Admitting the OGL fiasco was a 'rug pull', D&D head says 'bluntly, we're recovering from a lot of missteps—very loud, very public missteps'
Overview & Key Takeaways
"We're not going to fix it in one year."
Dungeons & Dragons has had a rough handful of years. A new version of the Open Game Licence (OGL) leaked in 2023, portending doom for independent creators and giving Wizards of the Coast a licence to rug-pull any third-party creator it didn't like (among other such horrors). This began the long and arduous process of mending burned bridges and un-pissing everybody off, starting with an immediate walk-back.
Since then, there have been upsets, ones I've been plenty critical of myself. But in late 2025, D&D got a new head in Dan Ayoub, who is now in charge of the D&D franchise at Wizards of the Coast. And his words last August gave me hope—and continue to do so, given the refreshingly straightforward candor of them.
In an interview with Wargamer's Mollie Russell, Ayoub doesn't mince words: "Bluntly, we're recovering from a lot of missteps—very loud, very public missteps. And we're not going to fix it in one year. I can talk 'til the cows come home, but we've got to show more than tell, and that is going to take some time. I'm very conscious that it's going to take a lot of time to win back the trust to the extent that I would like.
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"Having said that, I think we've started strongly, and a lot of these things are still happening behind the scenes." To Ayoub's credit, there've already been some solid signs of change. After bungling its weird 3D tabletop in Sigil, D&DBeyond has focused on its already-present 2D offerings and incrementally improved it considerably.
Rather than trying to muscle out third-party competition, Wizards has also been doing extensive partnered content with those same creators, which is genuinely lovely to see. It's not all roses, mind—Hasbro has been engaging in some nasty union busting behaviour. Which didn't take, as UWOTC-CWA was formed thereafter.
Still, overall, Ayoub does seem to genuinely be walking the walk, not just talking the talk: "Honestly, if I would give myself good grades on one thing in particular over the past year, I think it's been listening. We established the community council. I've personally spent a bunch of time talking to not just fans, but retailers and consumers."
Regarding the OGL itself, Ayoub states that: "D&D is about, for, and by the fans. That's the first fundamental point that we can never lose. I think, over the course of several years, we lost sight of what was important. We lost sight of who our audience was."
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Ayoub admits that the OGL fiasco "was a rug pull, right? A lot of people and businesses were built up around a specific thing. Trust was given to the brand, and people rightly felt the rug was pulled from under them. In some cases, it's caused damage we are still trying to fix today. So I understand the hesitancy of 'okay, here's this new guy saying all these things'."
"My biggest takeaway as I step into this role is that trust takes a long time to build and a second to break. I'm keenly aware it's going to take me a long time to repair this, but my hope is people will give the benefit of the doubt as we continue to show that lessons have been learned. This is a new direction, a new voice, and a new spirit and energy behind D&D."
While the grotty old cynic in me is still tutting and shaking my fist at recent crossovers, I still feel more optimistic about the system's future than I have in a long time. For one, just having its current head speak so candidly is kind of jarring—let alone the actual enthusiastic collaboration with third-party sources. The future's looking brighter by the second. Or, as Ayoub puts it, talking about bringing in partners to help write core source books:
"What was rewarding for me was, when we laid out that we want to bring all these voices back, I was thrilled with the level of excitement from these partners. It was almost like this exhale of relief."
