So what DOES 1.1 allow?

[Cadence]

So it is a fair deal… it’s just not as beneficial for 3rd parties as they would like.

A fair deal for 3PPs making future things for 5.5?
Or a fair deal including 3PPs never making any future developments of the thigns they spent decades developing based on 3.5 and 5?

(ninja'd by @Ruin Explorer )

 

[OB1]

“If you do Well”? That’s the understatement of the year. The threshold is $750,000 dollars a year (not even aggregate - every year). Surely that means the majority of medium producers would be untouched financially and only the largest would be affected by questions of profitability. Surely even EN World only falls into this camp when there is a huge kickstart like Level Up.

Secondly my understanding of the right to use creators work is not to intentionally steal it but because Joe Bloggs in his basement sells 15 copies of something on Drive Thru RPG that happens to resemble something WOC put out 5 years later and then sues WOC. It costs WOC $10k to defend that suit from a nobody and there are thousands of people like this that they couldn’t dream of keeping an eye on. Even if it’s spurious and add a couple of those together it’s just not worth it.

Lastly the need to be able to revoke the rights to publish is necessary to prevent some idjits publishing Anschluss 5e. They can’t be getting into a debate over free speech if this happens.

Wizards are allowing people to use their own work for profit (up to a point). I would be amazed if this license would have been rejected with such antipathy if it had been offered up in the nineties!

Your last sentence is such a good point. It's the change from what was that is hard. But I think a few things are true at the same time.

1. Hasbro has legitimate reasons for needing to make the changes that they are to protect their business and livelihoods. They have and are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to provide and improve a product consumed by millions of people.

2. 3PPs who have relied on 1.0 have legitimate reasons to be concerned with how these changes will affect their business and livelihoods. They have invested money, time and effort to create products under the assumption that they would be able to continue to sell those products.

My hope is that the negotiations between Hasbro and the 3PPs are in good faith to ensure the mutual benefit for all parties. With hindsight, a change like this was likely inevitable given the explosion of the hobby over the last 8 years.

I would personally love to see the 1.0 OGL remain in place for existing SRDs, and having 1.1 only come into effect on new ones, but can also understand why that would be very hard for Hasbro to accept moving forward, as it would be a massive risk for their investment. The courts could decided that 1.0 remains in effect for older SRDs, and if that happens, Hasbro will have to deal with it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A fair deal for 3PPs making future things for 5.5?
Or a fair deal including 3PPs never making any future developments of the thigns they spent decades developing based on 3.5 and 5?

(ninja'd by @Ruin Explorer )

Not entirely ninja'd, that's a huge point - they're saying "Oh and you have to shut down anything based on older SRDs". Which is virtually everything. You can essentially only make stuff for or based on 5E.

Your last sentence is such a good point.

It would be a good point if it was the '90s.

In 2023, 30 years later. Not so much.

My hope is that the negotiations between Hasbro and the 3PPs are in good faith to ensure the mutual benefit for all parties.

The document is not a good faith document.

This is very clear for example in this sentence:

"Licensed Work includes Licensed Content (what used to be called “Open Game Content”). If the only way a reader can distinguish what You created from what We did is to check Your Licensed Work against the SRD, You are not in compliance with this provision."

That's not arguably true, and it's something WotC added in to "guide" people, but it doesn't match up with the legalese, and WotC knows perfectly well that it's a lie. You don't put stuff like that in a final document that's in good faith.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I'll let Jim Carrey field this one for me. "Hey Jim, what does the new OGL let you do? If you could use a movie quote to illustrate your point, that'd be great."


"Thanks, Jim"

 

[TheSword]

No lol.

It is not a "fair deal".

That's not supported by logic, facts, rationality, or linear time.

That's your problem here. You're neither Doctor Who nor Inspector Spacetime. You have not in fact, travelled back to the 1990s to provide this wonderful licence to the unenlightened, Nirvana-listening, plaid-wearing denizens of that time.

Is is the year 2023 AD and there is only war an existing licencing agreement, which for 20+ years, has purported to be impossible to retract. It kind of looks, as we analyze this further, that actually maybe the OGL 1.0a really isn't possible to deauthorize, and WotC really just wishes it was. That maybe, if push comes to shove, Tenkar was right that it was opt-in. But the WotC comments in the agreement suggest otherwise, very clearly. So either it's opt-in and they're pretending otherwise, or we'll see them in court, I guess.

I mean, put it like this, if you got a first-gen Tesla Roadster (2008) and took it back to say, 1995, it would be amazing piece of technology, people would be delighted, amazed, fawning over you. But if you declared in 2023, that you were going to do an Over-the-Air update to all Teslas made since, bricking them, and in return, you'd be offering Tesla Roadsters (2008 model) to everyone as replacements, people would be outstandingly mad.

What your problem here really is, is linear time though. I'm sorry buddy but until the Tardis is working, we have to live in the present. What's a good deal in 2023 is different to what was a good deal in 1995. You know this.

A fair deal - a benefit for an equitable reward - is a fair deal. The fact that you had a cushty deal before doesn’t make the new one unfair. It just makes it worse for you… which of course doesn’t mean it’s unfair.

It’s the change that hurts.

 

[Reynard]

A fair deal - a benefit for an equitable reward - is a fair deal. The fact that you had a cushty deal before doesn’t make the new one unfair. It just makes it worse for you… which of course doesn’t mean it’s unfair.

It’s the change that hurts.

"We can change the terms at any time" is not a fair deal.

 

[Incenjucar]

A "fair deal" that can turn wild success into abject failure and can be altered every 30 days to be even worse is not a "fair deal".

There are ways for WotC to be greedy without being harmful, but they have chosen to be harmful and to provide themselves with additional capacity for harm.

 

[Greg Benage]

"We can change the terms at any time" is not a fair deal.

That’s the thing: If everything else about it was great, you couldn’t put significant investment at stake under this term.

 

[Incenjucar]

You could, in theory, just make 3P stuff very, very expensive by default to cover the 750+K tax, if you knew for a fact that it wouldn't change. You'd struggle to sell as much, and the players would be impacted pretty heavily, but you'd at least be able to plan around it.

Edit: Heck, even if they could only change it annually, that would be something you could plan your year around.

 

[Mecheon]

A fair deal - a benefit for an equitable reward - is a fair deal. The fact that you had a cushty deal before doesn’t make the new one unfair. It just makes it worse for you… which of course doesn’t mean it’s unfair.

It’s the change that hurts.

"We can steal your content at any time and release it under our banner for our money alone, with absolutely no benefit to you (And can cut you completely out of publishing full stop with a 30 day notice). Oh, and if we're sued for using it (say, for mis-doing it), you cop all the legal fees, not us" is not, in any way, sense or term, remotely fair.