In 2014, 20th Century Fox acquired the rights to produce a Magic: The Gathering film with Simon Kinberg as producer and TSG Entertainment and Allspark Pictures as co-financers. Magic is a strategy card game created by Richard Garfield in 1993 and published by Wizards of the Coast. The company, which owns iconic brands like Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and Duel Masters, has been set to become one of three new divisions of Hasbro.
Magic: The Gathering, also known as Magic or MTG, was created by American mathematician Richard Channing Garfield in 1993. It is considered the world’s first trading card game, offering highly strategic gameplay that is customizable to any individual’s playstyle. Played by over 50 million players globally, 13 million are part of the Wizards of the Coast division.
Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast in 1999 and had previously run it as a subsidiary. In February 2021, Wizards of the Coast announced its new logo and refreshed website. The company is a family of studios specializing in building role-playing, trading card, and digital games for all genres of players.
In 1999, Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast for about US$325 million. In 2001, Peter Adkison resigned, and Magic became a billion-dollar brand for Hasbro. Magic is now just another Monopoly for Hasbro, an established game that can be slapped on popular faces to sell more copies.
In summary, Magic: The Gathering, a strategy card game created by Richard Garfield in 1993, is now owned by Hasbro, which has made significant changes to its operations.
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How did Hasbro ruin Magic: The Gathering?
Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have been accused of a strategy to capitalize on the nostalgia of wealthy fans or cater to the wealthiest collectors, who could sell the cards at high premiums. Fans are concerned that Magic is becoming a luxury hobby due to the high costs involved in maintaining the game. Eric LaGaccia, owner of Action City Comics in Brooklyn, NY, stated that Hasbro is “trying to milk as much money from customers as possible” and that new Magic: The Gathering sets are now released more frequently.
How is Hasbro ruining Magic: The Gathering?
The stock of Hasbro has been underperforming relative to the expectations of the investment bank, with a price target of $42 per share, which is approximately 30% below the current market price. The primary concern is that Hasbro has been engaged in excessive production of Magic cards, which has resulted in an inflation of the company’s earnings but has simultaneously caused a deterioration in its long-term brand value. This has resulted in mounting frustration among players, collectors, distributors, and local game stores.
How much did Richard Garfield sell magic for?
Magic: The Gathering, developed by Garfield during his Ph. D. at the University of Pennsylvania, is a unique fantasy-themed trading-card game that initially cost less than $100, 000 to produce in 1993. The game is more than just a card game; it’s a strategic battle where players use cards representing various creatures and spells to outsmart their opponents. The game’s success is due to its self-sustaining financial model, where players are consistently incentivized to purchase new card decks priced between $3 and $10, ensuring a continuous revenue stream while the cost to print is very low.
Is Magic: The Gathering owned by Hasbro?
Hasbro’s Magic: The Gathering has become a billion-dollar brand, exceeding the sales of other toy manufacturers’ brands such as Transformers and G. I.
Who owns the rights to Magic: The Gathering?
The American company Hasbro offers a diverse range of games, including collectible card games, role-playing games, video games, and magazines. The company’s executive leadership, comprising the president, general manager, digital publishing director, and finance and operations managers, oversees these operations.
Who owns the Magic now?
The DeVos family purchased the Orlando Magic in 1991 and has been its caretakers since then. The franchise has won six division championships, two Eastern Conference titles, and seven 50-win seasons, including a franchise-record 60 victories in 1995-96. The Magic has advanced to the playoffs 16 times and finished with a. 500 record or better in 17 of the last 28 seasons. The operation of the Orlando Magic has been a passion and priority for the entire family, including the late Rich and Helen DeVos and their four children.
How much of Hasbro is MTG?
Hasbro’s 2023 earnings report shows a decrease in revenues to $5 billion from $5. 8 billion a year ago, but gaming earnings are up, largely due to the Magic: The Gathering franchise. The franchise generated $1. 085 billion, accounting for over half of Hasbro’s total gaming earnings. CEO Chris Cocks praised Magic’s performance, stating that 2024 aims to return Consumer Products to profitability, invest in long-term momentum in games, and drive significant improvements in Hasbro’s bottom line through operational discipline and renewed product innovation. The company’s success is attributed to its successful games, such as Magic’s Universes Beyond and Baldur’s Gate III.
How rich is Garfield?
Garfield, a lazy, grouchy cat worth $800 million, has been a source of inspiration for founder Jim Davis. Davis, who loves his work, acknowledges that some staff may be less enthusiastic about the return to the work week. To cope with this, Davis avoids scheduling meetings on Monday mornings and provides plenty of black coffee and occasionally donuts. Garfield’s attitude of laziness and hate for work resonates with fans worldwide.
Davis believes that deep down, there is a little Garfield in all of us, and while he is an optimist, he also admits to having days where he just wants to sleep or stick to his diet. Davis shares this trait with Garfield, as he is skilled at sarcasm.
How is magic so rich?
Magic Johnson, a Los Angeles Lakers point guard, has an estimated net worth of $1. 2 billion, according to Forbes. He is co-owner of the Sparks of the WNBA, the Los Angeles Dodgers of the MLB, and LAFC of the MLS, as well as having a minority stake in the NFL’s Washington Commanders. He also owns Starbucks coffee shops and TGI Friday’s restaurants, and has 60 shares of EquiTrust, an Iowa-based life insurance company that has assets of $16 billion in 2015 and is now on its way to $26 billion. He has joined an exclusive list of billionaire athletes, including Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Tiger Woods, and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Is Richard Garfield still involved with magic?
