It’s been a strange, turbulent time for RPG tabletop tentpole Dungeons & Dragons. Perhaps you’ve seen the vitriol lobbed at the franchise over the last two weeks. Io9 has the best breakdown of the situation. It really boiled down to the OGL, Open Game License, requiring royalty payments for “creatives who make more than $750,000 on products using the D&D license.”
Fan response to this was swift, ugly, and resulted in lots and LOTS of subscription cancellations. The D&DBeyond subscriptions page went down from the sheer amount.
This prompted parent company Hasbro to messily attempt to triage the situation. Which of course just made things way worse.
Kyle Brink, Executive Producer on D&D, has now apologized to fans and players on behalf of the company.
I am here today to talk about a path forward.
First, though, let me start with an apology. We are sorry. We got it wrong.
Our language and requirements in the draft OGL were disruptive to creators and not in support of our core goals of protecting and cultivating an inclusive play environment and limiting the OGL to TTRPGs. Then we compounded things by being silent for too long. We hurt fans and creators, when more frequent and clear communications could have prevented so much of this.
Starting now, we’re going to do this a better way: more open and transparent, with our entire community of creators. With the time to iterate, to get feedback, to improve.
The blog post reveals a survey is coming, as well as a ‘clarification’ on some of the OGL updates.
But is this too little too late for the company to save face with hardcore fans? Only time will tell.
Read the full statement here.
