Wizards of the Coast Won't Change OGL, SRD Available Under Creative Commons
Dungeons & Dragons OGL update plans were cancelled by Wizards of the Coast, SRD will be placed under Creative Commons license.
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| Wizards of the Coast Won't Change OGL, SRD Available Under Creative Commons |
Rolling out a proposed change to Open Game License (OGL) for renowned tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, publisher Wizards of the Coast and its parent company Hasbro, Inc. has started a controversy early this month.
After weeks of protests and outcry, Wizards of the Coast has decided to cancel its initial plan to update Dungeons & Dragons OGL, which will make System Reference Document (SRD) available under a Creative Commons license as well.
For years, content creators, players and third-party publishers were using DnD systems, defined in SRD. When recently, Wizards attempted to introduce an updated OGL earlier, fan-community almost immediately protested against this.
Wizards of the Coast officially confirmed that OGL 1.0a version will remain unchanged and SRD 5.1 comes under Creative Commons attribution 4.0 international license, after running a survey to fans regarding planned changes to OGL.
D&D Beyond announces that OGL 1.0a remains unchanged and SRD 5.1 comes under Creative Commons license.
Over the past few weeks you, the community, have made your voices heard. And we’ve listened. OGL 1.0a will remain untouched AND the entire SRD 5.1 is now available under a Creative Commons license.🧵 https://t.co/hJTm2Rgruo pic.twitter.com/qiBODaB7oj
— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) January 27, 2023
OGL 1.2 survey shows 88% participants won't want to publish content under new rules and 89% were unhappy with de-authorization of OGL 1.0a with another 62% people were pleased to see SRD will now be under Creative Commons.
However, some D&D fans want Wizards to add even more to Creative Commons as anyone can copy and redistribute these materials to any medium or through different formats, build, remix and transform for any purpose, even sales.
Under new OGL changes, major franchises would've been affected including Pathfinder as well as tabletop adaptations of Dark Souls and The Lord of the Rings but companies and fans can use DnD systems by simply adding an attribute.
Dungeons & Dragons backlash regarding OGL changes were one of the most successful protests in gaming industry. D&D Beyond subscriptions were being cancelled en masse when a proposed change to OGL by WotC was leaked online.
