Wizards of the Coast Breaks Their Silence on the Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License

Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro subsidiary that publishes Dungeons & Dragons, revealed details of its new Open Game License on Friday and attempted to answer questions about the future of the D&D community that were raised after io9 broke the news about the contents of a draft of the document last week.

A leaked copy of an updated “OGL 1.1,” received and reported on by io9 last week, outlined restrictions on third party publishers including a 25% royalty payout for revenues over $750,000, and a copyright clause which appeared to cede ownership of content over to Wizards of the Coast (WotC). All of these concerns were taken up online, as D&D fans, content creators, and third party publishers responded to the report with concern. Several prominent game publishers announced plans to stop creating creating new licensed content and focus on their own systems.

The update from Wizards of the Coast says; “the next OGL will contain the provisions… [so that it] covers only content for TTRPGs. That means that other expressions, such as educational and charitable campaigns, livestreams, cosplay, VTT-uses, etc., will remain unaffected by any OGL update. Content already released under 1.0a will also remain unaffected.”

This seems to imply that the Fan Content License, which was previously mentioned in the OGL 1.1 draft as continuing under the new licensing agreement, will be used to protect Wizards from fan content like APs. The fact that they are also saying that VTTs will be unaffected is a significant change, as earlier editions stated that “non-static” media would be disallowed under the new OGL 1.1. This is likely a massive relief to numerous companies that are working on creating and innovating in the VTT space, but without the full updated OGL, there’s no rock-solid assurances yet.

[Editor’s Note: This article is a breaking news story, and the information cited on this page will change as the story unfolds. Our writers are updating this article as new information is released.] 

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