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It looks like Dungeons & Dragons just succeeded on a death-saving throw. After weeks of backlash and protests from fans and content creators, Wizards of the Coast — the Hasbro-owned publisher of Dungeons & Dragons — announced that it will now license the tabletop role-playing game’s core mechanics under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This gives the community “a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license” to publish and sell works based on Dungeons & Dragons.

“Overall, what we’re going for here is giving good-faith creators the same level of freedom (or greater, for the things in Creative Commons) to create TTRPG content that’s been so great for everyone, while giving us the tools to ensure the game continues to become ever more inclusive and welcoming,” wrote Dungeons & Dragons executive producer Kyle Brink in a blog post.

This is a massive change of heart for the gaming giant. Earlier this month, Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) sent a document with a new open gaming license (OGL) to top Dungeons & Dragons content creators, asking them to sign what they called “OGL 1.1.” Some creators leaked the document in protest, exposing its predatory terms that would suffocate the prolific fan community and collapse some creators’ businesses. The now-retracted OGL 1.1 would have required any Dungeons & Dragons creator earning over $50,000 to write reports to WoTC, and any making over $750,000 to start paying a 25% royalty. These numbers might seem high, but these figures refer to gross revenue, not income — and the industry of third-party Dungeons & Dragons content is so large that the impact would be severe. Other creators worried about a clause in the contract that would allow WoTC to publish their work, potentially without credit or payment.

Over 77,000 creators and fans signed an open letter against these changes, and some went as far as canceling their subscriptions to D&D Beyond, an online platform for the game. Finally, WoTC admitted that they “rolled a 1” — for those uninitiated in TTRPG-speak, that means they screwed up really, really bad.

“There’s no royalty payment, no financial reporting, no license-back, no registration, no distinction between commercial and non-commercial. Nothing will impact any content you have already published under OGL 1.0a. That will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a. Your stuff is your stuff,” Brink wrote in today’s blog post. Later in the post, he affirms again, “You own your content. You don’t give Wizards any license-back, and for any ownership disputes, you can sue for breach of contract and money damages.”

The draft of the new OGL under Creative Commons — known as OGL 1.2 — is a big improvement from the last document. But some fans remain worried about terms that impact virtual tabletops and works already licensed under the original OGL, which dates back to 2000. Virtual tabletop (VTT) software helps people play games like Dungeons & Dragons when they’re not in the same room, and of course, these products exploded during the pandemic. Dungeons & Dragons does not currently have its own VTT, though. As part of the new OGL, WoTC wrote a draft of a brand-new VTT policy.

According to the VTT policy, it’s okay for developers to display content from the Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks. But WoTC is wary of content that is “more like a video game” than a TTRPG.

“What isn’t permitted are features that don’t replicate your dining room table storytelling,” the document says. “If you replace your imagination with an animation of the Magic Missile streaking across the board to strike your target, or your VTT integrates our content into an NFT, that’s not the tabletop experience.”

As far as content published under the original OGL goes, WoTC says that content already published will remain licensed, but moving forward, the old license will be deauthorized.

Tomorrow, WoTC will update the blog post with a link for fans to provide feedback — this survey will remain open until February 3. Then, within the following two weeks, WoTC will issue another update.

“The process will extend as long as it needs to. We’ll keep iterating and getting your feedback until we get it right,” Brink wrote.

This is a promising first step for Dungeons & Dragons to regain its fans’ trust. But when you make a death-saving roll, you have to succeed three times before your character can get back into the fray. Hopefully WoTC leadership keeps making good dice rolls.

Dungeons & Dragons’ publisher will put the game under a Creative Commons license by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

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Blockchain games have grown exponentially over the past year as a new and innovative alternative to the traditional gaming world. While the two areas have been widely separated, some market players see an integrated future.

“I was around in the very early days of mobile gaming, right after the iPhone came out, the App Store came out,” Chris Akhavan, chief gaming officer at NFT marketplace Magic Eden, said to TechCrunch. “I remember the attitude back then amongst traditional gaming companies was that mobile games were stupid.”

