OGL part II: How is this actually affecting people?
Okay, it’s been a really intense couple of days. I have got a lot of weird anon hate over this, and I’ve seen people get super worked up with me. I’ve also seen people spread lies and weird takes, trying to say this is not concerning, so let me add some information on why is the OGL very worrying, based on corrections people have made and to clarify against some posts I’ve been seeing circling around.
Let me preface this: I am one of the many people that could get potentially affected by the OGL, as a creator aiming to work in the TTRPG industry. I have been able to get a bit of money from giving people usage rights over some images (and I haven’t officially started freelancing), all of which came from third parties that are at bigger risk of this OGL. I have been planning to get into battlemap making, specially aimed at FoundryVTT. So, let’s get to it:
To start with, I’ve seen people say this whole thing is a “dnd hate agenda” and some other takes that borderline conspiracy theories. I can’t stress this enough: DnD is one of my two main hobbies. It’s what has inspired most of my art. Go to my sygdomthings tag if you’d like, I have spent so many hours at this hobby. However, I can enjoy media and be aware of the problems from the company behind it, and it’s very important to talk about these.
I’ve seen claims that you “can’t really say anything because the leak may not be real”. There has been confirmation from big companies, like Kickstarter, that the leak itself is real. The OGL has already been sent to several big names, including Griffon’s Saddlebag (a fantastic source of homebrew content), which have confirmed this is not a draft, and that they have been sent contracts to sign already (they have refused.
So, about VTTs (Virtual TableTops, like roll20, Foundry, etc)
VTTs are probably getting hit. The new OGL would give WOTC the right to retire anything-dnd from VTTs, including roll20 and FoundryVTT. WOTC and Foundry have never got to reach a license (as of now), and they are not willing to work with them, because their goal is to release their own VTT in DnDBeyond. And I can’t stress this enough: WOTC having the only VTT with access to DnD would be very, VERY bad (and this OGL would allow them to do so!)
It’s bad for a plethora of reasons. It means they can charge anything they want for the VTT. Which will be a subscription service, according to their CEO, who has said the hobby is “undermonetized” and they want to put more “recurrent spending” (aka subscriptions and microtransactions)
They may put basic stuff behind paywalls. Roll20 has a subscription to have light sources and extra storage. They can put these behind a subscription, as they may put any sort of quality of life tool, and literally anything else they want. If they have the only VTT with DnD, they can do anything. Monopolies are bad for the consumer.
They may also let you have temporal access to sourcebooks in exchange for a subscription, which leads to this horrible idea of you not actually owning what you pay for. You stop paying? You don’t have access to it.
Think about how DnD refuses to have PDFs, and instead forces you to be on DnDBeyond to access that content online. Think about how that could be a subscription service instead. I don’t know how likely it is to happen, but if they have the monopoly, they can do that.
They can fill their VTT with micro-transactions. They can make you pay extra to have a more comfortable sheet to fill. They can shove skins in it. They can shove exclusive “minis” (3d models) you’ll need to pay for if you want to use.
They want to use UNREAL ENGINE 5 and it’s not going to be based on 2d battlemaps you can easily make, buy or download for free. Which means you may need to pay to make a custom mini of your character there, because you may be unable to import a lovely commission you got. You may need to pay for a battlemap.
(This also hurts people who do minis, like Heroforge, people who do battlemaps, people who do commissions, etc!)
Also Unreal Engine 5 is a very heavy tool that may not be accessible for many lower-end computers. If they have the only VTT that gives support to DnD, and it’s one that consume heavy resources, anyone with a bad computer won’t be playing DnD in a VTT. Simple as that.
No word of what will happen with people who have DnD campaigns in other VTTs that may get their access to DnD revoked. I DM a +90 sessions campaign, I play a +50 sessions campaign. We could potentially lose support for it before they finish. We can’t realistically input all of 5e’s content by ourselves now. Think about your campaigns, too.
Again: Monopolies are bad and don’t benefit the consumer. Speak against this.
The 25% tax cut is MASSIVE. It’s not applied over net benefits, it’s applied over gross income. A company making $1,500,000 would have to pay 25% of the 750,000 bit, which is $187,500. The usual benefit margin for TTRPG companies is of 12%, which would be $180,000 in this case. Which means that a company making that income would be LOSING MONEY because WOTC’s cut outweights their benefit. The higher the income, the bigger the loss is.
I know 1,5millions sounds like a lot, but these companies are paying a lot of people, and the actual benefit margin (as mentioned) is quite small. These millions mostly go towards keeping workers… Fed. Making a living.
Which also brings me to this: Third party companies have a lot of people working for them. A lot of them are freelancers. If you are starting in the TTRPG industry, you will probably start on a third party company or in a small TTRPG (a lot of which are also based in the OGL). This is hitting the very same small creators you love to see when you search for “dnd art”, because commissions rarely pay for a full income, and a lot of artists do TTRPG industry work on top of them.
Btw, I saw someone say they “don’t make anything out of DM’s Guild”. Plain untrue, they take 50% of every sale there!
On registering work using the OGL: (Source: https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-open-gaming-license-1849950634 )
Anything you make, regardless of your income, has now to be registered. Which means they can just tell you “no” if they don’t agree for whatever reason. Do they think you are a dangerous “competitor”? You can get stopped before you start. Or when you’re mid-project, too. They don’t agree with it on a moral level? You can also get kicked.
