Wizards should've never sold out to these parasites.
They were bought out publicly, not sold. They've also been owned by Hasbro for 20 years, so WotC and Hasbro probably aren't that different from each other.
It's also not like WotC had DnD for all that long before they were bought out either.
Also, to back up the other commenter, Hasbro buying Wizards actually saved them back in the day, as they came in and saved Magic the Gathering. Now, granted, they are ruining both of them currently, but they are the reason that Wizards was able to make it this far for them to ruin it.
@@superpetunia5044 that's right, the problem is not "HASBRO" the entity, as it is only a vessel of late stage capitalism. could another company do a better job? probably, but it would be a matter of time until it reached it's logical conclusion, the line must go up.
Look! They hired certain types of people and the type of people they hired see the customer as an enemy, and the community as an obstacle.
Wizards itself is a bane to D&D. They keep hiring entitled whiners who pander to communist rage posters on Twitter who don't play D&D or MTG.
Dang I can’t wait for everyone to start playing/creating “Caverns and Cryptids” games.
Pathfinder and Paizo Is in almost every literal sense the opposite of Wizards of the Coast. They offer almost everything they produce for free online, in community run Wiki sites.
Not only is Pathfinder not going to go to the same direction as wizards, their going to benefit immensely from the migration to their much more competently run and community friendly system.
I've been dying for my friends to join me in PF for years. And even before this, some of them finally started to. But now, there's going to be a huge wave of them.
And now they're leading the pack into an alternative ogl.
Thank you for covering this horror story my man. Probably one of the most important ones to cover to date 👍
Thanks dude. This is the most consequential horror story I've ever covered I think.
I really got into DnD at the end of its golden age huh?
@@Sgt-Wolf You can just move to another system whose golden age is about to begin. Not sure which one though.
@@Sgt-Wolf The indie scene is currently undergoing its own golden age so don’t be too concerned! Blades in the Dark, Dungeon Crawl Classics, MÖRKBÖRG, and even more recognizable titles like World of Darkness and Pathfinder are kicking off. Check any of them out and you’re bound to find a game you like :)
@@CrowePerch
I do like 5th edition but yeah it might be time to jump ship.
Worst case, Critical Roll could conceivably create their own system to continue the shows with. And the community would have something to rally around
That would be horrific, I'm gonna stick with FFGWH and Cyberpunk
I would continue watching it. There are plenty of other systems, games designers and DMs in the world.
That'd be insane, but I won't leave it off my bingo card
I would like to see them go with 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons published by TSR in the 1970s and early 1980s. They would be playing the game made by the creators of the game rather than those who are destroying it.
Creating a game system is generally a years long process and is very different from writing a campaign or making things to enhance an already existing system. Do they have these skills, possibly. Do they have the time and inclination for the hours of rules discussions, tinkering, playtesting, then tinkering some more as opposed to finding an alternative and playing that instead... I doubt. They actually started playing Pathfinder IIRC so I'd bet on them returning to that.... But if they tried Savage Worlds instead I'd not complain. :)
This will go from "our profits are low" to "our profits are nonexistent" RAPIDLY
"Delusional company wages war against its fans."
You just described at least half of all media and games companies in the US, especially Disney and Hasbro.
For me, the scariest part of this is that, instead of creating more content for a clearly voracious community, or engage with said community in more ways to determine how best to meet their needs, WotC has chosen to CUT DEVELOPMENT of more in-house products.
They aren’t cutting anything yet.
And with the money they earned off others would probably go back to making new stuff.
Honestly a lot of stuff they are pushing is pretty common practices despite how scummy it might look.
Why would they make more content when they can steal profit from the creativity from others.
@@edwardlomeli5657 Until they still make crap but kill off 3rd party content GW style
No the scariest thing is the fact they want to OWN anything you create under the license and the fact they would have the power to deny your license and then copy all of your work. They could literally use people as free labor and then cut them out and forbid the selling of their own ideas.
@@edwardlomeli5657 Why would they? Being leeches is so much easier than doing it yourself.
They call it undermonetized but if you look at it in another way, they are investing in 'goodwill' and 'community'. Something that will benefit you much more in the long term than monetizing everything to the bone. They'll suck out the soul of D&D and leave it a rotting husk eventually. But like the vultures they are, they will just move on to a new prey to scavange to the bone.