These gaming conglomerates viewed mobile games as “really small, unimpressive games” that people wouldn’t want to play, Akhavan said. “Largely, a lot of the big traditional gaming companies ignored mobile [games] for the first couple of years and that created opportunities for new mobile gaming companies like King, which is now owned by Activision, to create that margin and grow substantially.”

As that happened, big gaming companies became hyperfocused on the mobile gaming space and began acquiring smaller games to compete, Akhavan noted.

“We think that the same journey is going to happen in web3,” Akhavan said. “Over the last year, there’s been multiple billions of dollars invested in new web3 gaming studios and they’ll lead the charge here in creating the ecosystem and showing the true sides of the opportunities, which is going to be massive.”

Magic Eden exec sees NFT gaming like the ‘early days of mobile gaming’ by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

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Playtika, the Israeli tech company that made its name through a series of wildly successful online gambling and gaming titles with hundreds of millions of players, is leveling the latest swing of the layoffs pendulum. The company today has confirmed that it is laying of 15% of its staff. Playtika currently employs 4,100, so the redundancies will impact 615 people across the company’s global footprint in Europe, Israel and the U.S.

A memo sent to employees seen by TechCrunch notes that three titles will also be sunset as it seeks to rationalize costs across the board. We understand that these will be MergeStories, DiceLife and Ghost Detective. We also understand the company is going to offer alternative roles to a proportion of employees impacted by the cuts. Playtika’s most popular titles, such as Best Fiends, have racked up at least 100 million users apiece.

”Playtika’s success is rooted in our agility, efficiency, creativity and obsession with delivering the most fun forms of mobile entertainment to our players,” CEO Robert Antokol told TechCrunch in an email in response to questions about the cuts. “We consistently evaluate our strategic plans with attention to many factors, including the economic environment. We believe the structure announced today further leverages our core strengths of delivering superior in-game experiences and scaling mobile games to global franchises in continuation of growth. Saying goodbye to talented colleagues and friends is difficult. They will always be part of Playtika’s rich history and a foundation to our bright future as we build on our reputation as a technology and entertainment powerhouse.”

The layoffs have been the subject of rumors since last week in the Israeli press — although the actual figures are higher than the 500 number getting reported.

Playtika — publicly traded on Nasdaq — has been facing an especially tough year in what has been a hard time for the tech sector overall.

The company was one of the wave of businesses that went public last year, riding on the back of a huge surge in usage among pandemic consumers cooped up at home and staying out of in-person social situations.

In its IPO in June 2021, it debuted with a per-share price of $27 and a valuation of over $11 billion to raise nearly $1.9 billion, before climbing to a market cap of over $14 billion in its first day of trading. A few months later it followed this up with a big move into “design entertainment,” buying home deco games maker Reworks out of Finland for $400 million, in cash.

But gaming has long been a business with stark rises and drops, with titles very much subject to user taste and no real guarantee that whatever gets developed next will be as big of a hit as the previous effort. Combine that with the current general depression in tech stocks, and Playtika has seen massive drops. Currently, its market cap (pre-market open on December 12) stands at $3.1 billion, with stock priced at $8.61/share as of market close on Friday.

The company also missed on earnings estimates in the last quarter. Although third-quarter revenues climbed slightly to $647.8 million versus $635.9 million in the same quarter a year ago, net income dropped to $68.2 million versus $80.5 million in Q3 2021.

Last week, one of its shareholders, Joffre Capital, pulled out of a deal to take a majority stake in the company after disputes over governance. This wasn’t cited in the memo sent to employees, and from what we understand is unlikely to have an impact on the company’s financial planning going forward, but it speaks to what might be happening in the background as the company looks to restructure its business.

It’s not game-over just yet, but online gaming is going to lose a lot more lives in the coming months.

Playtika itself had already cut 250 workers in May, Electronic Arts is reportedly looking for a buyer and Unity laid off around 200 people earlier this year — and some believe this is just the start.