Richard Channing Garfield, an American mathematician, inventor, and game designer, is known for creating Magic: The Gathering, the first collectible card game (CCG). The game’s success led to numerous imitations, and Garfield oversaw its growth. Other game designs include Keyforge, Netrunner, BattleTech, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Star Wars Trading Card Game, The Great Dalmuti, Artifact, and RoboRally. Garfield also created a variation of Hearts called Complex Hearts.
Garfield’s passion for games began when he played Dungeons and Dragons, leading him to design Magic decks to be customizable like roleplaying characters. Both Garfield and Magic are in the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame. Garfield was born in Philadelphia and spent his childhood in various locations, eventually settling in Oregon at the age of twelve. He is the great-great-grandson of U. S. President James A. Garfield and the nephew of Fay Jones, who illustrated one Magic card for him.
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As an avid player of magic and DND, and someone who works in a local card/game shop, Wizards has been actively hurting its community and retailers for a while now. Thanks for bringing some attention to this, not a lot of people realize how their poor corporate decision making actively hurts stores like ours. You’re absolutely right about Critical Role bringing in most of their customers in the last few years, every single person who comes in wanting to get campaign materials at our store brings up how they got into it because of CR, it’s not an exaggeration in the slightest to say that CR is singlehandedly keeping DND afloat. Also, “Under Monetized” my ass, DND books, minis, and all other game materials are INSANELY overpriced. DMs/GMs and even a lot of regular players each spend thousands upon thousands of dollars a year on these materials. The only reason they’ve been able to justify their prices IS the open game contract, without that excuse they better start drastically lowering prices. I know for a fact a large majority of their community is gonna stop buying anything new if they don’t. Dark Souls has a tabletop RPG now, my friends and I all cancelled our plans for our next DND campaign to play that instead, I don’t think they realize how easy it is for their community to choose to stop supporting them. They’ve got a lot more competition than they realize, especially since people don’t even need campaign materials or rulebooks to play an RPG in the first place, I for one much prefer homemade campaigns.
What they mean by “under-monetized” is, people are able to participate in TTRPGs without spending any money. You go to a friend’s house to play, and you can borrow books to make your character. As long as somebody at that table has the books you need, and you can borrow some dice and maybe a figurine, it’s absolutely free for you to participate in this hobby. Hasbro wants to try to squeeze some money out of EVERYBODY who plays D&D. That’s why they bought out D&D Beyond, and they’re planning to roll out their own virtual tabletop program. They’re planning to charge a monthly fee for those services. And they intend to push every D&D player to subscribe. And once you’re on that hook, you start to become vulnerable to the sunken cost fallacy; why would we switch to some other game, when we’ve all been paying for this monthly D&D subscription for the past few years? Unfortunately for Hasbro, one of the best features of roleplaying games is the fact that you can participate for free. This has gotten a whole lot of low-income people into RPGs. A good gaming group is an absolute blast, and you don’t have to spend a penny for all those hours of entertainment. This is as it should be. RPGs cannot flourish and grow without that option to play for free. Coworker A: “Hey, what’s this D&D thing that I hear you and Coworker C do? It sounds fun! Can I join?” Coworker B: “Yeah, but first you’re gonna have to sign up for D&D Beyond for $18 a month.” Coworker A: “Uh, you know what? Never mind. I’m not THAT interested.
The 30-day notice part isn’t even the worst part…the worst part is the clause that says they own the rights to ANYTHING created with the OGL and they can take complete ownership ANY TIME they feel like and incorporate it into official D&D content…and then terminate your ability to receive royalties, credit, etc. Basically, they can straight up steal your work if they feel like it and then shut you out of it forever.
Hey! There’s been an update to this whole scenario! Apparently, Paizo (the company that owns pathfinder and starfinder, and headed by some of the ORIGINAL PEOPLE WHO HELPED MAKE THE OGL, including the LAWYER) are making their own open rpg creative lisence, (ORC). And Paizo is basically one-upping WOTC by being willing to go to court over the OGL, and making an even better license that nobody can betray like the OGL!
As a long time fan of DND, it’s been incredibly frustrating seeing things go south so quickly. I’m really glad the community is giving it so much backlash, and I’m equally glad large creators who break beyond the DND audience are giving it some attention. You’re saving people’s joy. Thank you, Charlie.
I was at Wizards and worked on the 3rd Edition release for D&D, back when the OGL was created. As I remember it, the rationalization was thus: one of the things that killed TSR (in addition to many poor business practices) was the amount of money spent on Gaming Modules and alternate Game Worlds that spread their buyer base too thin. They reasoned that rather than throw good money at products that didn’t sell, giving away the right to create 3rd party content was a good way to grow their base, so long as those properties encouraged buyers to purchase the core rulebooks—the only thing WotC wanted to sell. It worked amazingly well and grew the brand. This seems like take-backsies of the worst sort. So long and thanks for all the fish.
The absolute worst thing is they can take anything made by anyone (eg a kickstarter campaign book) 1. Take the 20% of the kickstarter money 2. They can then print that book for themselves 3. They can then send a cease and desist to the original creators to stop selling So they can basically steal new (usually better made) addon campaigns while being paid to do so
Another detail that Charlie didn’t bring up here… if you submit a product for licensing and it’s accepted, Wizards then claims an irrevocable, royalty-free license to use your material in any way they wish, including publishing it themselves or giving it to another company to publish. They effectively own anything you submit. Couple this with their option to “alter the deal further,” and they can approve your book, cancel your license once the books come back from the printer, and then publish your work themselves, without paying you a dime, leaving you on the hook for your massive printing bill, holding thousands of books you’re now legally obligated to destroy. You would have to be insane to agree to this new license.