Goodwill is literally so important that it's taken into consideration for financial investments. It's given as much value as physical assets, and WotC is flushing it down the toilet
WotC: You need to pay more... and some more
DnD Enjoyer: I will rather just play Non-DND games with DND game mechanics
WotC: You can't do that!
DnD Enjoyer: Yes I can because you can't copyright game game mechanics so the only thing you actually have is the name and copyrighted monsters and stories and such
@@APerson-ws4cw I think they are thinking that this is the time to harvest the golden goose and make a tonne of money. While they aren't quite committed to killing it off quite yet, they are in the process of strangling the poor goose out of laying any further golden eggs.
A good policy would be to revert back to community building if their overal growth and more importantly popularity decreases but knowing the investors mindset, they'll just double down on monetizing and finishing off the goose because they don't have an actual concept of what community and goodwill means, they only see dollar signs. They aren't invested in the business intrinsically, they are invested in the business financially.
Nah bro you just have to make D&D a trend so everyone buys it. Because we all know that in the modern era of instant gratification and social media, that mainstream people will invest hours of their free time into group creative storytelling.
@@CrizzyEyes idk about that, a lot of people are walking up to this nonsense
Y'know, I was really into the ONE D&D changes that WotC was producing. I gave honest feedback on the playtesting materials, and I felt that it was truly the future of D&D. I loved the new content so much, in fact, that I never bothered keeping track of what was going on with the OGL. I thought that people were overreacting, and that it really wasn't going to be that bad.
You, however, have changed my mind.
Thank you for explaining this topic so thoroughly. I likely wouldn't have realized how bad this change was going to be until it was too late.
so you liked the change from race to "species"
@@flamingrubys11 Okay I didn't like *everything* about the new material.
@@flamingrubys11 I mean, it is a far more accurate word with fewer unsavoury connotations
The problem is even if it isn't worst case scenario most people will now not risk creating something new out of fear of either having to pay royalties/being sued for not paying. Essentially this could end up killing the things they actually need CREATIVITY and COMMUNITY. All because of avarice and envy.
The royalties is not what bothers me. it's the fact that they can take something I created without no issue at all and claim ownership and more or less tell me to ****** off.
Games workshop has some competition when it comes to terrible tabletop game company's public relations
Let’s go I’m part of two communities who’s company hates them!
@@batondude0818 Same here, high five!
Wassup, fellow nerds?!
For the emperor
It's not competition. GW nuked the fan content after they hired on a Hasbro executive
2023 is the year of people figuring out that there are other TTRPGs than D&D and I'm all for it.
Thank you WOTC for giving people a reason to explore systems that aren't made by greedy corporate overlords (yet.)
...just to find out that basically all other TTRPGs similar in nature to D&D are built on the OGL and are being targeted by this. Pathfinder, 13th age, etc.
You're not safe from this unless you jump genres or go to something unrecognizably different like GURPS. Even jumping genres may not save you, like with Mutants & Masterminds, the most prominent superhero RPG which also happens to be built on the OGL.
Oh and they're going after VTTs, too.
@@Zakon673do those systems use the EXACT same wording,settings,and specific names as D&D? I thought you couldnt copyright game mechanics,only how they're expressed(and stuff like beholders ofc)
If they dont,great. If they do,then they could maybe just,idk,reprint new books that use completely original wording? It's still money being taken out sure,but they're not forking it over to wotc/hasbro
@@EG-hy9mv Yeah, they include the OGL 1.0a in them, even if they're almost completely different from D&D like PF2e and M&M. The new OGL 1.1 as written is attempting to invalidate the original OGL, and anybody currently using it for their works will either have to win a lawsuit or migrate to OGL 1.1a, wherein they'll be subject to the new restrictions. The new OGL is almost specifically crafted to sabotage all of D&D's competition this way.
@@Zakon673 I think they're going to have a rough time in court going after different companies, honestly, them trying to sue other companies with big bad lawyers is probably gonna be what knocks their 'retroactive contract' out of the legal system. Because I highly doubt that will hold up in court.
Worse comes to worse, you get a bunch of big corporations wasting money on lawyers for some squabbling.
Rifts!!!
Fans: I love D&D and having tons of content for it!
WotC: And we took that personally.
