#stopthesub

Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast (WotC) some time ago, but recently they got new leadership who said in an interview that they see D&D as "under-monetized". Hasbro is on the decline with finances, and WotC is its biggest cash cow. Why milk that cash cow through producing more content when you can instead revoke a legally irrevocable license that makes it impossible for 3rd party content creators to exist?

America loves a good monopoly. The old license that permitted the community to grow to what it is today was OGL1.0a, and without it, D&D would not be what it is right now, nor even close. They tried to shift to OGL1.1, a new license that is, in a word, PREDATORY. Horrific, nasty shit.

OGL1.1 was quietly sent to large creators to sign. It then got leaked. The community erupted. The backlash was loud and unanimous. WotC was radio silent for like two weeks. They finally gave a single-sentence "we'll explain soon" tweet on DnDBeyond's account. Then more silence.

A WotC employee reached out to large creators to blow the whistle on WotC. The source was verified, and they shared that WotC sees the community as an obstacle between them and their money, all they care about is bottom line, and they're delaying in hopes we forget and move on.

And also that they are mainly looking at DnDBeyond subscription cancelations to gauge the financial impact; they don't care about our sentiments, only our money. So everyone erupted into signal boosting for others to unsubscribe as the single and best way to make ourselves heard. Cue the mass unsubscribing.

Today (January 13th 2023), a shitty PR piece was posted on DnDBeyond full of blatant lies and, in my opinion, barely-contained saltiness. Right before that, though, OGL2.0 leaks came out; the tweaks they'd begrudgingly made following the backlash. 2.0 is basically just as bad as 1.1; they just spoke of it as being more changed than it was.

In other words, they keep bold-faced lying to a community of rules-lawyers who recreationally read fine print :)

Meanwhile, Paizo (creators of Pathfinder) has come to the rescue, vowing to release a truly open license that will allow everyone to continue pursuing the livelihoods they're passionate about; this is the Open RPG Creative License, or "ORC".

Canceling subscriptions immediately sends a potent message, even if you may have to resubscribe later for functionality in your games. You'll still have the remainder of your billing cycle to enjoy paid perks.

Everything's a little on fire, but I think we'll be okay ♥️

OGL1.0a was never meant to be revocable, as loudly stated in the past couple days by the very people who authored it. It is very likely that WotC is actually just bluffing and bullying, and is actually powerless to revoke it--something many lawyers more knowledgeable than myself seem to be suggesting. In which case, it is my greatest hope in all of this that 3rd party creators are able to continue doing what they love, with no further interruptions.

Remember: the majority of WotC and DnDBeyond employees feel the exact same way we do, but they don't have a choice. Hasbro is the enemy here. Be kind to each other, and know where blame should and should not be placed. If you want to stay up to speed, the account of @.DnD_Shorts seems to be a very active and informed voice, largely responsible for sharing the first leak. If Twitter makes you want to puke, I completely understand; DnD_Shorts also has a YouTube channel with frequent updates on the situation posted in video format.

Hasbro and the Orb of Gratuitous Leeching! A free 5E adventure where you get to stop the Big Bad Evil from destroying the Wizards of the Coast OGL

3rd Party creators are who introduced me to Tabletop Games in the first place, the fact that WoTC & Hasbro found it necessary to change the OGL in order to make a some extra change (in comparison to the millions they already make from their content) by ripping of those creators is just insane. 

Watching Puss in Boots 2 last week with my kids sort of put two and two together and I put together this adventure piece to do a whole play on what is going on. I’d love to see people share it, would love to see people play it!

But I’ve cancelled my DnDBeyond subscription over the disgusting greed of WOTC’s OGL 1.1. I’m probably gonna complete my current campaign because hell, it’s been a year, but who knows afterwards.

However, I’m not spending anymore money on WOTC and I LIKE DnDBeyond. It’s pretty useful to me. So it’s inconvenient for me to cancel my subscription, but I’ll do my best to not support this sort of greedy abuse of the wider DnD and TTRPG community.

And from further leaks from rebellious WOTC employees, DnDBeyond subscriptions are the first and quickest metric WOTC and Hasbro has to gauge how deep they are into the Find Out phase of Fuck Around and Find Out.

So I encourage everyone to cancel your subscription, ya can still use it until it runs out, I am with my yearly subscription, and let WOTC know we want OGL 1.1 changed.

A phenomenal breakdown addressing some of the questions I've seen going around that are more niche--questions about "can't you just do X?" "What about people who are doing Y?" "What about prior editions?" and whatever else. Highly recommend this video by Legal Eagle.

My post covering this stuff is here. If you prefer to listen instead of read, CritCrab's videos cover just about everything up to the time of me writing this. Only thing he hasn't mentioned in a video

Paizo (creators of Pathfinder), Kobold Press, and a sizeable collection of other large name creators have joined together to make the Open RPG Creative License (or ORC License). It will be a system-agnostic license that is irrevocable, and will never be owned by a company that makes money off of publishing RPGs to ensure it can never be jeopardized. Their full statement is on their website, the link for that is here.

My sincere hope is that this will allow creators who love 5e and don't want to leave that system if they can help it to continue publishing 5e-compatible content that they're passionate about, under ORC instead of any bullshit OGL at Hasbro's control. The path forward will require time and effort and, more than likely, some manner of adjustments... but as someone who absolutely Does Not Want to leave 5e despite being thoroughly repulsed by WotC's behavior, I actually have a shred of hope again. I am deeply, deeply appreciative of Paizo today.