The funniest parts about this is that they tried changing the OGL before and created their biggest competitor in Paizo who made Pathfinder. Now Kolbold Express, the largest third party creators for DnD, are making a totally free ttrpg system called Project Black Flag. And to add on to that, the article game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is based on the OGL, which is owned by Disney. I’d love to see Hasbro try to profit off of a Disney product when they’ll assassinate you for fanart.
Something that wasn’t touched on was a clause where they own and can use any dnd content you make, even if you don’t minimize it. Like it you make a homebrew campaign or supplemental work and post it online, they can 100% claim and use it themselves. As a DM who has changed and posted a lot of WotC source material, this is the concern that hits me most
Another thing Charlie didn’t touch on: Wizards is now claiming that the OGL “was never meant to” allow for article games, or card games, or board games, or web shows, or indeed anything other than TTRPG content, and so none of that is covered under the new OGL; you have to come to your own license agreement directly with Wizards if you want to do any of that. This is actually pretty fascinating, because there used to be a FAQ on their website stating that the OGL was meant to allow for article games and card games and board games and all sorts of things other than TTRPG content, but it’s gone mysteriously missing. You may have heard of, say, Knights of the Old Republic? Yep, OGL article game… They just remade it, too, didn’t they. That means fucking Disney has some skin in this game.
The funny thing is that Wizards was poised to make so much money off of One D&D. New core rule set being well received, they were going to make a ton off a new DMG and Player’s Manual. Content creators always push and promote official content because it’s the only thing that be universally discussed across every table. Now there’s probably going to be a huge boycott and it’s hard to imagine grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory any harder than this.
Hasbro has been extra shady recently, in ireland they had thier branch taken over by a company called Cartimundi a few years back (same building and company basically) and before christmas people who I know worked there were telling me that recently they were leaving workers, whether they were there for 10 days or 10yrs, with no days of work over 5-6 weeks, only to give them one day and then repeat the 5-6wks to avoid giving them their redundancies as you have to have no work for 13 weeks to claim redundancy in Ireland. Completely scummy leaving people with no money and basically forcing them to leave on their own terms so they didnt have to make payouts so I am not surprised their trying to rake in as much cash as possible.
Perhaps the wildest part of this is the fact that Wizards have tried to get rid of the OGL before – 4th edition didn’t have one – and do you want to know what happened then: Pathfinder, pathfinder happened – people just used the 3.5e OGL to make the first edition of Pathfinder and killed 4e in the water. It’s almost like they forgot people can do that. Also it’s worth mentioning that this new not-so-open “Open Game Licence” has a clause in it that says if you make a piece of content they like (say, a sourcebook for rules on pet ownership or smth) then they can just steal everything in it and publish it as their own.
I’m a small third party publisher that is hit hard by this. We were meant to be launching our Kickstarter this year but everything has had to be put on hold, potentially adding over a year of additional work to pivot our stuff away from D&D if they keep going ahead like this. There are so many issues with the new OGL that will ultimately bankrupt any creator that happens to do well with their content & grants them free use of all our IP in perpetuity. Thank you for covering this, it has felt like we’ve been fightnig an uphill battle for the past few months and I’m glad that more people are being made aware of the truly shitty situation us as third party content creators find ourselves in.
This is the same company that often paid between $5 to $50 to artists for artwork they afterwards owned and would sue artist for using their own artwork afterwards. One major artist hated how Wizards was treating artist so he bought the master artwork from the same artist at the correct market value at the time. He helped many college artists pay their loans and help establish themselves in the art world. Today he has the best master work from MTG card art collection worth millions. Wizard is not stupid to go after him since he is wealthy and has lawyers who would love to go after their past sweat shop style of using new artist.
The plan here is simple: when Wizards switched from 3e to 4e Paizo used the OGL to build out Pathfinder as a way to support the audiance that wanted to kepp playing 3e. Now Wizards is planning to switch from 5e to OneD&D, so they want to make sure that nothing like this happens again. Ofc it’s not going to work, major players of the industry already announced they are going to be making their own rulesets (which will probably be fairly close to 5e), and just going to be making their own content with that. Btw, as much as people love to blame Hasbro for this, this is 100% a WotC party. They have a new leadership which comes from the articlegame industry, so they are treating D&D as a “game as a service” type a thing.
Honestly, Critical Role has gotten so big in the last few years that they could just make their own TTRPG under their Darrington Press tabletop publishing company to compete with Wizards of the Coast. They could make their own rule-set that is just similar enough to be compatible with D&D (their campaigns started on Pathfinder anyway), and with an OGL of their own they would absolutely crush it.
For those who aren’t aware, a substantial portion of the 1.3 billion generated in the community comes from publishing sites like Drivethrurpg and DMsguild which predominately hosts digitally distributed 3rd party content for D&D and other roleplaying game platforms. Thing is, both companies are owned by OneBookShelf. If WotC really wanted to make bank, buying out both companies and maybe merging their content with D&DBeyond (WotC’s own method of publishing its material digitally) would enable them to take a cut and not suffer any backlash if they didn’t touch anything with how those operations are run. It’d save everyone a lot of hassle, anyways.
This is like if a paper factory wanted royalties from your best-selling books. Dungeons & Dragons seems more like a medium or a formula than a product at this point. If the company itself had continually generated custom content, accessories, etc, over the years, then that would be different. But it’s kind of like they invented paper and let us roll with it. Then they want royalties on that paper…
“It takes a lifetime to establish a good reputation. But only a single moment to ruin it” – by Sun Tzu probably Hasbro really trying to one up themselves with anti consumer and anti local game store choices. You can look up how they are not only going more direct to consumer but also pushing Amazon sales to kill the local game stores.