I will admit I'm a bit worried about CR right now. Partially for whether or not they will be able to continue doing what they are, but also because due to a block on the subreddit, people may start demanding a statement from them or they could start seeing backlash for not speaking soon enough, when they may need time to think through the issue properly and or even just decide to wait for some official word from WOTC first. That kind of emotional dysregulation and reactivity does not often seem to have good results.
I am pretty sure they already saw the writing on the wall. That is why they renamed the gods in their campaign world and the current campaign has a god eater as a BBEG who might remove those gods altogether. Might be why the campaign has been so weird this go around, it is on rails to reach a specific narrative to help cut ties the last ties with the official DnD IP.
@@jtyranus I am so bloody behind on campaign 3, but really? You think? And I thought the renaming was just an in universe cultural difference of Marquet as opposed to, say, Tal'Dorei
I’ve also seen speculation that they’re all probably under strict NDAs due to CR and WOTC’s current/past relationship. I doubt they’d sign the new OGL(s) but until WOTC has an OGL to officially sign, I doubt they can speak publicly on the matter.
I mean, they’ve not been sponsored by D&D Beyond anything like they were for C2, and C3’s story does seem to be ramping up to remove the last of their non-original IP: the gods.
With the possible introduction of the ORC (Open RPG Creative License) and new, compatible, ORC/non-OGL gaming systems from Paizo and Kobold Press, WOTC’s seeming monopoly (not Hasbro’s Monopoly™️) over D&D is teetering on the cusp of collapse.
Roll for Combat have done a lot of live streams covering everything, but some snippets have been uploaded separately talking about this, if you’d like more specific information! I really hope the ORC pushes through, for everyone’s sake (except for the huge company trying to sap the community’s money away)
Can't believe that they might actually end up making Games Workshop's rampant greed look good in comparison. This is the sort of thing that might very well knock them all the way back to pre-3e levels of popularity or even further!
And the solution to this is sooo freakin' easy... Just contact and hire the fans that are making good third-party content and offer to turn it into first-party content! Just bring them in and get them to work with their employees to flesh out the material, then offer a cut of the book sales for their material and watch the cash roll in!
really? parasitic producers will hate it... reciprocity is good, greedy 3rd party leeches will howl about loss of profits.
the new OGL is very fair.
@@h.s.lafever3277 I think you come to the wrong video and comment section if you believe that lol
That's what I was thinking too it would be easier to employ the people making good stuff for their games if they feel "Undermonetizing DnD" but that would most definitely caught new problems like creative disagreements, overworking, underpaying and the biggest problem would probably be a lot of restrictions on what they would get to create
@@lycandoodle
i get it, you support IP theft and exploitation... is that out of greed and neo marxism common among undereducated kids these days, or do you lack the ability to create your own unique Ip /content?
No. GW is up there with goddamned ubisoft, ea and activision blizzard for the utter worst. I'm willing to bet abuse is common in GW. They're just really good at hiding it.
The community and the OGL existed long before 5th edition. This is a strike deep into the past.
Which, tbh, is probably part of what Wizards and Hasbro aren't grasping. D&D's cultural footprint is mostly due to it being an accessible cultural institution that exists parallel to and independent of whoever currently owns the rights to the trademarks, not because it's an intrinsically desirable product on a store shelf somewhere. The cultural institution aspect is fundamentally a bottom up construction by countless individuals unaffiliated with Wizards and has very little to do with anything Wizards is producing or contributing, but because dipshit executives are dipshits, they don't stop to think about that stuff, so they see D&D is really popular and have no ability to understand "D&D" except as brand that their company owns and can monetize. Then, instead of monetizing the brand in a reasonable or useful manner that results from understanding the different modes of D&D's existence, they simply try to burn down the cultural institution to get at the money they believe is inside.
I remember when they changed it for 4e and that's what made 4th edition so awful. They ended up changing it again for 5e.
Yep. There are dozens of non wizards based srd games on it. Open d6 is one.
Fate is on it but has an alternative license.
@@enixxe At this point I question how much authority WotC actually has anymore. It feels like everyone there is just a mouth piece for hasbro at this point.
@@HellyeahRook 5e seemed to be alright though, sure it sacrificed some of the intricacies but it worked enough to make dnd a main stream game.
And hasbro just wants to kill that.
CEOs say it's under monetized. I hear run for the hills.
Good time for competitors of DnD to shine.
You mean pathfinder the only read rival it has
@uNnHkP8mza isn't PF built on current OGL?
