interesting news going on in recent days
Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast, which owns Dungeons & Dragons, have decided in their infinite wisdom to revoke their old Open Gaming License from the year 2000
this pulls the rug out from under tons of small creators who used it, and replaces it with a new much worse license that gives them ownership over what you create and a big cut of any money you earn
the old license did not include the word "irrevocable" because it was made before licensing language was commonly strengthened to include that, but in spite of this it's still likely that no court would ever let them get away with revoking it
this information was leaked and the gaming community has been stewing over it for a few days...and as nearly everyone assumed, it's looking like it was intentionally leaked so that they could later "improve" the terms and make everyone think they're meeting people halfway
well a whole lot of people are getting a lot of legal education all of a sudden, and it appears that the old OGL was ALREADY a bad deal, that it claimed to give you legal access to things that you ALREADY HAD ACCESS TO, which Wizards couldn't copyright (mechanics for playing a game and generic descriptive terms like how a magic missile works) so you were already fucking yourself over by publishing under it
in response to all this, Paizo (creators of Pathfinder, which became top dog on the back of the OGL when D&D 4.0 floundered) came out swinging last night with a new license, the Open RPG Creative license (ORC)
they are adding insult to injury by having it drafted by the same lawyers who made the original OGL, and putting it under a non-profit similar to how Linux operates, to ensure that even Future Asshole Paizo can't mess with it
they've already got a huge chunk of third parties on board with the new license, and are prepared to defend themselves legally if necessary
gaming community is in an uproar and lots of people are canceling D&D subscriptions and pissing on Hasbro
Paizo's announcement (hammered and the site is up and down):
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v?Paizo-Announces-SystemNeutral-Open-RPG-Licensean article that basically says what I said above:
https://gizmodo.com/paizo-wizards-of-the-coast-dnd-open-rpg-ogl-1-1-1849982443a very good article on the whole subject of licensing and how shitty Wizards/Hasbro are being:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-how-dds-open-gaming-license-may-have-become-trap-creatorsanother great article:
https://www.tumblr.com/wilwheaton/706168791099392000/good-riddance-to-the-open-gaming-licenseangry subreddits, which are shockingly not run by corporate mouthpieces and allowing people to rage:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/https://twitter.com/DaarkaArts/status/1613614755809492992https://twitter.com/DnD_Shorts/status/1613576298114449409