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Wizards of the Coast, who own Dungeons and Dragons, have been in the news lately because their OGL 1.1 was leaked. The OGL was an open source-like license, originally from 2000, which allowed people to create D&D-related works and which was supposed to not be revocable, as confirmed by its drafters. WOTC is trying to revoke it by using a clause referring to "authorized" versions of the license and claiming to have de-authorized the earlier license. The new replacement license requires giving 25% of your revenue to WOTC, makes you send a copy of your content to WOTC which they can then publish for free, and they can revoke it at any time making all your products instantly unsalable.
After backlash from fans, WOTC officially released a 1.2 license instead, which has similar problems, but worded a bit more subtly.
The culture war element comes from this clause:
I hope the problems with this are obvious to everyone here. I absolutely don't want a world where people with the wrong political beliefs can be barred from producing game materials. But every objection I've seen to this clause by fans has been a twenty Stalins objection: WOTC has produced discriminatory material in the past and can't be trusted to do this properly. There have been calls to have WOTC outsource this to an independent tribunal. Just, take it out because even people with unpopular opinions should be able to put them in games? No, nobody believes that.
(Links are trivial to google, but it's hard to find a site that has everything correct all at the same time, and is up to date as well, and also engages in trustworthy journalism in general. This EFF post at least covers part of the initial controversy, though you'll have to follow links to see what's in the license.)
Again as with Twitter, I think WOTC have the absolute right to decide who uses their IP via license and contract agreements, if they want to stop everyone left wing, right wing or whatever then that is up to them (and their bottom line). Note you can put whatever opinions you want in games or have them, you just can't do so with their license and IP and that should be their choice to control (or not).
I think that people with whatever opinions should be able to make games, but I also think WOTC has the right to decide who can do that for their licenses specifically.
And then people have an absolute right to not buy/use their products or go to a competitor if they don't like their stance.
But then I haven't liked a DnD product since 3.5 so it's no skin off my nose to avoid buying their stuff, as I haven't for years. Pathfinder 1E is a good substitute for 3.5 and Pathfinder 2E is excellent in my opinion and splits off further from DnD mechanics at least somewhat. Though not sure that helps you from a non-woke direction as I think Paizo are perceived as more woke than WOTC.
IP itself is a government creation. So the question is not "does WOTC have a right", the question is "are we happy with the government giving them this right". I'm not happy with it.
I suppose my question is why? Part of a companies brand and therefore value can be the moral values it upholds (or is seen to uphold at least). A trad right wing RPG company should be able to pick and choose who it licenses to and not license to communists or whatever. Thats a business decision. People who don't like it can suck it up and use it anyway. Or go elsewhere.
A company should be able to be openly political if it likes. If Elon owned Twitter wants to ban everyone to the left of Kevin Sorbo he should be allowed to. It's his platform now. We can then respond by not using it. It isn't necessary, it's not a requirement to live or take part in society. Even less so with WOTC.
I don't pick the companies I use due to their values but many people do and companies should be allowed to take advantage of those preferences if they like. If they think one of their license holders being outed as a rapist or a liberal or jaywalker is bad for PR then they should be allowed to write their license for the future to include severability. And then customers can either like that, not like it or not care and act accordingly. Forcing companies to be viewpoint neutral is a disservice to them and to the engine of capitalism. It's ok for them to be biased and have a political lean if they want. It's also ok for them not to be. More choice, more freedom, more dynamism.
Social media site for centrists only? Go for it. High heel shoes only for right wingers? Rock on. Rugby boots for anarcho-syndicalists? Kick away. You'll probably fail horribly but you should be allowed to try. If you want to try and spread your values and earn money that should be allowed. It gives people more opportunities for work where it is for something other than just a pay cheque, which is i think one of the most soul destroying things we do. Woke capitalism is the model of the future. Many people it turns out like to work for a company that (they believe) is also doing good.
Exceptions for utilities, phone, internet access and the like as they are requirements on the modern world. But it should be a light touch beyond that.
