Dungeons and Dragons: The Nerds Are Angry
As Jonathan Bailey reports in Plagiarism Today, big changes are coming to the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast (WotC) owns the rights to the game, and it licensed the Systems Resource Document under the Open Gaming License (OGL). As my former student Tom Taylor explained to me, this means that since the year 2000, people, have been able to access the basic document and then create their own variations on the game, which they can then market as they wish. But soon that may all change.
Last week, Gizmodo reporter Linda Codega received a leaked draft copy of a proposed OGL 1.1 license, due to take effect January 13th. As she explains, the original OGL:
has allowed a host of outside designers and publishers, both amateur and professional, to make new products for a game that remains entirely owned by Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast (WotC). While this arrangement sometimes created products that directly competed with WotC publications, it also allowed the game to flourish and grow thanks to the resources created by the wider D&D community.
We are about to enter a different world.
The key features of 1.1 are as follows:
- It supersedes 1.0, meaning that 1.0 will no longer be an authorized license agreement;
- Creators who publish work under the license will have to report on their publications, and if they earn over $750,000, they will have to pay 25% of their royalties in excess of that amount to (WotC);
- 1.1 does not cover apps, video games, virtual tabletops or other non-print/static digital materials; the former categories must be licensed directly with WotC; and
- WotC will retain a “nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose” in any works licensed under 1.1.
Creators can still make money off of their publications through advertising or donations, so long as they do no charge for use.
Benjamin Abbott explains on Gamesradar why 26,000 people signed an open letter condemning 1.1. It seems that the main concern is that some creators of popular tabletop versions of the game will lose their licenses and will not be able to afford to pay the royalties to WotC. My former student explained to me that the few businesses that are able to profit off of their variations of the game operate with very small margins. They might be able to swing giving WotC 10% of their profits, but not 25%.
Those operations may have to shut down, or they may survive but have to cut back on staff needed to develop the products going forward. There is also troubling language in 1.1 that provides that WotC “can modify or terminate this agreement for any reason whatsoever, provided We give thirty (30) days’ notice”. So even if creators sign on to the new license, it could be yanked with very little notice. Meanwhile, WotC maintains the intellectual property rights mentioned in the last bullet-point above.
In so doing, WotC seems to be violating no legal norms; it is simply upsetting cultural norms that have evolved over the last two decades. We’ll see how this all shakes out.