(They have mentioned they won’t be allowing bigoted content under the OGL, which is nice in theory, but given how WOTC released the Racist Monkey Race in fucking 2022, I don’t know how much to trust this actually. Also as a Roma-descended person, I’m still waiting for an actual overhaul of the Vistani in Strahd, but oh well.)
They have censored people over extremely arbitrary things, like a DM’s guild module named “Eat the Rich”, which WOTC deemed too offensive for containing the word “anti-capitalist”. The idea behind this module is adventurers facing mega-corporations. Y’know, standard cyberpunk setting. But WOTC, being as they are, found that to be too much.
This is bad. This is really bad. Some people say this is “usual IP standard protection”, but now if you are registered under the OGL (and you’ll need to be), WOTC can just word-per-word copy whatever you make and sell it as their own. THIS IS BAD. I don’t want people to be like “but they probably won’t”, the important thing is that they can, and this gives them free reign to take whatever competitors make. Which, again, is giving them a monopoly.
And this is also VERY, very bad. They can change any terms, which means anything you make under this new OGL is subject to their whims, and 30 days notice is a very small one, given most TTRPG projects can take years to come to fulfilment. Creators are scared of this, of course, because WOTC can change the terms at any point and destroy your project. Don’t like the 25% cut? They can change it to 50% instead. The old OGL was supposedly irrevocable, as confirmed by the writer, but this new one can change at any point.
It’s still unclear if they will be able to get away with revoking the old license.
This is a more confusing area and I can’t give good advice. Some say they may be exempt from this because it’s “transformative” work, but any sort of homebrew content a podcast may release, is now also subject to this.
I think the bigger podcast (CR) is probably not going to suffer from this, because they’ll get a special license with WOTC. CR is WOTC’s biggest advertising tool atm, and CR benefits from DnD’s widespread popularity. I doubt they’ll speak against this new OGL. I find it weird people want them to speak about this. CR is very, very closely tied with WOTC at this point.
I REALLY don’t know what may happen with D20. Their content being behind a paywall may make this much different, since d20 isn’t as much of an effective advertising tool as CR is.
Smaller streamers are the ones getting hit the hardest. There are many of them who are getting ready to move systems or create their own. These streams often also employ artists and creators, so jobs are getting lost here, if this goes live.
I don’t know where this misconception came from, but no, the grand majority of streamers don’t have an agreement with WOTC at the moment.
Why “playing Pathfinder” is not a bad idea in this mess?
One of the wildest points I’ve seen in the post trying to dismiss the new OGL’s danger is that “people who tell you to try Pathfinder (or other systems) don’t actually want the best for you”. I am recommending people to try other systems because playing DnD (specially online), if the OGL goes live, may become very expensive.
Pathfinder 2e is actually probably going to be safe about this, according to Paizo itself. I am not recommending you to jump into a sinking ship. Pathfinder 1e (which is not really active anymore) and Starfinder (this one is) are affected under this new OGL, but PF2 is an actual safe bet, even if it’ll give them a headache to update stuff.
I used to not be as eager as PF2 as I am nowadays. In fact, I antagonized my DM a bit over it, because I was comfortable with DnD. I’ve been realizing I’m wrong myself. So, please, trust me as someone who used to favour DnD very heavily.
Why you should not go silent about this?
Remember the whole “monopoly is bad for the consumer”? You need to speak against this because WOTC will get even more of a monopoly on TTRPGs after this. Which means they can get away with over-pricing their products, offering bad content, whatever.
WOTC does not have the need to do this. The company has been massively profitable, with record sales in the last years. They somehow still think it’s “under-monetized”.
This comes from Hasbro, the parent company, which hasn’t been doing as well and wants to turn both DnD and Magic The Gathering into their cash cows.
As the consumer, you are going to get hit if WOTC has more of a monopoly than it already has. You need to care. You need to worry.
Also, a multi-millionaire company like WOTC does really not need people to “white-knight” for them, specially when these moves are only for their OWN benefit.
honestly I didn’t expect people who would go as far as “it’s capitalism baybee just cope”. You can and should call out businesses on bad practises. You don’t make excuses for Amazon just because “it’s a business, y’know”, right?
This move will put a lot of people out of their jobs. Most third party creators don’t have the lawyers to push against this. Artists you’ve loved all these years are going to lose steady sources of income. Homebrew content you have been using are going to get heavily hurt. I don’t know how to tell people that you need to care for others.
Since the other post I’ve seen circulating about this seems to be really aiming at my old one, I hope this serves as clarification. It has a good bunch of sources, it’s more thoroughly informed, and more accurate than my first one. Please be aware that information has been coming up with every passing day, and a lot of what I’ve quoted or mentioned here are recent finds.
So, again: Boycott WOTC over this. Cancel your DnD Beyond subscription. Don’t buy their books. Don’t buy their products. Don’t watch the new movie. This is coming from a creator who is directly hurt by this OGL, and I am one of many. I know some of you follow Lauren Walsh, who has also expressed concerns over this OGL (and they have worked for WOTC, CR and third parties). If you don’t want to take my word on this, at least take it from them.
As always, all reblogs are appreciated. English is my third language, so I’m sorry for any grammar mistake!
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