The funniest part is, they behave like they have a monopoly on TTRPGs, but the truth is, should these changes come into play, most of the people will simply move to a different system, there are so many of them, and essentially they don’t really have to be that different, Wizards don’t own the rights to 20-sided dice or statblocks lol
Critical Role was one of my inspirations for getting into Dnd, along with being invited to a Pathfinder game. I have spent probably hundreds so far on source books and subscription service to run my own games. If there’s enough pressure on the big names for them to give up and leave, WoC is going to see a whole generation not brought into the hobby and it quickly drying up.
When you said that Hasbro isn’t doing well, that made perfect sense. These aren’t the moves of business savvy executives with money to burn; these are desperate boneheads trying to turn every trick to squeeze out every extra dollar they can because the company is heavy. I can only expect this will worsen the decline.
Im a DM/GM of about 6 years now, I feel it’s important to note that while this may (hopefully) be the death of WOTC or Hasbro and D&D. This is not the end for tabletop RPG’s as a whole. The great thing about games like this is that they are analog by nature and people will continue to make stuff and play even after the overlords fuck things up. There are tons of other games that are honestly just as good or better than D&D and it’s such a fun community to be part of!
OGL 1.1 is even worse than what this article mentions. There’s a third major change that’s being added: that they can do whatever they want with your content – including repackaging it and selling it as their own. This means that they would not only be able to take 25% royalties, but also sell the stuff in your product as well if they wish. It essentially allows them to double dip. A top comment on the CritCrab article you played has a pretty interesting take on the matter that I thought should also be pointed out: They likely leaked this on purpose to gauge public reaction and then backpedal afterwards.
As someone whos website is dedicated to supporting 3rd party publishers this has been absolutely devastating for so many people I work with and consider friends. I plan to shift my website to cover other systems and the publishers that make those books. I appreciate you covering this and bring more light to this situation! Subbed.
I think this is legitimately a “we’re going to make a move in the future that is absurd. So let’s leak that we’re doing this much more outlandish thing, so the first thing, which we actually want to do, sounds much more reasonable.” The classic “Ill ask Dad for my thing first, cause anything you ask for will sound reasonable afterwards” This isnt like a game, or a game engine which can be held and gripped by the code, this is something anyone can just pick up and walk away from. Absolutely maddening choice
Love both D&D and MTG, but the intense greed from the companies is truly dragging both through the mud. Me and my friends stick to our own casual/homebrew rules so this isn’t such a personal concern, but what is very concerning is the impact on larger websites who are MTG/D&D focussed, many of which I enjoy. It’s been great to see D&D in particular have such a resurgence over the last few years thanks to the streaming websites such as Critical role and the like. In fact, Arcadum was the reason I got back into D&D over the lockdowns, including the campaign Charlie was part of which I very much enjoyed (at the time, this was before all the drama surrounding Arcadum himself) All the custom interesting custom worlds these websites come up with play a HUGE part in this, even if someone’s not into the traditional D&D world, there’s such a wide variety for different people to get into, my friends do a Warhammer 40k one and Lost Pause is even doing a Pokémon themed D&D. This just helps to bring the hobby to a much wider audience and what the companies themselves are doing goes against that. It’s just been nice to see the community grow to a much wider spectrum recently and see so many people who’ve never played discover a niche within that they really enjoy. I just hope the companies actions don’t ruin that and everyone continues to do their thing
D&D has been a huge part of my life over the last decade. It was a way to bond with friends, practice telling stories before pursuing a career as a writer, and just exist in a space where I could be someone else for a while. I lost a lot of friends and family members in 2014-2015, and I might have gone full hermit if I didn’t have something like D&D that made me want to interact with people when I didn’t strictly need to. I owe the people who actually make D&D a huge debt for that. The designers and writers at WotC didn’t make this choice. Greedy executives did. And unfortunately, it’s everyone else who will pay the price for it. I have an entire shelf on my bookshelf dedicated to 5e books. But even if they change course and don’t put out this OGL, the trust is gone. WotC will never get another cent from me.
Small dnd creator here. Thanks for covering this Charlie. WoTC is walking a path that would kill creativity in their game that is completely about creativity. They would lose the modules and homebrew 5e content that builds this game up into a better version of itself. Not to mention just giving themselves full power to come after any dnd youtuber as well. I hope the social pressure they’re facing makes them revert these changes. They’re a billion dollar company, they don’t need anything else.
Ever since the old ceo retired they have been maximizing profits and trying to maximize literal gambling with their pack system, filling most sets with 1-2 great cards hoping that the community will spend 100+ dollars on a chance to get that specific card, which if you want to buy that specific card costs over 50 dollars while simultaneously not acknowledging the third party market, which is literally the only reason they are still making money off of magic, while laying off all of their artists to try to maximize profits with AI art, I hate wizards more than 95% of companies, I have stopped playing magic and dnd specifically to stop supporting them and I wish that more people would also do the same 😊
This really reminds me of when Games Workshop did the exact same thing to the Warhammer Fandom a few years ago, and I can tell you, this is only going to hurt Wizards in the long run. When GW did what they did, it made a lot of fans (myself included) completely jump ship, and those who didn’t completely jump ship just found ways to continue playing the game without giving GW any money. Most players 3D print armies now, or buy 3D printed models from a 3rd party. I imagine something similar is going to happen to Wizards of the Coast.
