Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast has done an impressive amount of damage to its own reputation over the past few weeks. Now its new executive producer, former video game developer Kyle Brink, has issued a full apology on behalf of his team.
“We’re sorry,” Brink said in a post on D&D Beyond. “We were wrong.”
The thing that Brink and his team got so wrong about is the latest version of the Open Gaming License, also known as OGL, a decades-old legal framework that allows additional content to be created based on certain elements of the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset. . Wizards originally stated that it would modify the OGL to protect the brand of interlocutors, including attempts to integrate blockchain technology into D&D 5th Edition. But fans and business partners remained skeptical of his intent.
Later, a draft of a new version of the OGL – first reported by io9 and later verified by Polygon – sent shockwaves through the tabletop RPG industry. Its provisions would have disrupted the business model of many other publishing houses, including Paizo (Scout, star seeker), Kobold Press, Green Ronin and others. But smaller independent creators were also taken by surprise, with many wondering if they would be able to retain ownership of their D&D-based creative works in the future.
That anxiety was only heightened by Wizards’ week-long silence after the leak. Fans have organized on social media and elsewhere, creating multiple petitions and even a boycott of Wizards’ online platform, D&D Beyond. Brink’s post reads like an attempt to stem that bleeding, which is believed to be in the tens of thousands of users.
It’s also worth noting that this is the first official statement regarding OGL that a Wizards employee’s name has been attached to in nearly a month.
“Our language and requirements in the OGL project were confusing creators and did not support our core goals of protecting and cultivating an inclusive gaming environment and limiting OGL to TTRPGs,” Brink said. “Then we made it worse by staying silent for too long. We’re hurting fans and creators, when more frequent and clearer communications could have prevented so much.”
It should be noted that this message, posted on Wednesday, stands in stark contrast to the original apology Wizards released last week. The post ended with a warning to fans: “You’re going to hear people say they won, and we lost because having your voice heard forced us to change our plans. These people will only be half right. They won – and so did we. This post, which has not been attributed to any specific individual at Wizards or its corporate owner, is seen by many as insulting and even a refusal to acknowledge many legitimate concerns raised by fans and editors. That New the apology is more like a complete retreat from the precipice attempt exposed in the leaked OGL.
“You deserve some stability and clarity,” Brink wrote, before setting out clear next steps for the new OGL. A new preview will be released this week, no later than January 20, and a survey will be offered for fans to provide feedback – much like the process used to test and balance the TTRPG itself.
Brink added that whatever form this new OGL takes, it will have no impact on fan-made video content, thumbnails or other props, content for virtual tabletop platforms like Roll20 and Foundry. VTT, or – more importantly – previously created content and ownership of such content in the future.
“You will continue to own your content,” Brink said, “without any licensing requirements.”
Despite these new assurances, many creators are simply unwilling to take Wizards at its word in the future. This includes Paizo, which has already promised to foot the bill to create a new license completely outside of Wizards and Hasbro’s control.
Brink, whose previous experience includes work on guild wars 2, takes over the D&D brand from Ray Winninger, who served as an executive producer for more than four years. Winner left Wizards in October after leading the first tabletop RPG through a period of incredible growth, including during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
