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As outrage over Sony’s physical media crusade builds, Dungeons & Dragons players like myself can’t help but feel a sense of deja-vu.
A few years ago, Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro, the companies that develop and distribute D&D, pulled a very similar stunt to the one Sony is pulling now. The D&D community fought back and won, and the “Save the Disc” movement might want to study their tactics.
The great Dungeons & Dragons debacle of 2022 revolved around the Open-Game License (OGL). This long-standing copyright agreement allowed independent game developers to use D&D‘s core mechanics to create and distribute original content without fear of reprisal. From fan-favorite D&D adventure modules to entirely new TTRPGs like Pathfinder, the creative freedom promised by the OGL led to some amazing creations.
So when Hasbro and Wizards announced they were planning to “update” the OGL in the tail end of 2022, D&D fans were understandably put off. Within weeks of the news, a version of the “OGL 1.1” was leaked by Gizmodo, revealing that the planned document not only gave Hasbro and Wizards complete creative control over any products produced under it, but also cut hefty chunks out of the developers’ revenue through royalty fees.
To say that the D&D fan community felt betrayed would be a colossal understatement, and its response was swift and brutal. Third-party content creators severed their working relationship with Hasbro and Wizards, major D&D-themed live shows announced their intention to switch to other TTRPG systems, and D&D players launched a well-coordinated boycott of D&D content.
While Hasbro and Wizards initially hoped the outrage would blow over, their hopes withered as the months dragged on. Scraping their plans to move forward with the new OGL, the companies instead enshrined D&D‘s core rules under a Creative Commons agreement, officially bending their knees to the community.
As Sony marches forward with its plans to eliminate physical media, the company’s critics are looking for ways to convince it to reverse course. It’s not exactly the same setup, naturally, but perhaps inspiration can be drawn from those who roll dice and do funny voices. They won, after all.
0The post Dungeons & Dragons players know how to beat ‘unbeatable’ companies; ‘Save the disc’ could learn a thing or two from them appeared first on Destructoid.