This whole situation is such a slap in the face to loyal DND players (you know, the people making them the most money). I’ve literally spent hundreds of dollars just on books alone. I know there are people who have spent *thousands*. Now I and many others are cancelling D&DBeyond subscriptions, looking for new systems, and genuinely considering never touching anything DND again. This is probably one of, if not the worst decision WOTC and Hasbro have ever made, at least in the last few decades. It’s a real shame.
I’ve been in a campaign for about 2-3 years now. D&D has become a major part of my life and me and my DM regularly make content and post it on DMsGuild. We’ve made subclasses, a class, countless spells, we’re working on a monster book and on a campaign book. We come up with the concepts, he makes sure they’re balanced, I illustrate and they look really good imo. We are passionate about it and believe that there’s no better game if you have the right group. This new change is shocking to me. I really cannot fathom how delusional you have to be to kill what made you, the community… I really wanted to one day be able to make D&D content full time, but that doesn’t seem like a possibility if this goes through.
You didn’t mention the 2nd biggest issue with the leaked OGL…It states that WotC OWNS everything you make and can take it without paying you, and use it however they please. So paired with the fact they can terminate your contract at any time, they can see your product making money, terminate your contract so you make no more money, and then claim ownership of the product to claim ALL the money it makes. (Edit) Also forgot to mention that the OGL says you can’t sue them if they do this either
This is really a bad situation right now. Imagine having a passion for something and you want to share it with the world. And suddenly a big company disallows you to do what you want, because they want to make a quick buck. I honestly hope for websites like Critical Role and others that they will find a solution here🤔
I think the worst part is them being able to use any stuff that these 3rd parties created as their own, at any time and even start consider them as their own propriety .. imagine, you make something nice, the find it, they start using it and then they terminate the contract with you after 30 days notice.
Before Critical Role started streaming their Vox Machina campaign, they were actually playing it using the Pathfinder system. That’s why Percy is a Gunslinger, and why the whole party had so many magic items at such a comparatively low level. They only switched to D&D when they started streaming. And maybe their ties to D&D are too deep to just drop it all now, but I can’t help but wonder if they might go back to Pathfinder instead of letting WotC tap them for royalties, or maybe even switch to an entirely new system altogether. After all, Critrole has been mindful to not infringe on any potential copyrights lately – they’ve stopped using brand-exclusive names (by making up their own names for the deities and referring to Goliaths as “half-giants” instead, for example), so maybe they’ve already been trying to enforce some deliberate distance between themselves and the brand, in case they’d ever need to step away. I really hope this stupid move will backfire hard on WotC, by companies like Critrole withdrawing their support for the label.
The craziest part about the OGL changes is that all the stuff I’ve heard from lawyers about the leaks basically boils down to: “yeah, they probably can’t get rid of the first OGL.” So not only are they absolutely destroying their own reputation, but even if they didn’t alienate their player base it still wouldn’t have gotten them anything.
My friends and I have been playing a consistent dnd campaign every week for over a year. They got into it by perusal Critical Role and brought me along. At first, I just pirated all the books I needed to play – they are very easily available online. After a while, I went out of my way to buy all the physical rule books, which I still don’t actually bother to use or bring to the sessions, just because I felt I should support the company making the IP. I think a lot of casual players, after this change, will continue playing but just won’t buy the books that provide Wizards revenue. They don’t realize they are operating on a good will model with their customers
the best part of dungeons and dragons is being able to create your own worlds, characters, stories and sharing them with everyone else in the community. Sitting down and writing your own campaign and publishing it for people to be able to play, things like that. But now if these leaks are true, our own work can be taken from us without any repercussions on wizards, all of our love for this game stripped away for corporate greed. Taking the freedom and creativity away from dungeons and dragons is the same as taking away the fanbase itself
Thank you for covering this Charlie. The community needs loud voices right now to save both Magic the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. The CEO of Hasbro Chris Cocks and Cynthia Williams the president of Wizards of the Coast are the main villains in this. Please anyone that wants to help please sign surveys or write in social sites to protest against this. It’s a a dark time right now. We need help.
If they actually go through with this, the community is just gonna adapt, and make their own game. It may be called something new, but you can hardly copyright the base of d&d. Such as character sheets, dice, imagination, maps, etc. I guarantee you, if this goes through, the D&D will rise from the ashes of wizards of the coast like a Phoenix, and start anew
As someone who has been keeping up with both D&D and MTG; especially the recent drama in both subjects (shitty 30 year anniversary and Brothers war in MTG; and the OGL drama in One: D&D), I am very happy Charlie decided to cover this issue. This doesn’t just affect these areas; rather, this is another offense that companies need to be told is a big no no. 😔
I’m so glad that you decided to cover this. We need more people talking about this so WoTC can get their shit together. It’s honestly insane how they think they could do this to their own fan base and would wouldn’t say anything. I’m also glad to see the community coming together like this we have to show them they can’t do whatever they want and we don’t do anything.
I was on the train back to Rhode Island from New York last night and there was a businessman behind me who kept talking on the phone/ voice message about gaming-related things in very vague terms but with levels of urgency. He got off with me at Providence, where there’s a big Hasbro office not far from their headquarters in Pawtucket. My wild guess is that it was probably some Hasbro guy trying to damage control.
Initial thoughts having done some thinking and discussing with people around me: Wizards of the Coast is fucking up big time. The previous contracts stated very clearly that they would not ever do this, the writers of those previous contracts are still alive and able to fight it, there are SO MANY sources from Wizards of the Coast that literally say “we’re not going to do anything bad” so this is potentially just a big storm of lawsuits or the company bleeding itself out by losing a lot of its sources of profit. I may edit after perusal the article if my thoughts change or if I feel like I can discuss anything on a deeper level.
