Wizards of the Coast has officially ended intends to update outdoors Game License (OGL) for Dungeons and Dragons, following major community backlash. A draft from the planned update for the OGL was leaked in early January 2023, and seemingly revealed Wizards from the Coast planned to better monetise the franchise by controlling what creators could profit from.
The community expressed major concerns about ownership of Dungeons & Dragons stories under this OGL, given clauses that would seemingly force these to report any profits produced from adjacent content (live streams, independently-released adventures, along with other ventures). In reaction to WoTC plans, people in the community began cancelling their D&D Beyond subscriptions, with a social media campaign drawing a large number of fans towards the cause.
Wizards of the Coast subsequently cancelled and pushed back plans to reveal much more about this OGL, eventually issuing two separate apologies to fans – a blanket statement that caused more ire, along with a personal apology from Dungeons & Dragons executive producer, Kyle Brink.
Brink’s apology directly addressed community concerns, and attempted to reassure the community the updated OGL would not allow Wizards from the Coast to claim ownership of custom D&D content. Additionally, it heralded the arrival of a survey designed to gauge feedback about the new OGL terms.
Of the 15,000 responses received, the feedback was largely negative, based on Wizards of the Coast. This inspired a dramatic rethink from the OGL, that will now remain in place, in the current form.
‘We are leaving OGL 1.0A in position, as is. Untouched,’ Wizards of the Coast confirmed through the D&D Beyond Twitter account. ‘We are also making the whole SRD [System Reference Document] 5.1 available within Creative Commons license. You choose which you prefer.’
Rather than being restricted to strict rules and ownership structures, Dungeons & Dragons players will now have much more creative tools to work with. The move, based on Kyle Brink, was made like a direct result of overwhelming community responses to the OGL survey.
‘These live survey answers are clear. You want OGL 1.0a. You want irrevocability. You like Creative Commons. The feedback is in such high volume and it is direction is really plain that we are acting now,’ Brink said inside a article.
‘We wanted to protect the D&D play experience in to the future. We still want to do by using your help. We're grateful that this community is passionate and active because we'll need your help protecting the game's inclusive and welcoming nature.’
Going forward, Wizards of the Coast will be more likely to consider the voices of its fans when planning major changes to the long-running Dungeons & Dragons franchise. As many have pointed out, it’s the players from the game that have made it so popular over the last many years – and it’s their voices that count most when determining the future of the series.
