Wizards Of The Coast Axes New OGL Announcement Following Fan Backlash

Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast has cancelled an announcement about its updated Open Gaming License (OGL). According to inside sources at Wizards of the Coast (via io9), they are still trying to find a way to respond to fan backlash for the new OGL.

What is an OGL? The Open Game License (OGL) 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.

The new OGL was supposed to go live on Thursday but all that changed when Dungeons & Dragons personality Ginny Di tweeted that people should cancel their Dungeons & Dragons Beyond subscription to show fan backlash.

Seems that @DnDBeyond's Subscription Management page is down as a movement grows to cancel subscriptions to protest reported OGL changes. This comes up when you try to use the Subscription Management page. pic.twitter.com/HOlFvvt8zk

— Christian Hoffer (@CHofferCBus) January 12, 2023

Currently, it’s unclear when Wizards Of The Coast will release the new OGL, or if they will release it at all.

In the meantime, Paizo has announced their own neutral OGL:

While our site trying to deal with the ORC Horde, here is the announcement. #OpenRPG #ORC pic.twitter.com/6luRFI1nMv

— Jason Bulmahn, Game Designer (@JasonBulmahn) January 12, 2023

The OGL battle is heating up, folks.