When a leaked document suggested Hasbro has plans to change the terms of its open gaming license, Dungeons and Dragons fans responded with petitions against it and subscription cancellations to its online service.
Oops.
Hasbro has announced the company won’t include the more onerous terms about royalty structures and assume intellectual property rights over third party creator content based on the D&D gaming mechanics. But a new OGL is coming, and Wizards of the Coast, owned by Hasbro, wants to profit off the rise in popularity of D&D.
The terms of the leaked updated OGL were much greedier than those posed by the Wizard in our dungeon master’s game above. Says CNBC:
With its OGL update, Hasbro initially looked to charge these sellers fees if they generated too much money from their products in a calendar year.
Those that tallied more than $50,000 in revenue would need to report their profits and products, and they would have been required to obtain a creator product badge for their work. Those that topped $750,000 would have incurred a 20% fee on every dollar over that amount, according to OGL 2.0. In OGL 1.1, that fee was slated to be 25%.
Damn. Enough to make a goblin blush.
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