I really appreciate how you clarified Hasbro’s role in all of this. WotC is a (relatively) small studio– like the entire D&D studio is TINY compared to any digital game company of the same popularity. WotC has its ups and down’s creatively, but never would I expect such extreme business choices from just a handful of leadership.
Critcrab has posted a statement from a WotC employee. Whether the post is real or not, with the way management has been handling things, I am inclined to believe that they really do see their customers as obstacles to their money It sucks even more cuz we’re supposed to be their supporters, yet they see us as obstacles :/
Hasbro literally put out a post a few months ago on social media after they got a new CEO announcing that they were aiming to increase profits by 50%. They’ve been treating the action figure community with this exact same amount of disrespect and price gouging, both on this extreme end with some Haslab projects being $400 for like one figure and a toy car, but also with every single item going up by about $5.
I really appreciate you covering the MTG side of Hasbro’s (and yes Hasbro is the main one making these decisions) fuckery because I make my living running a MTG store. I’ve been very frustrated that their treatment of the game over the last 4 years hasn’t made major headlines and am honestly a little annoyed that people only look when it’s DnD, but that’s why I’m so appreciative of you talking about it first here. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing a light on this Charlie. Our entire community is on fire right now over this whole thing, many of them who are not even sure if they are going to have jobs next week. Hopefully Wizards of the Coast backtracks on this, but even if they do, I fear the trust we had as been irrevocably damaged. D&D might never be the same again after this.
One of the great things about Dungeons and Dragons was that it was a shared universe for all to enjoy. Settings like Faerun, Eberron, and Dragonlance were just meant to give people an anchor for their adventure. Now, thanks to Hasbro, any adventure in those settings that is profitable are now subject to monetization, even if they’re not canon.
Keep an eye on Paozo, they will be the biggest ones to fight this new OGL. For those who dont know, Paizo is the people behind Pathfinder 1st and 2nd edition. While Pathfinder 2e is it’s own diverse system, 1e is based off of DND3.5. This was possible because of the original OGL, because they weren’t happy about the direction WOTC was taking DND with its upcoming 4th edition. If the new OGL passes, Paizo will have a whole can of worms to deal with, now being heavily under WOTC influence for their older works. Not to mention various article games that use the OGL to build on, like Knights of The Old Republic, Solasta: Crown of The Magister, and the 2 Pathf8nder games developed by Owlcat, Kingmaker and Wrath Of The Righteous.
What I’m getting is this: Hasbro is sinking and wants to bring down everything with it. This is out of pure spite, not to save themselves but to destroy everything they can. If they can’t win, then no one can. They’ve decided “no one can have good things,” and this is the apocalypse they have wrought.
Games Workshop really paved the way in treating your consumer base with borderline open contempt in order to maximize profits while continuing to improve brand awareness and maintain market dominance. It makes sense for Hasbo of The Coast to test those limits too. If there’s enough pushback from the community to shut down what they’re trying here it will be forgotten faster than you can say “our sales figures don’t really seem to line up negatively with the volume of public outcry.”
Love that you’re covering it, but this is only the half of it. There’s a lot more to talk about. For one, a lot of games beyond D&D and beyond WotC are using the current OGL 1.0a. If OGL 1.1 succeeds in unauthorizing 1.0a, then tons of games, big and small, will become in breach of the OGL. This includes (if I’m not mistaken) Pathfinder, Traveller, OpenD6, Fate, Fudge, Gumshoe, 13th Age, Dungeon World, and more. Dipping into “I heard it from internet lawyers” territory, chances are that OGL 1.1 won’t make it through if they try it as-is. It could, but it wouldn’t do what WotC want it to do in court: invalidate 1.0a. Also, I would bet that Paizo — who owns Pathfinder and is in one of the better positions to fight it — would want to fight it. Then there’s the idea floating around that WotC intentionally leaked 1.1 to garner anger, so that the actual next OGL they’ll propose will look better by comparison, despite still being worse than 1.0a. It’s easier to get someone to accept a bad outcome if you offer a worse one first. Swap “WotC” with “Hasbro” wherever you’d like, it doesn’t matter much, they’re off the deep end in any case.
The bigger unspoken issue in this story: Is it time for new laws that prohibit these kinds of licenses ? Isn’t this starting to become anti free market and anti fair use ? Before this, we have a healthy ecosystem where jobs are created out of this game, and the main company still earns a large amount of money from this ecosystem as well, be that by proxy (buy the base books to play 3rd party campaign) or advertisement (critical role). At the very least I believe the vast majority of people can agree that retroactively changing agreements is 20 steps too far, something that does not have a law to prohibit such things for some reason.
I have been playing D&D since my junior year of high school in 1998. Since 2nd Edition. I remember making the switch to 3rd Edition when it released and the announcement of the OGL, and how it changed the TTRPG landscape. It was, to put it mildly, revolutionary. I also remember 4th Edition and how no one I knew played it. We all either stuck with 3.5 or moved to Pathfinder. This is truly gutwrenching.
Thanks for reporting on this Charlie, its great to see that the community is getting their voice heard. However there is also more to this shit-fire. What also scares creators in this field is that WoTC also gains ownership of you content and are given freedom to use it however they wish. While this is standard language in many creative licensing contracts, if this is applied retroactively, then all those creators who have worked hard creating amazing worlds and content, will no longer be required to be given credit.
I’ve noticed with companies over the last 10 years that nobody sells anything to make money or a living… they sell to get instant rich and as much money as humanly possible. Every industry. Every company. They all started doing the same thing. Charging the maximum amount they can get away with. It super sucks. Price gouging as gone insane.