I'm not suggesting they be arrested for not wanting right-wingers to use D&D. I'm just pointing out that IP isn't naturally property; it's not a right which the government merely recognizes like the right to actual property or to your body. IP is a government-granted monopoly and the government shouldn't be granting monopolies that are against the interests of the populace in general.
They shouldn't be allowed to have a license for that at all. It's IP, it isn't something that they naturally own such that it can only be used by others if they license it out. It's not a car, or an apartment. It's a deal where we say "we pretend you own it and we'll shoot people who don't agree, as long as you use it for everyone's benefit".
I don't think the "use it for everyone's benefit" is part of the deal. It more like "so you can monetize it therefore incentivizing people to come up with new ideas in the future, which can also be monetized and thus taxed"
There is absolutely no requirement for everyone to benefit because that would mean giving your IP away. The restrictions specifically mean NOT everyone will benefit, thats the point. Only certain people will. I'm not benefitting from Brandon Sanderson owning his product, he is. Which makes sense as he spent time and effort making it up. I can enter into a transaction to enjoy his product by buying his books. But i would benefit more by getting them free. But he wouldn't.
There is a meta view that encouraging people to create by allowing them ownership so they can make money off it, then benefits society over all. But that doesn't mean every single person or group has to get that benefit for every single IP. Just that IP laws protect the trad right RPG maker as they do the communist left RPG maker. The key factor is that they then retain the right to decide what to do with their work. They can sell it on, destroy it, refuse to license it for any reason.
There are writers who refuse to license their works to be made into movies because they think the message will be destroyed or their vision perverted. But more people will benefit from their work when it is more widely spread so accepting your logic, they should not be able to refuse? Alan Moore must license his works so that more people can benefit? That would seem to be the end point of your argument.
If Alan Moore held 80% of the market, such that making a derivative of anyone else's work than Moore's was difficult merely because of the size of the market, it would be fair to not let him use copyright to keep people from making derivatives. Think of something like public accommodation laws, except that there's no issue of "the government telling me what to do with my property" because copyrights are not actually property.
I can't imagine how such a thing would even come up for Alan Moore. It would be impossible for one person to produce enough literature such that creating literature that didn't use it was orders of magnitude less practical than using it. Even Watchmen or Harry Potter aren't 80% of the literature market. D&D's position in the gaming market doesn't compare to anything else that's copyrighted except software, and I'd certainly object if Microsoft said "anyone can link to Windows libraries, except Trump supporters".
DnD makes up about 53% to 55% of the market as near as i can tell. So it isn't anywhere near a monoply though. And even if it were 80% there are plenty of alternatives, so it would quickly lose market share. As indeed seems to be happening right now.
There are feedback mechanisms to punish companies who overreach without government intervention. And if their consumer base like the overreach, then it was not overreach but a savvy business move.
I am more sympathetic to your Microsoft example. So its not that i think the base idea is without merit. Monopolies that lock people out of using most computers (vital for the modern world) seem something worth tackling.
But DnD is just a game. They don't have to be politically inclusive if they don't want to be. Even if Fox news had 80% share i still think they should be allowed to be as partisan as they want. After all that is part of how they would have got to 80% market share so hobbling their strategy doesn't seem warranted. Its ok for entertainment and "news" and so on to be partisan. People are partisan and in general companies should be able to appeal to that as much or as little as they want to.
And its not as though a conservative can't hold their nose and play DnD anyway. WOTC can't tell, the only thing they are targetting are people they license. Its more like Fox News saying they can fire a host who comes out as a communiat or gets into a scandal. Thats the default position I think.
Googling figures, if you add Pathfinder, Starfinder, and D&D 3.5 you get somewhat over 60%. Which is less than I expected, but big enough that keeping someone from using it is not like saying they can't use something by Alan Moore.
... if most of the market were occupied by Fox News and this automatically made you lose out on 60% of the jobs. And even that's a bad comparison because Fox News hiring someone means that Fox is spending money that they actually own, not things that we've created a fake ownership structure around.
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I have a problem with an open source style license ever being changed in a way that restricts use of material that had been open source. If you develop something newer and better that's fine, but you shouldn't be able to ever make an existing open source license more restrictive.
