if the dd licensing controversy was a game session itd be the sort of garbagetruckonfire disaster that becomes legendary amongst your group but the reality isnt something you can laugh about over a beer for thirdparty creators like richard august lead rpg writer at steamforged games perhaps best known for its tabletop adaptations of dark souls and elden ring its an owngoal that was badly misjudged on every conceivable level in fact it may have created dds next big rivalupdate jan 27 2023image credit wizards of the coastit seems like the uproar over a new dd ogl worked since this article was published the company has completely backed down from those controversial changes in a surprise heelturn original story followsthe original dd open game license or ogl has been kicking around since 2000 allowing other creators to use mechanics from one of the best tabletop rpgs in their own products the result was a thriving community that tackled new concepts or expanded on ideas dd publisher wizards of the coast had introducedthe ogl became this very fertile ground for small companies to get a start august explains when we catch up to discuss the issue in midjanuary it basically created the modern industry as we know it and while it didnt provide direct money to wizards what it did create was an ecosystem in which everything fed back into dd to make use of these games you needed the players handbook you needed the monster manual you needed the dms guide it was essentially a brilliant marketing strategy because it solidified dd as the biggest game on the market a lack of initiativeimage credit wizards of the coastshortly after new year an unexpected resolution emerged via a document leaked to io9 it was revealed that a new ogl would be changing all that invalidating the original ogl 11 put forward an array of unpopular changes but the headline was the introduction of royalty payments any dd creator earning more than 750000 a year would have to pay 25 of its profits or 20 if made through kickstarter to wizards of the coast it was a crippling blow to many thirdparty creators leading to a public outcry where so many fans canceled their online dd subscriptions that it crashed the pagethe margins in rpgs are razorthin as they are says august and once you start paying out 20 of anything youre earning over 750k its unsustainable people arent going to play ballrichard augustas the team behind a ddpowered dark souls rpg steamforged is one of the groups in the firing line for this change while august thinks the company could weather that storm it would still be a deathknell for projects and livelihoods across the industry at largepeople arent going to play ball he says because the impact would be to basically make a huge number of smaller companies financially unviable and the larger companies would be paying an enormous chunk on not that much how are you going