The WotC OGL Release on DDB today was edited in real time!

[Ruin Explorer]

Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky, too.

Very different situations there, though, and Cyberpunk finally reached the DAY ONE sales expectations a couple of months ago, almost exactly 2 years after release. It sold 13m on day one (or week one, I forget), which was so far below expectations that that CDPR got sued over it and settled (for $1.85m). If it had been as good as it is now, even, day one, and somehow not been a trashfire on PS4/Xbox One (impossible? It should never have been released on them), it'd probably have sold those 20m day one and be closing on 30m or more by now.

NMS, on the other hand, sold INCREDIBLE NUMBERS of copies on day one, far more than the devs had been anticipating a few months before, and made giant wodges of cash for a tiny development team, and no-one knew how absolutely miles short of it's promised goals it was. What kept it selling was that instead of taking the money and running, the team kept developing the game, and have never stopped. IMHO it's a godawful game, just terrible but apparently people disagree! (Oh god so boring. How can you make space exploration that tedious and grindy? Criminal!)

I think it's dangerous to compare videogame sales to TTRPGs because all evidence is they have very different sales patterns, either way.

The difference is that BF2 was a fundamentally good game with an exploitative monetization scheme, whereas 2042 was just a bad game.

Maybe, but still, a lot more games have remained relatively unsuccessful despite being "fixed", than have come back like a phoenix or whatever.

 

[The Stray]

Do they need to now, with the Paizo license in the works?

Yes.

 

[Yaarel]

The polishing of the text demonstrates how carefully Hasbro-WotC are crafting their wording.

What they say, what they omit, and how they weasel-word the terms to be ambiguous, is intentional.

 

[FormerLurker]

Yes.

Why? What difference would it make when people can use the Paizo license? (And likely will just in case. No one is going to trust WotC)
It would just be performative.
It's not like anyone is making new 3.5e content.

 

[Yaarel]

Nearly everything I write -- including most of my ENWorld posts -- gets edited after publication.

If Twitter would let me edit them, I'd go back through 14 years of tweets to fix those, too.

Heh and I hate the race against the time stamp that appears at the bottom right of the post.

At least give me 10 minutes to rethink a statement!

 

[Voadam]

Do you really think for a SECOND that had the blog instead said something to the effect of "we've heard the community and are doubling down on the protection for the OGL with the 1.0b, which is the same as the 1.0a but adds a clause making it extra double irrevocable!" that any of the people mad at WotC would calm down and forgive them?

It is what I have been explicitly wanting as an ideal.

Why? What difference would it make when people can use the Paizo license? (And likely will just in case. No one is going to trust WotC)
It would just be performative.
It's not like anyone is making new 3.5e content.

The attempt to knock out 1.0 OGL through "de-authorization" means knocking out new stuff for everything built off the old WotC SRDs 3e and 5e. So no new 5e OGL material. Pathfinder. Mutants and Masterminds. A bunch of OSR stuff. It puts the same cloud on using any of that under a new ORC license as doing it without the OGL when they specifically used stuff directly from the SRD under authorization from the OGL.

ORC stuff would have to be built from the ground up, not be a continuation of anything OGL based on WotC SRDs to avoid the legal threats from WotC's claims about the effects of their "de-authorization."

Putting out a new OGL revision with explicit terms to make unambiguous that WotC cannot de-authorize or revoke or revise old versions or terminate old versions would take that cloud away and allow continued OGL publishing without this new explicit threat of WotC having a legal argument to target things published under the OGL. People could rely upon the legal document even if they did not trust WotC.

It would be substantive, not PR assurances.

 

[Yaarel]

Why? What difference would it make when people can use the Paizo license? (And likely will just in case. No one is going to trust WotC)
It would just be performative.
It's not like anyone is making new 3.5e content.

Gamers have the legal right to modify SRD content. People commonly use 3e content for their own games, rather than the 3.5 engine. For example, most psionic fans use 3e content for 5e games, since 5e lacks much development of the psionic power source. They couldnt make these homebrew modifications publicly available without the OGL 1.0a.

 

[Yaarel]

This isn't a legal document. This is literally a blog post.

It isnt a legal document, but it is written by the legal team, and might offer insight into the legal intentions.

 

[FormerLurker]

The attempt to knock out 1.0 OGL through "de-authorization" means knocking out new stuff for everything built off the old WotC SRDs 3e and 5e. So no new 5e OGL material. Pathfinder. Mutants and Masterminds. A bunch of OSR stuff. It puts the same cloud on using any of that under a new ORC license as doing it without the OGL when they specifically used stuff directly from the SRD under authorization from the OGL.

How much new stuff for 3e SRD and the 5.0 SRD are you expecting? Is anyone making content for PF1? When was the last Mutants & Masterminds release?

 

[FormerLurker]

Gamers have the legal right to modify SRD content. People commonly use 3e content for their own games, rather than the 3.5 engine. For example, most psionic fans use 3e content for 5e games, since 5e lacks much development of the psionic power source. They couldnt make these homebrew modifications publicly available without the OGL 1.0a.

Legal right? Where is that right outlined?

And can't people who want 5e psionics just as easily use the DMsGuild? Or r/UnearthedArcana? Or Homebrewery? The OGL is for publishers, not homebrew modifications.
Unless there was some Psionic Handbook for 5e on Kickstarter I've missed.