Playtika lays off 610 workers, shuts down three online gaming titles amid broader restructure by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

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A group of about 300 quality assurance (QA) testers at video game company ZeniMax Media are seeking to form the first ever union at Microsoft, the parent company to their studio. ZeniMax includes subsidiaries like Bethesda Softworks and id Software, producing franchises like “The Elder Scrolls,” “Doom” and “Fallout.”

Union organizing has been on the rise in the video game industry, particularly among QA workers. QA testers at Activision Blizzard at have successfully formed unions at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany through the Communication Workers Alliance (CWA), which will also represent ZeniMax’s union. But while Activision Blizzard has attempted to stall union organizing at every turn, Microsoft pledged in June that it would not stand in the way of employee organizing. So far, Microsoft has held true to its promise (and of course, that promise will get complicated if Microsoft’s $69 billion bid to buy Activision Blizzard closes).

On Friday, union organizers opened a portal where ZeniMax QA testers can vote yes or no to a union through the end of the month. If more than half of eligible workers vote yes, then — if the company stays true to its word — Microsoft will recognize the union without turning it over to an official, bureaucratic vote with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Zachary Armstrong, a Senior Quality Assurance Tester II at id Software, told TechCrunch that the unit is organizing to fight for better pay.

“Right now, we’re not being paid a wage that reflects the respect and the value that we bring to our company,” Armstrong told TechCrunch. “This is something that is the case across all video game QA.”

It’s not a coincidence that other major union pushes in gaming have also come from QA testers.

“QA testers are consistently placed at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to game development, to the point that we’re not even considered game developers.” Armstrong said. QA workers rigorously test all facets of video games to identify and resolve problems that impact user experience. “That’s reflected in our pay, and that’s reflected in our work, especially with regard to crunch.”

In the lead up to a major game release, QA testers are sometimes expected to work unsustainable hours, which is referred to as “crunch.” Before announcing their intent to unionize, the first major U.S. gaming union at Raven Software went on strike to protest layoffs affecting 12 contractors — before those contracts were terminated, the QA testers had been working overtime for five weeks straight.

Armstrong expects that the ZeniMax QA testers have the votes necessary to win their union at the end of December. For now, Armstrong is optimistic that Microsoft will continue to let the workers organize without interference.

“It’s made it a lot easier to reach out to people who are more concerned about retaliation and consequences for supporting a union,” Armstrong said about Microsoft’s union policies. “We understand that it’s been a lot more difficult at other studios, and the fact that we have not received that level of resistance has been a huge relief for us.”

If the union vote passes, the QA testers at ZeniMax will have formed the first union at Microsoft, as well as the largest U.S. video game union to date.

Microsoft could get its first official union as ZeniMax QA testers organize by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

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Today’s Google Doodle lets you make, play and share your own mini arcade game to honor the memory of videogame pioneer Jerry Lawson. Lawson led the team that developed the first home video gaming system with interchangeable game cartridges. Today would have been his 82nd birthday.

The interactive Doodle starts off by taking you through a short experience that introduces you to Lawson and his legacy. The first part of the experience is a tutorial that teaches you about the basic controls and editing features. From there, you can navigate to five ready-to-play games. You can play the games as they are, or you can click on the pencil icon to edit them.

If you want to create your own game, you can navigate to the home screen and click on the empty cartridge icon with a plus sign on it. Once you’re done with your creation, you can use the share button to send it to your friends.

The five ready-to-play games were designed by three American artists and game designers: Davionne Gooden, Lauren Brown and Momo Pixel.

Lawson was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1940 and had tinkered with electronics from an early age. He started his career in Palo Alto, California and joined Fairchild Semiconductor as an engineering consultant. He led the development of the Fairchild Channel F system (the F stands for fun), which was the first home video game system console that featured interchangeable game cartridges, an eight-way digital joystick and a pause menu. The system paved the way for future gaming systems like the Atari, SNES, Dreamcast and more.

In 1980, Lawson left Fairchild to start his own company, VideoSoft, which was one of the earliest Black-owned video game development companies. VideoSoft created software for the Atari 2600, which popularized the cartridge Lawson and his team developed.

Google’s latest Doodle lets you create your own mini arcade game by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

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