Dungeons & Dragons fans are furious with developer Wizards of the Coast over the company's tone in its OGL controversy response.
Multiple DnD players took to social media after Wizards of the Coast finally responded to fan outcry over its leaked OGL, criticizing the company for its approach. In particular, many took issue with one specific line from the document. After explaining its reasoning for the changes and agreeing to alter some specifics in the final OGL, the company wrote, "You're going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we."
DnD Fans Are Not Amused
Several fans accused the company of gaslighting, calling the tone "petulant," and expressed disbelief that a PR team or lawyer approved the message. Others said they could not believe the "audacity" of WotC to declare that it had won too. Most agreed that the overall tone sounded childish and proved that Wizards of the Coast did not care about players. Twitter user Liisa Lee (@Liisabelle) responded to the "we won" message with shock, saying, "This bit is so gaslighting & petulant I dropped my jaw. Legal & PR said go on that? Seriously."
Wizards of the Coast had already angered fans with a previous response earlier in the week, tweeted out from the D&D Beyond account, telling fans it would have an answer soon. It came nearly a week after the updated OGL broke, with many gamers causing several related phrases to trend on social media over the following week. The hashtag #OpenDnD became massively popular over the week, leading to an open letter for Wizards of the Coast demanding the developer cancel its planned update for the OGL.
"Nothing about this new license is "open," the letter argued. "It chokes the vibrant community that has flourished under the original license. No matter the creator, it locks everyone into a new contract that restricts their work, makes it mandatory to report their projects and revenues to Wizards of the Coast, and gives WotC the legal right to reproduce and resell creators' content without permission or compensation."
In the meantime, players continue to jump ship from DnD to other TTRPG systems. Third-party creators responded to this reaction, with popular publisher Kobold Press declaring the creation of its own fantasy core ruleset codenamed Project Black Flag. Pathfinder developer Paizo recently revealed it had joined forces with Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games and Rogue Genius Games to create a "system neutral open RPG license" in response to Wizards of the Coast's updated OGL.
Source: Twitter