If you are into video games then this story is very familiar. Company offered a product, it got a dedicated community doing great things with it, then the company wants to squeeze money out of them and it kills the community they had built over years.
And then you have those rare companies like Re-Logic.
Bethesda anyone?
As opposed to using the fairly open licensing to find creative talent to partner with or recruit.
@@relkasi5925 Halo came to mind immediatelly.
Sounds like Binding of Isaac Rebirth (+the other expansions)
Now imagine these creators start their own thing together. Unintentionally creating a competitor. Like what's going on with comics right now.
So pathfinder again?
@@Postie1994 or even something else. Doesent need to be pathfinder. Record of loddoss war was based in something similar but it's was not really dnd
Open source ttrpg. I would love that. I can help with game design and as a developer, code anything needed for this to work.
@@Postie1994 No, something new. Similar but different enough to avoid a lawsuit. When these companies abandon fans and creators then they should face the consequences. People don't need these companies. The companies need the people. And they tend to forget this too often lately.
@@reavervolfeed5454 Their point was that Pathfinder was only created because players were upset and felt WotC wasn't listening to real feedback/critisim when the game went into 3.5e/4e. So these players created their own game, fixing the things they felt WotC neglected while maintaining the core of the system they enjoyed.
We will see a 5e clone emerge by disgruntled creators in much the same way, and it would be legal so long as they avoided direct copy/paste of instructions, trademark violations, artistic violations, and so forth.
(Davinci Editrice S.R.L. v ZiKo Games, LLC. April 27th, 2016: United States District Court, S.D. Texas, Houston Division.)
It must be noted that WotC can't unilaterally change or invalidate OGL 1.0a. They can say that any new content running on the 5.X SRD has to follow 1.1, but the prior OGL was specifically written to prevent that "unilateral change/invalidation" part they're attempting.
Paizo stated they technically felt they didn't need to sign PF2E off using the OGL, but decided it was easier to keep using it for third-party creators, so that's pretty much locked in and safe.
There's a funny mid-sentence splice still audible at 3:50. You can still hear the beginning of an M, presumably where an earlier draft singled out Magic the Gathering.
It's already not an insignificant hint that they would consider Paizo as exploiting D&D
Well, it's Sort of true. But, if D&D listen to the fans and Paizo team.Back when they were still part of D&D team.
Pathfinder would've never come into existence. And 4.0 may have been more of a success.
Pathfinder 1e is literally D&D 3.5 with the serial numbers filed off.
Im so happy Critcrab is talking about this! This needs to spread literally everywhere. WE SHALL NOT BE SILENCED. CRABS, RISE
and my claw
*Crab Rave intensifies*
You have my claw
*furious claw crackling noises*
plus he's explaining it all so clearly Im able to get a grip and not feel overwhelmed with who said what or this.
The price tags on the books keep me from buying them, and have me turn to the open seas for them instead. I'd love to buy a ton of D&D books, but I don't have a kidney to sell. If they slashed the prices, they'd sell books to people who currently aren't buying them.
You literally can play most competition with only one 40- 60 buck core book.
Yet DND demands 150 for the full 3 book set of rules.
The german corebook for Core of cuthulu even was only 25€. The players handbook equivalant (which is fully optional) is only 15€.
The sheer stupidity for a company with quite literally the ONLY socially accepted monopoly on an industry is absolutely baffling to anyone with a shred of common sense.
This whole situation is giving me big "Thanks for the cards, but we'll take it from here" energy. We don't need WOTC for D&D and they're going to learn that very quickly.
You don't need WotC for D&D. But you know what else? You also don't need D&D. There are hundreds of RPGs out there.
@@Arvaniz unfortunately, many of those RPGs were made thanks to OGL 1.0 and 1.0a
Fortunately, the fact game rules have been deemed public domain by default may mean the licence is redundant if you make your own d20 game
@@KyrieFortune So true!
I've been playing 3.5 and pathfinder for about 10 years. Professor Dungeon Master of Dungeoncraft here on youtube lays out a lot of really good ways you can do things on your own, and nice alternatives to rules people are familiar with
You really don't need WotC or their cringe content, they don't have any say over what happens at a table with me and my friends
Buy vintage Basic D&D, and Advanced D&D published by TSR before 1985 so that you are playing the game by people who created Dungeons & Dragons, not from the people that are destroying it.