I agree with that. If they want to add a caveat or two going forward, i think that is their right (albeit probably stupid given the reaction.) But only for material licensed after that change.
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I am fundamentally against companies upholding moral values. I think it's a societal declaration of bankruptcy and corrosive to democracy, and I think it should be outlawed. I want my companies to be amoral profit-maximizers. This idea we have that we can tame companies when we already have a nice, central mechanism for arbitrating moral questions (elections, rule of law) just ends up recreating democracy but worse in every way: less equal, less regulated, less principled, less consistent, more corrupt, more vulnerable to extremism, and so on.
Companies are just people, and people have moral values. There's no getting around that point.
This is also why I don't take the defense that they're just pandering seriously. No, they are staffed by true believers, and those true believers have shifted the balance of power into their favor.
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There is no such thing as amoral profit maximizers involving people. Your idea means both Chik Fil A and the mom and pop restaurant who donate food to the needy are ruled out. You're ruling out Fox news, Red State, MSNBC, Twitter, any company that chooses to use American labor for patriotic reasons. Any company that donates to charity.
Choosing profit and nothing else is already a moral stance after all.
I'll take that trade. Companies should preferentially use American labor due to a law passed by Congress (or a state legislature or a local ordnance), if at all.
So when (which ever side is not yours) is in power and does the opposite of what you like, affecting every company in the nation, that is better than companies making their own choices and rising or falling based upon them?
When the neo-liberal wing is ascendant they force companies to out source, when the woke wing is ascendant they force companies to support Planned Parenthood or Trans rights? Evangelicals force companies to put up crosses? Once the government gets to decide what moral stances are acceotable for companies in general that can be used by every government.
I think it would likely be unconstitutional in any event but it seems like a very bad idea.
Companies are democratic in that they only survive if consumers use their products or services, we can easily choose not to, and if enough people agree either their stances change or they go out of business.
I believe in the ability of government to deadlock itself on contentious issues. That aside, this is how things used to work - labor regulation, health and safety, disabled access etc. That's the sort of world I want to go back to.
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The main issue is that WotC has almost certainly been piggybacking off the efforts of independent creators popularizing DnD and making it, lack of a better term, 'hip' and accessible for audiences who otherwise wouldn't consider tabletop role playing games at all. All this while there was minimal (to my knowledge) marketing by WotC itself.
Many of these creators probably wouldn't have bothered making DnD content if they had to agree to the 25% 'tax' up front (yes, it only kicks in after a certain amount of revenue, but you still have to do the accounting). They'd either have gone with a different game that didn't require that, or just not produced it at all.
I, personally, find it unreasonable to just unilaterally switch up the agreement, which was explicit in this case, on the people who have put in the actual effort to popularize your game, and who have accumulated a LOT more goodwill (whatever that's worth) than the company has.
It's not even clear what everyone is getting in exchange for paying this money forward. Will it be used to increase the quality of the product? Will they put some of that back into marketing? Or is it literally just establishing an additional revenue stream in the face of a tightening economy?
You sell people the books, they play the game with their friends, using their imagination to 'render' the world and characters, they add homebrew rules, they make up their stories using the basic materials you provided, they make content related to their game and publish it for other interested parties, and none of this really inflicts any additional costs on WotC.
This transaction really should not require WotC to do anything other than put out new materials semi-periodically.
Note I have no issues with WotC enforcing copyright on their books or characters, or restricting creators from using the brand name in their content, I'm just amazed at the lengths they're going to throw out the previous license in a clear money grab and burn through so much goodwill when there are ample competitors around who will gladly snatch their marketshare.
Absolutely, just because I think WOTC should be able to do x, doesn't mean I think they are right to do so. I don't think they should be able to retrospectively change contracts/licenses. That's a separate issue for which I will not defend them. My only point is that it isn't in and of itself bad for a company to be able to enforce standards on who gets to use or license their stuff, given it will have impacts on them. If a Trad Right Winger wants to create a game company and decide that they don't want to license it to someone who campaigns for abortion to be legal that should entirely be their decision.