This is the first time i see Charlie mention Lost At Sea, hahaha. For those who don’t know, Lost At Sea was the DnD campaign Charlie participated (with folks such as Ludwig and Dunkey), the GM he talked about had been discovered for cheating on his fiancé with many other women a month after the campaign ended, it was wild
Not only that, but even if you use the pre written adventures you as the DM still have to write your own content to adjust to your player’s decisions. If they get rid of that then it ruins DND all together. The fun of DND is that you can run the same adventure with different groups and get a totally different story and experience each time.
After I graduated from college in my mid twenties, 2015, 5th edition was the reason I was into D&D. The Forgotten Realms set in Magic was the reason I got into Magic. The Tavern I go to in Boston is where they have pre-releases and D&D is where I was able to socialize. Thank you for being a respecting the spirit of D&D, also thank you for mentioning The Professor of the Tolarian Community College, I was able to back his Kickstarter.
an update on the DnD situation: as of a couple months ago, WotC more or less completely backed down on the changes, apologized, and even made parts of 5e creative commons (which is a really big move, as it actually further formalizes the open status of the DnD IP, beyond just a company policy that could clearly just be changed on a whim at any time). Why did they completely back peddle? Well, obviously, Wizards/Hasbro was only doing this in the first place because they’re not in an ideal financial position rn (or at least, that is how they see things), and the enormous and rapid consumer backlash to the decision, which included a virtually overnight surge in sales for practically every other reasonably popular TTRPG besides DnD, clearly freaked them out, and they thus were made to realize that this terrible decision would ultimately lose them more money in the long run than it would pull in. This should be an important case study for everyone: when a company that is already desperate makes moves like this, it’s usually a sign of vulnerability, and thus the consumer base of said company actually holds a lot of bargaining power, and thus making a big public show of absolutely not taking that shit actually can (and often will) scare a company into switching gears. Granted, I’m sure if they’re not seeing the profit margins they’d like, Wizards/Hasbro will still continue to find other scummy ways of squeezing whatever extra cash they can out of the fans of their properties, but at least they’ve been discouraged from doing in so in one of the most egregious and harmful ways they could.
I was always under the impression that dnd was that kind of game, like tic-tac-toe or hangman where there wasn’t any ‘official’ rules and it was basically just handed down over generations and augmented based on how you wanted to play. Me and my group of friends play dnd once in a while, and a lot of us got brought in from popular media (I got interested from Gravity Falls, I think they got interested from Stranger Things). I really only use the Wizards rules as a guideline for specific numbers and spells sometimes, but for the most part we basically only use custom stuff. Our gm uses custom campaigns, most of our players use custom characters that rarely fall under their races/classes, and frankly we have the philosophy of “if you can explain why it makes sense, you can do it” so we barely use their rulebook to begin with. Honestly, I’d sometimes barely classify it as “Dungeon and Dragons” anymore as much as it is “That Custom Tabletop RPG I Play with my Friends”.
I feel it’s worth mentioning that that royalty fee is based on gross profits, meaning that Wizards gets a 25% cut before your writers, artists, designers, printers, retail partners, etc. This is huge for Kickstarted projects that makes their intial sales up front. MCDM isn’t exactly a major player in the TTRPG space, but they did a Kickstarter for 2 million, meaning WotC would have taken 245K off the top if this happened after these changes drop, and that’s a lot of money that should have gone to developement and fufillment. Also, a lot of people sell their products through digital storefronts like DriveThruRPG, which also take a cut. Near half the money gone before anyone gets paid.
Critical role is big enough at this point that they could actually just make their own system swap to that and make extra money from everyone buying their new thing. It’s not hard to use other systems. There are so many. I’ve had 2 games that have swapped mid campaign because we felt a different system would work better for the game we were playing. Wizards is relying very heavily on the idea that people with cling to dnd with all their might instead of just like switching to Pathfinder or gurps or any of the other d20 systems that exist
D&D has always been fun because it allowed anyone to have endless fun by using as little as our own imagination. I’ve played campaigns that take place in the wild west, or imperial Japan, with the only actual game supplies being a player sheet. Some would even say it’s not even D&D anymore, it’s just cooperative storytelling. But, if we did want to start streaming these sessions, we would be at risk of paying some CEO royalties for our own original ideas.
It’s crazy to me because WOTC are already making money off shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20. They’ve brought in a ton of new players. Their explosion in popularity is entirely thanks to the creators they’re now hurting. The fact that they’re targeting home brew content is honestly insane, especially since it sounds like they are going to be applying it retroactively to groups and companies who made their content before the change based on the previous OGL.
Ty Charlie for covering one of my closet hobbies. I was actually surprised you hadn’t gone over this subject when it was hot, maybe due to editing and other content you delayed this one but the worse thing is the exec’s straight up stated they are happy with the current state of reprints and releases, not even touching upon the proxy 30th anniversary cards they are promoting to prevent them from getting sued per the “promise” WotC made when the “list” was created. Thank you again for covering this.
Im a junior in high school who started the Dungeons and Dragons club. There are so many different types of experienced players, but the thing that is common with ALL of them is their creativity. Ive seen experienced DMs run campaigns using different rule sets that arent apart of official DnD content (one of my close friends is running a DnDestiny campaign right now) and a lot of new people tend to like trying to homebrew races and other things. These things are also shared amongst the people in the club, and a lot of the stuff they make is freaking great. Seeing this from WoC has broken my freaking heart. I hate that this is happening.