I mean, one of your opening statements in this video is EXACTLY why WOTC is trying to tighten their grip on DnD and sums the whole thing up as you explained.
You only own 1 official WOTC product, the Player's Handbook, but you own tons of 3rd party content. A lot (I'd even say that the vast majority) of DnD players are probably in *exactly* as the same boat as you in terms on things they own for the game.
WOTC took one look at their fanbase and their spending habits and said "Man, we need a way to produce good content 50x faster than we do so *we* can be the ones getting all of that sweet 3rd party money instead." and rather than actually figure out a way to do that in-house, they said "What if we just steal - outright - from the community by claiming **everything** they ever make is irrevocably ours for all time to pack up and sell as a first-party product with no credit or royalties due, ever? Then we can make all of that sweet, sweet 3rd party money and don't have to invest a single cent into our in-house development team whatsoever! We can just steal somebody's idea and then sell it straight back to them! Then, if they go ahead and try to sell that idea themselves, we can siphon off a portion of their sales if it gets big enough to have any risk of competing with official sales!"
Genuinely disgusting attempt to undermine the license that the author wanted for the game and break down what made this so successful for all these years.
What slays me about this is the answer is so obvious: License these books out.
The only official content I've ever bought has been a couple modules and a starter set, purely for getting my friends into dnd. I think I'll try to pull them to pathfinder.
That is an excellent way to sum up their disgusting business plan. So, when do we break out our protesting equipment? I do not want to go through another 4th edition crash.
@@TheDapperDragon Looks like that's sort of what they're trying to do, if perhaps in a roundabout way.
Well, if their writing wasn't some of the most cliché and banal shit out there, maybe more people would buy modules and stuff. Our group discarded D&D from the get go, because the system is tied to that very same cliché/banal fantasy storyrelling. It's basically a bunch of regurgitated tropes stacked on top of each other with no internal logic. Rather than trying to decouple the system from its underlying "narrative", we just looked elsewhere.
Gary Gygax tried to copyright almost all creatures from ancient mythology and was practically laughed out of court.
"Oh no, our company isn't making as much money as it could be!"
"I know! Let's fuck our community!"
Welcome to the cycle:
-AD&D and 1e: impassioned artists make something amazing
-2e: impassioned artists have to capitulate and squeeze their own ip under the corporate whip while trying to make something they love
-3e/3.5: corporate owners buckle, artists freed under new management, great content resumes
-4e: corporate (this time Hasbro) steps in, artists try and make something fun but are hobbled by corporate demands, fans flock in droves to other systems
-5e: corporate backs off, excellent products resume, experience even bigger spike than 3.5 was
-OneD&D: here we go again.
Hasbro, please take a history class, you seem to be failing to learn from the past here...
I almost had an aneurysm from how many times you spelled corporate as cooperate
@@andrewmarshall3408 Woops! Sorry! Editing now!
They want to try and make Bronies & Pegasisters happen again out of Critters and Stranger Things fans.
Shame those crowds, & make them stop buying.
Make them realize Hollywood don't care about them.
this is that Microsoft woman trying to save her job.
@@SodaPopBarbecue Hasbro might also be considering trashing WotC anyway since they didn't go through them for the various RPG's using their own IP...
the worst part is where they say they have the right to REPRINT anything they want without paying you. That basically means if you make any money on anything they will just turn around and rip you off.
Not only reprint, but do anything they want with it, and if they decide to, you can't sell it anywhere else anymore either. Scum is what they are.
"We can't write anything good, so we'll just steal yours."
They definitely do not. A copyright holder can get you to cease and desist or even pay damages (which is usually impossible to prove) but they never own what you make even if they can prove copyright infringement in court. Most they can do is get you to destroy the work. And even that is very rare.
I totally agree. If Company will try to take the others' content as their own and use is to make money (even if it is based on their own brand), just sue them for the time and money spent in making the content when it was ALLOWED to freely make it and to profit from it.
When these rules were changed (or will be changed), the company should reimburse all content creators for their time and effort that was put into their content and into expanding the brand.
When multi-billion lawsuit will come up from every single Content Creator who made that game Great again, top leadership, after shitting their pants, will either back down with written legal document to never do it again and promise to never touch other Content Creators' work or will have to give company as payment to content creators.
