Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

Is there actually not a catch here? I'm only somewhat familiar with the debate.

WotC licenses some of their content using the Open Gaming License. It ostensibly covers both the rules* of D&D as well as key elements of the setting -- particular monsters, characters, place names, spells, etc.

That license has allowed products and content creators to build on top of a shared platform -- using and reprinting portions of D&D's content to build their own worlds, stories, systems, etc. Note: not everything D&D publishes is covered by the OGL, just a set of core items they call the SRD -- Systems Reference Document.

WotC/Hasbro leaked that they were working on OGL 1.1 which had a bunch of ambiguous (and many argued harmful) language that required creators to do things like license their content back to WotC, pay fees to license content, control what and what was not appropriate to build on top of OGL, etc.

The OGL 1.1 was met with huge community backlash, and wotc has been fumbling for some time to figure out the next steps. It looks like they are taking those steps now.

* Aside, it's not clear that the rules of D&D are even something that can be licensed in this way, as game mechanics are not protected the same way as copyrightable characters are.

Here is a transcript of piece about the debacle from NPR from a few days ago.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1151474346

This is oversimplified but hopefully close enough.

A couple of versions ago, Wizards of the Coast released a subset of the D&D rules for free with a pretty open license. That free subset was called the SRD and the license was the OGL 1.0a. It allowed third-parties to publish D&D-compatible adventures and such without royalties. And, crucially, the OGL had a clause that seemed to make it irrevocable in the future.

Essentially, "if you build on our system, we won't come after you for money or with lawyers, forever, we promise."

The result was an explosion in third-party content and overall an explosion in the popularity of D&D as a whole.

Recently, WotC released a draft of a new license that a lot of people interpreted as going back on this promise. The community was up in arms, then WotC released several waffling non-apologies.

This, at least, sounds like they realized they can't put the genie back in the bottle and have given up trying.

After an earlier history of legal action against 3rd party publishers (TSR essentially bullying competitors to bankruptcy)[0], D&D's core rules were released under a license called the "Open Gaming License", which includes a license update provision reading "Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License."

The promise of that license built an ecosystem of people making and publishing their own content compatible with the official D&D rules.

WotC recently declared that they were switching to an updated version of the license, and that they were deauthorizing the previous version.

The new license included rules such as revenue sharing, limitations on how the rules can be implemented in software tools, and giving WotC the ability to revoke your license to the content. People are largely not happy about this change, especially with WotC's plan to retroactively cancel the current license and replace it with this worse one.

This has led to Paizo announcing their own open license with many other publishers on board [1], and a lot of D&D's vocal fanbase talking about moving their games to other systems with more favorable licensing.

Pathfinder 2, Paizo's competing system, apparently sold out what should have been an 8-month supply of their printed books in the last two weeks [2], and that's a system that puts all the official rules content online for free.

This announcement today of the SRD being released under CC-BY-4.0 is means WotC is canceling their plans to only license their system under the proposed OGL revision, since the CC-BY license more definitely can't be revoked once you've licensed content under it.

[0] https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/04/bols-prime-the-many-...

[1] https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v

[2] https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2023/01/pathfinder-sells-eig...