Will WotC's plans to change the OGL affect NWN:EE or Beamdog's future releases?
Unkillable_Weasel
Member Posts: 1
From what little I understand of the legalese, any not-for-profit hobby stuff based on the D&D systems would still be "fair use," so fan module creators would not be directly affected, other than having to sign WotC's new "non-commercial Open Gaming License."
But could this change in licensing contracts prevent Beamdog from releasing any further updates or premium modules? Could it force Steam and GOG to increase the price to recoop the 25% cut that Wizards of the Coast wants to take from third party company's revenue? Or for that matter, would it make any further work on refurbishing and porting other old D&D-based CRPGs impossible or just not financially worth it, if Beamdog has to give a big chunk of their profits to WotC for any future releases? I've just clicked my way through Beamdog's chain of parent companies on Wikipedia, and from what I can tell, they're not directly linked to WotC or Hasbro in any way, so that means they would have to pay the royalty fees, right?
Or, since the wording of OGL 1.1 means the old version "is no longer an authorized license agreement" and that "any prior agreements are no longer in force" as of January 13th, and the new version explicitly does not allow the creation of computer games, does that mean we'll have to wait on any further updates until Beamdog have negotiated an individualized licensing contract with WotC? (Or until some industry lawsuit forced them to abide by the terms of OGL 1.0a that has been covering third party releases using D&D 3e/3.5e for the last 2 decades.)
Will Beamdog even want to keep releasing D&D-based commercial content if WotC can now "change or terminate the licensing contract for any reason at 30 days notice," and so can disrupt Beamdog's business at any time?
My questions are directed towards Beamdog's spokeperson, but if somebody else has read this and is going "Wait, what?!" now, here's a rundown of the issue with helpful explanations from lawyers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqFFdHWEuvM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPV7-NCmWBQ
But could this change in licensing contracts prevent Beamdog from releasing any further updates or premium modules? Could it force Steam and GOG to increase the price to recoop the 25% cut that Wizards of the Coast wants to take from third party company's revenue? Or for that matter, would it make any further work on refurbishing and porting other old D&D-based CRPGs impossible or just not financially worth it, if Beamdog has to give a big chunk of their profits to WotC for any future releases? I've just clicked my way through Beamdog's chain of parent companies on Wikipedia, and from what I can tell, they're not directly linked to WotC or Hasbro in any way, so that means they would have to pay the royalty fees, right?
Or, since the wording of OGL 1.1 means the old version "is no longer an authorized license agreement" and that "any prior agreements are no longer in force" as of January 13th, and the new version explicitly does not allow the creation of computer games, does that mean we'll have to wait on any further updates until Beamdog have negotiated an individualized licensing contract with WotC? (Or until some industry lawsuit forced them to abide by the terms of OGL 1.0a that has been covering third party releases using D&D 3e/3.5e for the last 2 decades.)
Will Beamdog even want to keep releasing D&D-based commercial content if WotC can now "change or terminate the licensing contract for any reason at 30 days notice," and so can disrupt Beamdog's business at any time?
My questions are directed towards Beamdog's spokeperson, but if somebody else has read this and is going "Wait, what?!" now, here's a rundown of the issue with helpful explanations from lawyers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqFFdHWEuvMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPV7-NCmWBQ 0
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