Baldur’s Gate 3 is being boycotted? That’s why there’s a lot of trouble around D&D right now

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For some weeks now, everything around Dungeons & Dragons has been criticised on Twitter. Now the first voices against Baldur’s Gate 3 are being raised – what’s the reason for that?

Beyond Twitter you might not have noticed: Publisher Wizards of the Coast has apparently rolled a blooper dice, setting in motion one of the biggest fan uprisings in recent years.

You can always read about debates on Twitter or YouTube in which fans go to the barricades and accuse the Dungeons &-Dragons publisher of both (money greed and dishonesty) . This even drives people so far as to call for no longer buying official Wizards of the Coast products on Dungeons & Dragons. Often this includes the planned feature film D&D: Honor Among Thieves, which will be released in March.

The discussion around the film then ultimately drew attention to other media such as video games (and eventually to Baldur’s Gate 3). The role-playing game by Larian also obtained the licence for the world from Wizards of the Coast after all

Why are D&D fans so angry?

But why all the trouble? It all started when (a report from Gizmodo) contents of a document from Wizards of the Coast were leaked in early January, giving details of a revision to the so-called Open Gaming License. This OGL is an agreement that has existed since the year 2000, which makes the set of rules developed by Wizards of the Coast available to the broad masses without further licensing costs.

This way, other publishers and private creators could use D&D to develop their own products. For example, this also made it possible for the publisher Paizo to design Pathfinder, a system that uses many game mechanics from Dungeons & Dragons. Some games also benefited from this, such as (Solasta: Crown of the Magister), which uses DnD 5e but spins its own world around it.

But that was to change. From (the leaked document) it emerged that Wizards of the Coast wanted to impose significantly stronger restrictions on the licence. The following changes caused displeasure:

  • The original OGL should lose its validity.
  • Wizards of the Coast would be given a right to be informed of all merits with OGL content.
  • OGL products that generate over $750,000 per year should cede 25 percent of that to Wizards – if it’s money acquired through Kickstarter, the stake would be 20 percent.
  • Wizards would have a right to legally claim any OGL project.

Of course, much more was decided in the new OGL and the community will also agree with many points, such as that the revision should also prevent products with racist, homophobic, transphobic or generally discriminatory content from being created that are harmful to the brand. This should also put a stop to NFT projects.

Wizards row back

But at its core, the new OGL caused resentment mostly because fans feared being stolen by Wizards and primarily saw commercial goals for parent company Hasbro in it. An (open letter to Wizards), with over 60,000 signatures, makes this abundantly clear.

This headwind and the inevitable damage to its image now prompted Wizards to take a different spin on the whole OGL project. (After the first statement) was described by the community as insincere Wizards has since (proposed a new OGL) and changed many of the planned adjustments in it. For example, the original OGL 1.0 is not to lose its effectiveness after all, everyone is to retain the right to their content, and no levies are to be made.

In addition, the community is to be more directly involved in the OGL, for example via surveys. This has cooled the community’s anger somewhat, but there is still some discord and mistrust.

And what about Baldur’s Gate 3? Whether a large mass of people will boycott the role-playing game or not is not yet foreseeable. But at the moment only (a small minority seems to consider it boycott-worthy). Especially since the game already went into Early Access in 2020 and thus many fans have already grabbed it anyway

How do you see the whole situation? Are you as angry as many others, or can you not understand the whole uproar? Write us your opinions in the comments!