Everyone should take an interest in Kobold Press Black Flag. They announced it immediately after this leak dropped and it’s planned to be a “new Core Fantasy tabletop ruleset: available, open, and subscription-free for those who love it.” Kobold Press is an established company and so this is well worth keeping an eye on as one of what will probably be many potential replacements for D&D.
as a 25 year player/DM, i have supported a lot of the smaller, third-party companies that have gotten successful with D&D content in the last few years. when i heard of the changes to the OGL, it was kind of a sickening moment realizing just how devious this new OGL was going to become. after 25 years, i’m walking away from D&D for good. even if Hasbro and WotC walk it back in an effort to do “damage control”, i cannot trust them not to try it again later. this was a massive f-up on their part.
I actually learned something today and changed my position on something. I admit I thought the people crying about the MTG reprints were just scalpers that treat the cards like gamestop stocks and were mad their investment was going down. I didn’t know they couldn’t actually be used in a deck or played at all. That’s insane. So thanks for educating me!
I follow a small team of content creators called Narrative Declaration who are just about to disappear because of this. They’re a really great group, but some members work full time and are practically getting their livelihood and work squandered by corporate, which is such a sad sight. Man I hope they can make it out
I’m in multiple campaigns across multiple discord servers and the first move everyone made was to cancel any WotC related subscriptions and start planning future games in pathfinder and MotW. Even before the policy is finalized, its going to cost them as everyday players move on to the literally hundreds of other systems available.
Another part: Wizards of the Coast can take any content you publish under the new license. They do not need to tell you, credit you, and they can change it however they want. They own your IP as long as it uses their system as a skeleton. This also affects other companies like paizo, which has made its own game (pathfinder) and competes with dnd, despite having its own separate rules that are similar to dnd, but different enough to have its own rulebooks
It must be pretty hard to monetize a creative endeavour such as D&D. However, killing creators off of your creative product is the product’s suicide. I reckon launching more lore-related books could’ve inspired more people to buy the products off their hands whilst maintaining the community – but they failed to create any inspiring lore books for a while now.
Thank you for bringing more eyes to this. The RPG community is in an uproar and your coverage is a great boost to help expose WotC/Hasbro for the predacious bad actors that they are. I’m out of touch with a lot of things that you cover so I think you’ve really helped tear the lid off exactly when it needed to be.
I’ve been playing Magic for a huge part of my life and is such a significant part of it. Some of my closest friends, and some of my best connections, are people in the community, and I love the community to death. 30th anniversary upset me greatly, and I appreciate someone like you with such a large platform shed light on the greed the company is indulging itself in. Magic is not dead, it’s still the greatest game on the planet, and the greatest community of people. They just need to clean up their recent momentary lapses in judgement
We were planning on launching our product soon which was based on 5E system which basically updated the GammaWorld setting for a new generation to play, but this cancels this altogether. This is frustrating after we have done the entire outline for the 400 page book, and finished around 68 pages of text, and spend over a thousand dollars of personal money to buy hundreds of nice color artwork and fillers.
Thank you Charlie, for pointing out just how fucked up contracts and laws can be with blatant ways to subvert said rulings planted within them. They literally set a limit for their rules, and then immediately put in a rule after that states “btw that rule doesn’t really matter, we can just do whatever we want.” This is how a lot of modern contracts and laws are worded, so that these enforcers can break their own rules, because their rule let’s them break their own rules
Back in the 90s, when the World Wide Web was just starting to really take off and people were creating web sites dedicated to D&D, the original parent company of D&D, TSR, sent out legal notices to everyone that came to their attention that more or less said that anything you posted on a web site that used ANY D&D copyrighted content (in the opinion of TSR’s lawyers) had to be removed. The implication being if it wasn’t removed, bad things would happen. Instead, and TSR tried to make this sound like a good thing, player generated content that used TSR copyrighted materials (in the opinion of TSR’s lawyers) was to be sent to TSR for inclusion on their web site. Effectively, they were trying to turn fans of their game into uncompensated freelance writers. The outrage was so bad, some players actually boxed up their D&D books and mailed them to TSR quitting the game in protest. By 1997, TSR was near bankruptcy, and was acquired by Wizards of the Coast. Without question, TSR’s hostility toward people creating content for their games and posting it on the Web played a part. It’s a shame that WotC/Hasbro seems to have learned nothing.
If they really try to make this retroactive then they’ll get sued to hell and back. A license is an agreement, when people did their creations they accepted that agreement, and by law you cannot go changing an agreement after it has been signed/accepted legally. Only new products can be monetized because they’ll fall into the new “open game license” (Which is now not open). So I’d say: Let them f’around and find out.
The reason whyD&D could be so charming is because it hasn’t been extremely monetized or configured for a bigger user base. It was like total freedom for anyone hopping in, but even if D&D ruins itself. We still have older versions. And we still have multiple other “versions” under different names, a lot of them being from the original creators of D&D. If the name kills itself, the style of play could never change. It’s up to a DM what happens anyways lol
Well. You should follow up on this Charlie. They have managed to alienate their entire fan base. I run two youth library programs, and one of them is a tabletop role-playing game group for tweens and teens. I have a meeting later today to discuss with the director of the library the fact that we will no longer be using any Wotc products in our program. Is absolutely Christmas for me as a DM because now I get to run all this great third-party content that has been gathering dust on my shelves for years. I get to go buy more!
As someone that doesn’t usually watch your content, I am glad that a guy like you spread the word about this, as it will reach a greater number of people than with smaller creators. I’m not expecting the whole of your community to push back, but I appreciate the debate going mainstream instead of being kept in its geeky specific niche. Cheerz