The legendary tabletop RPG and the second most valuable intellectual property of Wizard Of The Coast have been the talk of the gaming and fandom community for a few days and this is what has been going on.
Everything started when Wizard Of The Coast originally announced a new version of the OGL to version 1.1 and OGL stands for Open Gaming License is a public copyright license by Wizards of the Coast that may be used by tabletop role-playing game developers to grant permission to modify, copy, and redistribute some of the content designed for their games, notably game mechanics. However, they must share-alike copies and derivative works.
Or in short, this is Wizards Of The Coast laying down, how people can create their own Dungeons & Dragons games following official rulesets and managing their own tournaments and communities.
The proposed OGL 1.2 basically, did not mention (and hence not recognize) any of the ownership, royalties, and revenue reporting requirements found in the more restrictive than ever and had a deadline for approval on January 20th, 2023.
While this being a leak and not official, reactions did not wait to the point that WOTC via Dungeons & Dragons Executive Producer, Kyle Brink, announced a new version of the OGL 1.2 that did recognize all content created under the OGL 1.10a and changes could affect future new content, all within a "Playtest".
“Virtual Tabletop Policy: We will continue to support VTT usage for both OGL creators and VTT operators. The Virtual Tabletop Policy spells this out.
Ownership disputes: You own your content. You don’t give Wizards any license-back, and for any ownership disputes, you can sue for breach of contract and money damages (versus holding up products other players are waiting for while we sort it out).
No hateful content or conduct: If you include harmful, discriminatory, or illegal content (or engage in that conduct publicly), we can terminate your OGL 1.2 license to our content.
Creator Product Badge: You’ll have the option to include a badge on your OGL works. Once we get your feedback on the badge, we’ll create a guide on how to use and display it.”
Despite all this, reactions remain moderate to negative, placing the blame of changes to Wizards Of The Coast parent company Hasbro as it is all intended to control more the intellectual property that includes Dungeons & Dragons and less liberty of entities having incomes without due licensing.