This is fantastic news. They also said they will go to court over if WoTC try to “deauthorise” OGL 1.0a which is just epic.
Edit: The site went down lmao. Epic stuff.
Edit: BTW, Paizo is the company that also recognised their Union without requiring it to go to vote or hiring anti-union shitheads.
Eh. The TTRPG industry doesn't really need its own license (CC-BY would be a good fit), and folks will still have to either re-edit their products to remove references to WotC SRDs or face WotC in court (assuming that they don't back down over the OGL). The whole concept of "Open Game Content", which is trying to claim ownership of non-copyrightable game mechanics, is the original root of this issue, and the ORC will probably perpetuate it.
I also don't know how well people are aware of the context of the Paizo unionization, but the union recognition wasn't because Paizo is some beneficent company: it's because the workplace environment was so bad that literally everyone joined the union and management was forced to fold.
Your second point is sad to learn of.
As to the first, Paizo says they are willing to foot the bill for the court fight with WOTC. And for paying the lawyer fees for drafting up the ORC.
These open licenses also allow you to build on literally the same names and worlds of these IPs. Which I think is what a lot of people love. Not just the mechanics. Or am I misunderstanding something?
The whole point of the OGL is that it clearly demarcates game mechanics (Open Game Content) and Product Identity. There are some "IP" that could be released under OGC, but most of that IP is either sufficiently generic or already public domain (things like spell names and monster names), so that wouldn't be copyrightable anyways.
TTRPG settings fall under Product Identity. Paizo, through its Pathfinder Infinite program, charges a 20% revenue cut to use its IP in your products (same cut as Wizards at the DMsguild site.)
So TLDR then is that Wizard wants even more of a cut from using just the game system then or just want to run off all 3rd party peeps to monopolize any and all materials? I'm a bit confused on the OGL given you can't copyright game mechanics (I thinks that why we have seen a resurgence of OSR THAC0 style games)
All 3PP content published under the new license (which WOTC want to force on everyone) can be used by WOTC for any purpose for ever without paying any royalties or fees. And, if you happen to start making big bucks (750k) from that content, you owe them 25% royalties (on revenue, not profit). Given most publishers operate on margins much, much smaller than that, this is just a way to forever limit the growth of 3PP. WOTC don’t want another Paizo. Ever.
Also, Wizards can change the terms of the license to whatever they want, whenever they want, and by using it you acknowledge that they have sole discretion to determine whether you've violated the agreement, and you forfeit the right to sue them, forfeit the right to a trial by jury over any related dispute, and using Open Game Content (which, again, they determine if you've done!) means that you implicitly agree to the terms of the license agreement. It's a frankly ridiculous document full of blatantly illegal shit that will never hold up in court and which no one in their right mind would agree to voluntarily. Wizards has tried to defend themselves saying that only the biggest companies will have to pay royalties - but they can change that any time to whatever they want!
It's literally the piece of paper from Parks and Rec that just says, "I can do what I want."
Jesus it really is just 4e all over again, I honestly wonder then how shitty OneDnD is going to be when it comes to sucking out player money
Even the name has ominous "one D&D to rule them all" vibes, and the suits probably giggled while coming up with it. :capitalist-laugh:
You can't copyright game mechanics, but you can copyright the expression of game mechanics, and you can use litigation over game mechanics and their expression to drive your smaller competitors out of business whether or not the claim is sound.
The OGL was effectively a do-not-sue agreement. Basically, WotC wouldn't try to test its ownership of these mechanics/expressions in court. In exchange, you were able to make products in the d20 ecosystem as long as you didn't claim compatibility.
Honestly make me wonder now since all of the video games (some owned by Lucas Arts and now Disney) utilized the OGL to design their mechanics (KOTOR and KOTOR 2 being some of the famous ones). This feels like whoever has the biggest dick lawyer energy will win which is why all the famous 3rd party designers are jumping ship on to other systems or designing their own.
Afaik, KOTOR wasn’t actually OGL. They had their own separate license.
Yeah I've heard that too, seems the other claim is that the d20 mechanics were utilized (but could have been utilized under a different agreement since WOTC also publish an earlier Star Wars RPG before FFG published theirs)
Lmao what a shitshow.
Right? I feel like I'm just scratching the surface of weird fringe early 2000s game dev lore on how convoluted some shit was before Disney just bought everything in existence
Lucasfilm has a separate license.
So from one convoluted reddit post it's the d20 system of the WOTC public SW RPG, that was then swapped for the FFG SW RPG that utilized some form of the OGL for 3rd edition (or at least that's the claim). Of the actual verifiable information is that they do use the D20 system of 3rd edition for all of the background math (feels like this is a dive into early 2000s game design lore and law).
I know this is a take going around, but I think there's a part of the point that it's missing. Publishing stuff under an open license tells people that it's your intention to share the material. Even if everything is already covered, I think having a clarification from the creator of, "This is ok to use, I'm not going to try to sue you over this" is significant. What's happening now is that Wizards is doing something that's probably illegal, but there's just enough ambiguity that they can threaten small creators with expensive legal battles they can't afford, even if they're in the right. Having an explicit statement from the creator that the content is free to use could be helpful in that circumstance, to ensure that there's no ambiguity.
Has it actually been ruled in court that game mechanics are not copyrightable?