Games Without Frontiers

Corporate overreach into Copyright and Fair Usage precedents is over this season
So the power play is  done. Of course, it's just "for now," I mean come on. The thought of including the OGL in my works started officially for me like six weeks ago for me. Four weeks ago, WOTC got all weird very publicly-- mind you the true fans of D&D were getting worried since last August. What somebody has been trying to do with a hobby, to put it into an accurate metaphor, which has always included people not employed by them making money, has been like someone trying to monopolize soup recipes.

Besides starting to write scenarios compatible for friends that are all into D&D style play, I really shouldn't have cared. But I did... .

It's the fucking principle
For some background, let's go personal. When I moved my published RPG rule conventions in my products one step away from official T&T with the Red Bat system, it was because I didn't want friction with the folks that taking over to produce new official material. This was as the folks that I had agreements went on to do other things like die or take up an Instagram career. Even when interlopers into OUR GAME's domain like Webbed Sphere arrogantly asked me to remove Tunnels and Trolls from titles of works, Peryton decided for me, let's just get along. No one, though, buying a whole lot of my and others particular PeryPubber works will not think that that stuff is compatible with T&T.  It's called FAIR USE. When a brand is created from ideas that are based on parts that are already indigenous within the market it is targeted, the owners of said brand, are entitled to ownership of the name, not the elements therein. 

When I heard that WOTC was demanding that every GM that had published self-created material in their company-owned virtual table top, Dung and Dung for your CPU, would be owned by them not the creators I was not too offended. Then as something about an OGL Alpha needing to be revised, and the, let's call them, Contractees would need to agree that their stuff out in the for sale domain was owned by that company, I started getting worried. That is like someone agreeing that water from their own property should be placed into plastic containers that they themselves must pay for for before pouring into a glass, whether drinkable or not.
This "Drinkable or Not" thing is going to come up later

This was a fight not just interesting to me. It's my life out here in the turnip fields of RPGdom while you, Captains of Cottage Industry, have been strip mining for copper from OGL Kickstarter mountains. It's okay though, it's all ideas. As long as your 19th level Beholder isn't in an fight with an Illithid in the 4th expansion of Ravenloft, NO ONE OWES anything, except, maybe, to the IRS, if, even so.

The WOTC water holders versus D&D
Business minded folks, think on this course of points. Not to be too broad, but Creatives compliment RPG manufacturers. RPG manufacturers manufacture RPGs. Artificial Intelligence and phone apps are trappings that either help creatives or plagiarize them. The folks at WOTC should have already known this, instead they chose to take directives from their ownership and mishandle things as a heavy-handed, exclusive-minded derivative brand. The product thereafter will be making money marginally for about a year at best.

When asked "Can you deal with the real market?", the leaders at WOTC demanded tithes and overreaches into their fandom's creative nature. I am no Doctor of Money-Making, but that strikes me as the wrong response in such a marginal field of sales. The underlying excuse was something about being inclusive and wanting to do good. How long does it take you to ask them, who exactly is being excluded and wanting to do harm WITHIN the purview of the company?
The answer of course being NOBODY.
Now the question is begged, there is no call to do anything.
There is no rational answer for what has occurred. Whoever at WOTC that has sought to continue an argument from 2014 with whomever needs to be fired, AND SOON.