Then company will be freely owned by Content Creators face-red-heart-shape and to continue creating stuff again as before :)
Truly, they just need to sue the company when they will change the rules and not in small individual lawsuit but in collective massive lawsuit.
Japanese Man 1 : YOU RUN D&D!
Japanese Man 2 : It looks like I run D&D, but due to international copyright laws - it's not.
Japanese Man 1 : STILL, WE SHOULD RUN LIKE IT IS D&D!
Japanese Man 2 : [looks to the camera] Though it isn't.
This is the reason why a store that I went stopped doing D&D. A huge campaigns future got destroyed because of this. 😠
Thank you for covering this! As a Magic the Geathering player I can only tell you all: Get ready for the worst. Hasbro has tried for the last 2 years or so to do the same to Magic, maximising profits no metter the cost and it has ben horrible for the game. Now the Macig players have come together and ate refusing to buy the shit they try to push on us so now they try to squeez the next game for as much mony as they can. The d&d community needs to stand together now and tell Hasbro "no! ". Don't trust a word they say, they have been lying so much before. And as the Magic and d&d communitys we need to stand together aswel! Hasbro is going to war with all there players no matter what game from them we play. They will not stop there greed unles we make them. I really hope this goes better for d&d then it did for Magic. Love to all of you aswome people :)
like a $1000 box of cards that arent legal for any tournaments because they are all just proxies.
Cubes 4 Lyfe
I doubt it has as big of a community as Magic and DnD, but Beyblade has went through the exact same thing. To put it simply, Takara Tomy ( the Japanese company that also makes Beyblade) is such high quality and worth the money, Hasbro's version? Absolute overpriced trash. It's horrible that Hasbro is trying to do the same thing to DnD, it's disgusting.
@@tylerhaberer9649 whoa, i havn't played magic in 10 years, are they really doing this? good ness
@@AcenMasterX A Commander playgroup that is cool with proxys also works well for me so far :)
"The community is only as hurt as we allow ourselves to be" That's a great statement and stance. Thanks!
I'm sorry but this doesn't hurt the 'community'. What hurts fhe community is the price ceiling for getting started and staying current but none of these 'creators' gave a crap about that. This OGL hurts people like Criticsl Role and I couldn't care less.
I was telling friends, that we can basically run 5E in perpetuity with a combination of the current content and homebrew content for years and years. D&D going back to being an underground game will be good for it is that is the result.
The whole situation is a massive dumpster fire, and so many of us in the 3pp space have spent the last couple weeks in full crisis mode.
Hopefully we'll hear something from WotC soon, but anything less than full retraction and a promise to keep the 1.0a OGL in place is not going to be enough. They've opened pandora's box and the trust can't be put back so easily.
just remember it is common to "Leak" stuff just to gauge how others react and then backpeddle one step after they already took two. For once i would like to see a community with a backbone that doesn't give in immediately. If anyone is gonna do it I want it to be this creative community that we all have so much pride in.
Funny how we don't notice when governments do it
@@readilium3432 governments do it, companies do it, even educated fleas do it. And people fall for it every damn time
This "method" needs to be punished harsher by communities.
@@readilium3432 we do. Thats what leftism is
@@jadegreenleaf781 It's called being rational. Being a leftist means nothing if you're still supporting malicious people.
History really does repeat itself. There are reasons TSR went under and got acquired by WOTC, and a large part was alienating the fanbase with restrictive licensing and lawsuits.
I thought the scary part was that they could publish anything created under the OGL1.1: The updated OGL says that “no matter what Tier You are in or how much money You believe Your product will make, You must register with Us any new Licensed Work You intend to offer for sale... including a description of the Licensed Work. We’ll also ask for Your contact information, information on where You intend to publish the Licensed Work, and its price, among other things.”
WotC also gets the right to use any content that licensees create, whether commercial or non-commercial. Although this is couched in language to protect Wizards’ products from infringing on creators’ copyright, the document states that for any content created under the updated OGL, regardless of whether or not it is owned by the creator, Wizards will have a “nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose.”
The price of a religion is the blood of it's members. Actually, I kinda see nothing wrong with their perspective. Face it- DnD is a cult, you wanna play, you gotta pay.
The funniest thing about this mess is how wotc says that pdf's have become the main outlet for rpg rules, yet wotc had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the age of pdf's.
“We GET IT! You want PDFs!! *FINE!!!* But ONLY if you give us MONEY. Lots of MONEY!”