Dungeons & Dragons’ publisher will put the game under a Creative Commons license

techcrunch.com:

It looks like Dungeons & Dragons just succeeded on a death-saving throw. After weeks of backlash and protests from fans and content creators, Wizards of the Coast — the Hasbro-owned publisher of Dungeons & Dragons — announced that it will now license the tabletop role-playing game’s core mechanics under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This gives the community “a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license” to publish and sell works based on Dungeons & Dragons.

“Overall, what we’re going for here is giving good-faith creators the same level of freedom (or greater, for the things in Creative Commons) to create TTRPG content that’s been so great for everyone, while giving us the tools to ensure the game continues to become ever more inclusive and welcoming,” wrote Dungeons & Dragons executive producer Kyle Brink in a blog post.

This is a massive change of heart for the gaming giant. Earlier this month, Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) sent a document with a new open gaming license (OGL) to top Dungeons & Dragons content creators, asking them to sign what they called “OGL 1.1.” Some creators leaked the document in protest, exposing its predatory terms that would suffocate the prolific fan community and collapse some creators’ businesses. The now-retracted OGL 1.1 would have required any Dungeons & Dragons creator earning over $50,000 to write reports to WoTC, and any making over $750,000 to start paying a 25% royalty. These numbers might seem high, but these figures refer to gross revenue, not income — and the industry of third-party Dungeons & Dragons content is so large that the impact would be severe. Other creators worried about a clause in the contract that would