Like I said I left WOTC behind a long time ago so I am not specifically defending them.
Right, not accusing you of taking their side. My point is mostly that they really shouldn't be able to accept all the lovely benefits that came with having an extremely open license, then turn around YEARS after implementing said license and try to impose heavy restrictions because they're suddenly worried about possible costs of said license might hit them as well, to the detriment of the very people who produced those benefits.
To me it strikes me less as them really needing to 'enforce standards' and more about them needing some excuse, any excuse to start charging money to those who have struck it rich off DnD content.
It might have been somewhat more acceptable if they had clearly articulated how this money was going to benefit the product or the players or anything. But that would mean they might be called on that later.
In short, they're seeking to heavily bind their creators hands even after those hands have made the product more popular, whilst leaving their own hands free to collect money, change the terms of the agreement further, change the product itself in the future, and, apparently, to tell creators to screw off if they cross some arbitrary lines.
It's asymetrical in the extreme.
You're right, but I have the suspicion that an abortion campaigner will self-select against buying from a Trad right-winger anyway so that's likely a moot point.
Oh yeah the standards change is just the side show. The important point from their point of view is the monetization change. I suspect the standards change is just so they can cut loose anyone they think is a PR problem once they have a financial link to them through the monetization program where they don't have the plausible deniability they had before.
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I agree with you in principle, but I think one of the issues here is that the FAQ for the original OGL website heavily implied, and several higher ups working for WotC at the time of its original release outright stated that the original OGL is an irrevocable license. Many of the companies that have relied on the OGL for 23 years (some of which consisting of employees who were working for WotC at the time), believe that WotC cannot legally revoke the OGL 1.0a, but few of them have the money to actually fight a protracted court battle and prove it.
The other issue is that many creators used the OGL as an open license, even when they were making their own material and just wanted it to be available for 3rd Party Publishers to use. Several games that have nothing to do with D&D will be affected by this, including the OpenD6 gaming line (descended from Star Wars D6 and Ghostbusters RPG), which unfortunately had its original creators go bankrupt, and which might not exist in a form where they could easily relicense their product to keep the OpenD6 community able to remix and share their creations as intended.
It also greatly complicates the position of OSR products, inspired by old school version of D&D. Granted, there are already a few OSR games that are compatible with old school D&D, and which are under Creative Commons licenses, like Knave, and Basic Fantasy Roleplaying has been frantically scrubbing all OGL material from their books, and will be re-releasing a 4th edition under a Creative Commons license, so while there will be a hiccup, it does seem like the OSR space will be able to weather this change. Still, it's a pain in the neck to have good portions of the D&D-based gaming space scrambling to change their products just to avoid a lawsuit.
US copyright law is clear that game mechanics can't be copyrighted, but the exact limits of where "game mechanics" end and "creative expression" begin has never been tested in the RPG space. The OGL was the magic feather that made large portions of the publishing space work, especially after how litigious TSR had been when it was the owner of D&D. In terms of the overall health for D&D-like fantasy role-playing, WotC may or may not be able to actually de-authorize the OGL 1.0a (time will tell), but if they are successful it will be a huge blow for the creativity within that publishing space, and a huge change in the status quo for major parts of the industry.
Unfortunately, Pathfinder 1e uses the OGL 1.0a, which is being de-authorized by WotC, and so its continued legality will be up in the air. WotC has claimed that they won't go after previously published products, but considering the whole current OGL controversy is them doing something they promised they wouldn't do 23 years ago, it's hard to see what's stopping them from sending cease and desist letters to every Pathfinder 1e SRD site, every OSR company that uses the OGL, etc., and blowing up a good portion of the RPG space if they want to.
Pathfinder 2e is supposedly safe, and will be re-licensed under the ORC license soon so that 3rd party publishers can publish adventures for it.
Oh sure, don't get me wrong I am not defending WOTC's overall actions. Especially that nonsense. Just defending the idea in general that a company should be entitled to decide who gets to use their IP and so on. I think they have had enough bad publicity that Pathfinder 1E is pretty safe.
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