Probably because they are trying to figure out damage control. this leak only happened on thursday.
I would expect a response during the week with them backpeddling a bit.
Yet despite all that they've suddenly come out with this draconian agreement which is worse than most of the rumours that had already caused a huge outrage.
Well, they explicitely state, that they are ready to change a bit, if the shitstorm is big enough.
"The document does note that if the company oversteps, they are aware that they “will receive community pushback and bad PR, and We’re more than open to being convinced that We made a wrong decision.”"
I hope this will get settled in court, though.
The 1.0 Licence seems to be unclear whether it is revokable, but since there was a FAQ section on WoTCs Website explicitely stating you can always ignore changes you don't like, then this is what I would settle for, if I would have invested in it.
The picture of the FAQ:
https://miro.medium.com/max/640/1*ZdwvKxvMZWmS4xQZPcHJHw.web...
from this article
https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/lets-take-a-minute-to-tal...
Yes and there already was a massive shitstorm that they attempted to address before these additional details were leaked. That's the part that confuses me. It should have been crystal clear to WotC that there would be huge outrage over this leaked document. The chain of events so far has been:
- Rumours started about changes in the new OGL to make it more restrictive but with little actual details. - Creators within the community start worrying and raising a shitstorm based on their negative presumptions of the new OGL. - WotC post about the new OGL on DndBeyond to address the rumours (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-ogls-srds-one-d-d). They say they hadn't planned to share details so soon but felt they had to to reassure the community due to the shitstorm the unsubstantiated rumours had raised. The details they share seem reasonable, if more restrictive, and WotC say they want to make the process easy for creators. - The text of the OGL is leaked and it's waaay more restrictive than the blog post implied and arguable worse than most creators originally feared during the initial shitstorm.
> Yes and there already was a massive shitstorm that they attempted to address before these additional details were leaked. That's the part that confuses me. It should have been crystal clear to WotC that there would be huge outrage over this leaked document. The chain of events so far has been:
> - Rumours started about changes in the new OGL to make it more restrictive but with little actual details. - Creators within the community start worrying and raising a shitstorm based on their negative presumptions of the new OGL. - WotC post about the new OGL on DndBeyond to address the rumours (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-ogls-srds-one-d-d). They say they hadn't planned to share details so soon but felt they had to to reassure the community due to the shitstorm the unsubstantiated rumours had raised. The details they share seem reasonable, if more restrictive, and WotC say they want to make the process easy for creators. - The text of the OGL is leaked and it's waaay more restrictive than the blog post implied and arguable worse than most creators originally feared during the initial shitstorm.
Because from their perspective it's more advantageous to slit goose throat than share its golden eggs with competition allowing it to grow and in the future threaten wotc/hasbro position.
But I fear like MTG moved to maximize squeezing out money from players on the risk of long term losses D&D will now move there, too.
So I kinda expects this to only be the start of wtf. this isn't what we want moments.
It seems a bit odd, though — card collecting games have always seemed to have a bit of a mercenary streak. I mean buying and trading cards is sort of part of the hobby, right? I think players go into it expecting some level of ongoing costs. With pen and paper RPGs, the sort of mythical ultimate campaign that many only hope to achieve could go for years and years on a couple books. I can’t think of many hobbies that provide as favorable a $:entertainment ratio. This is… not a market that is expecting to spend a lot of money…
“It would cost $3000 a year to own a play set of every new card”
To
“It would cost $50,000 a year to own a play set of every new card”
Like yah for sure it was always for profit. But like the last few years of changes has been extreme.
There is a difference between making money and abusing year long commitment of the community to make people spent more money then they think is reasonable (or should afford give their financial spending).
People which have decades of emotional commitment are quite easy to be pressured into "over-spending", through if you do it too much it can cost you your brand and many people their hobby.
To some degree you can compare it to games having "just" in-app purchases in a well balanced way even if it might be a bit pay to win and it a game using all kinds of dark patterns to squeeze out every penny no matter the moral and being pay-hug to even have a chance to compete.
Like for many of the current relevant formats the entry cost for not just playing causal with your friends is around 500€ for a _single_ deck and 1000+€ for going competitive; and just to be clear that's in a context where WotC managed to not (yet) kill of their brand by going too much overboard with pricing.
But it means that if you are not a well earning single that hobby isn't quite affordable anymore. *Anyway WotC basically kicked out anyone who is not at least slightly well of, because they don't make them money and I'm afraid what that could men for D&D*.
It just seems like it would be harder due to the fundamentals of the game to screw over the actual player community of D&D. There’s no competitive aspect, you can write whatever you want on your character sheet, and there’s a strong home brew tendency. If they try to gate the content behind a paywall, players can just… make it up themselves.
They can go after folks publishing settings on drivethroughrpg which will be a bummer. And they can go after the sort of “play d&d on a podcast” groups (until they just switch to a different system). I think the players will be fine, though.
1. various creators were sent OGL 1.1 licenses, a contract to sign, FAQ, and an NDA on/around Dec 21 to be signed by Jan 4th.
2. Rumours were circulating about the OGL license changes.
3. Once the NDA lifted on Jan 4th, the various people sent the licenses from (1) sent the OGL 1.1 license to others, including gizmodo.
various creators were sent OGL 1.1 licenses, a contract to sign, FAQ, and an NDA on/around Dec 21 to be signed by Jan 4th.