Originally Posted by
ddavison
FG's future ability to deliver 5E or 6E content depends upon our contract auto-renewing each year in March (but with a 60-day notice requirement). We pay them 60% royalties on all products we sell for them, and it costs them almost nothing to support us. They don't perform quality control on our products, customer support, hosting, distribution, or development. Any costs they paid for the original writing and imagery would have already been paid when they created the print product and the version for D&D Beyond. The revenue that we provide them goes directly to the bottom line for Wizards of the Coast as profit. When you contrast this versus book sales where they have production fees and distribution fees, then I think we are much better for their business. If you compare us with sales on D&D Beyond, you could argue that they would get 100% of the revenue if they sold it on D&D Beyond instead of Fantasy Grounds. That would be true; however, we know that a fair percentage of our users purchased it on D&D Beyond and on Fantasy Grounds and then you are comparing 160% revenue to 60% revenue for those sales. The balance of which is probably demonstrably greater than the 100% by itself. They can decide not to renew our contract for an upcoming year. I don't think that it is in their best interest financially. If you pair this up with the negative backlash they would receive from our community (and similarly from Roll20's larger community), then I think a cancellation is very unlikely to happen.
We would still be able to keep all existing copies on our system for customers to use, reinstall, etc. even if the worst-case scenario happens, and they did cancel our license to produce and sell D&D content. We would just be unable to sell any of those going forward. What we are allowed to do with OGL based content matters a lot more to us at this point. That is why it is important for us to weigh in now. Aside from this, we currently include SRD content with our demo for free.
I would love for the whole OGL update to be dropped. I just don't realistically think that is going to happen. I want to at least help steer Wizards of the Coast towards an update that is as fair as it can be.