The Closing Game License: Dungeons and Dragons’ Recent Licensing Controversy
Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D for short, is a popular tabletop role-playing game enjoyed by millions of people over the close-to-50 years it has been around.[1] The concept of D&D is a fantastical one––players take on the roles of customized heroes of every shape and size, going on adventures and fighting monsters.[2] D&D has particularly picked up in popularity in recent years, seeing massive sales growth from 2016 to 2017.[3]
Part of D&D’s success depends on its player base. One player normally takes on the role of “Dungeon Master,” who arbitrates the game’s complex rules, controls the enemies facing the other players, and most importantly, decides what adventures the other players go on week after week.[4] Some pre-written adventures are officially sold by Wizards of the Coast, D&D’s publishing company, but it’s not mandatory to play using these adventures. Often, players write their own adventures.[5] The game’s rule system is also somewhat barebones despite its complexity, so players also write additional rules or modify the existing rules to fit the particular game they want to run.[6]
Sharing this homemade content has become an important part of the community. Players are capable of buying adventures and additional rules from third-party marketplaces, a popular option for Dungeon Masters that don’t have time to write their own adventures but also don’t want to run one of the ubiquitous official adventures.[7] Entire companies base their business models on writing and selling high-quality custom content to sell.[8]
The sale of this custom content is made possible through D&D’s current license, the Open Game License Version 1.0a, which permits third parties to create and sell content using the D&D system as long as they state that they are not associated with Wizards or D&D, indicate the official mechanics they are using, and include a copy of the license with their work.[9] Wizards adopted this very open system back in 2000, seeking to increase the overall number of people playing D&D––the logic was that even if new players were drawn in by content sold by other companies, the investment made by those companies would simply result in more eventual D&D sales.[10] Wizards has historically been open to third-party content to the point that they have even commissioned certain third-party publishers to create official adventures.[11]
On January 5, 2023, a new version of the Open Game License (“OGL”) was leaked online.[12] Version 1.1 introduced a number of major changes to the license.[13] Some of these changes were minor, such as taking a hardline stance against bigoted content and explicitly stating that any such content was unlicensed.[14] However, some of the changes were extremely impactful, such as requiring financial reports from anyone grossing $50,000 per year or more off licensed content, charging up to 25% royalties on any revenue exceeding $750,000 per year, and forcing licensees to give Wizards an irrevocable royalty-free license to use any licensed content for any purpose.[15] This new OGL would also invalidate the old version, blindsiding any publishers relying on its terms for an upcoming product.[16]
The D&D community took extreme issue with the changes, especially Wizards being able to claim their licensed content at will.[17] The new license seemed to fit perfectly with a growing sentiment that Wizards was more concerned with its bottom line than its player base, and a credible leak from a Wizards employee indicated that this perception was grounded in reality.[18] This leak also indicated that Wizards was looking at the number of paid subscriptions to its online service as the main metric of the community’s response to the new OGL.[19] In response, the community organized a boycott, which led to enough subscriptions to the service being cancelled that the website crashed.[20]
The publishing companies most affected by the changes also banded together. Many of them spoke out publicly in blog posts or videos about the changes, galvanizing the community at large.[21] Additionally, one of the publishing companies, acting in collaboration with the Seattle-based law firm Azora Law, began work on a collaborative license where any independent game publisher could open their game systems up to the world in the same way as the original OGL.[22] This license, called the Open RPG Creative License, would be stewarded by an independent party instead of being owned by any one company.[23] Over 1,500 publishers pledged their support to this new license.[24]
Wizards’ response to the backlash was a swift reversal. Almost exactly a week after the OGL first leaked, and after the subscription boycott began, they published an apology stating the new OGL would no longer contain a royalty structure or the provision allowing them to claim licensed content.[25] Two weeks later, after seeking player feedback, they committed to leaving the original OGL untouched.[26] They additionally committed to making the D&D rules available under a Creative Commons license and allowing publishers their choice of which license to use.[27]
Players driven away from D&D helped the sales of competing role-playing game companies. One company, Kobold Press, reported that their sales quadrupled in January 2023, while another, Goodman Games, said that January was their best month of sales since 2003.[28]
In the end, Wizards’ attempt to exert more control over third-party content by changing its licensing agreement ended as a complete failure. The culture around such content was simply too embedded into the game’s community to change without extreme backlash. Dungeons and Dragons’ unique relationship with third-party content allowed it to become one of the most popular role-playing games in the market, but that same relationship leaves it unable to control that third-party content as tightly as it otherwise could.
Footnotes
