Who runs D&D now: Dan Ayoub on the OGL, and Chris Cocks in charge at Wizards
Two stories in the first half of September 2026 describe who is running Dungeons and Dragons. On 1 September John Hight stepped down as president of Wizards of the Coast after two years, and Hasbro's chief executive Chris Cocks, himself Wizards president from 2016 to 2022, has the company's leadership reporting to him while a replacement is found. On 14 September Wargamer published an interview with Dan Ayoub, head of D&D since 2025, in which he called the 2023 Open Gaming Licence episode a rug pull and set out what he says the company learned. Read together, they are the clearest account yet of how Wizards intends to be judged.
· 5 min read · TerrainTale
Hight's exit and the interim arrangement
John Hight joined Wizards of the Coast in August 2024 from Blizzard, where he had spent thirteen years, and his departure was announced through a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that EN World reported on 28 July 2026. He stayed in post until 1 September 2026 and moves to an advisory role that runs to September 2027. His tenure was marked by the expansion of the company's video game studios; two games, Exodus and Dungeons and Dragons: Warlock, are due in 2027, and Hasbro took a 56 million dollar write-off on cancelled titles in the same period.
Wargamer's report of 2 September 2026 confirmed the interim structure: Wizards' leadership reports to Chris Cocks, Hasbro's chief executive, who ran Wizards himself from 2016 to 2022, the years in which fifth edition became the most-played version of the game. Hasbro is recruiting inside and outside the company for a permanent president and has given no timeline. Ayoub, as head of the D&D franchise, keeps the public role for the game. In a LinkedIn post quoted by Wargamer, Hight said Magic: The Gathering and D&D were stronger than I've ever seen them.
What Ayoub said about the OGL
The interview, by Mollie Russell, is the first extended account of the 2023 licence dispute from the person now responsible for the game. In January 2023 a leaked draft of a revised Open Gaming Licence would have deauthorised the licence that third-party publishers had built on since 2000; the reaction led Wizards to abandon the draft and release the System Reference Document under a Creative Commons licence instead. Ayoub's description is blunt. He says the company lost sight of who its audience was and, in his words, it was a rug pull, with businesses built on a promise that was then withdrawn.
He frames the lesson as trust, and says repairing it will take him a long time. He also names a second mistake: the assumption that one version of D&D suits every table, which he says is not the case. Tabletop Gaming News's summary of the same interview on 14 September 2026 notes he has been head of D&D since 2025 and that the crisis's effects reached the Creative Commons release and Pathfinder's direction, a reference to Paizo's move to its own open licence in the same year.
- January 2023: the draft OGL 1.1 leaks; Wizards withdraws it and releases the SRD under Creative Commons.
- 2025: Ayoub becomes head of D&D.
- 14 September 2026: the interview in which he calls it a rug pull.
The community council and the roadmap
The practical changes Ayoub points to are two. A D&D Community Advisory Group, launched in June 2026 according to Tabletop Gaming News, gives a set of players, retailers and creators a standing channel to the company, and Ayoub credits it with the decision to publish a public roadmap of the year's releases, the seasonal schedule that produced the Season of Horror, the Season of Magic and the coming Season of Champions. The other is his own habit of going to conventions and shops to hear complaints in person rather than through reports.
None of this is verifiable from outside beyond the roadmap, which exists and has held: Arcana Unleashed reached general release on 15 September 2026 as scheduled, and the Season of Champions dates were published on 15 September. Whether the council changes anything else will show in what Wizards does not do, which is harder to measure.
Third parties, by invitation
The most concrete reversal of the 2023 position is who is now writing D&D books. Ayoub says he does not want Wizards to be the only voice for the game, and names the partners: Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Luke Gygax and R. A. Salvatore among the classic creators, and newer studios including Hit Point Press, with Ghostfire Gaming handling Ravenloft, according to Tabletop Gaming News. Wizards announced this partnership programme at Gen Con in July 2026 for settings including the Forgotten Realms, Eberron and Ravenloft.
It is a different thing from the old OGL. The 2000 licence let anyone publish compatible material without asking; the 2026 programme hands named settings to chosen partners under licence. Both put third-party names on D&D shelves. Only one of them is a promise to the whole industry, and the Creative Commons SRD, not the partnership programme, is what still carries that promise.
What the players think, measured the same week
Ayoub's sentence about trust taking a long time to build has a number attached to it. Bob World Builder's survey video of 15 September 2026, a fan copy of the official player survey with about 5,000 responses, found about 70 percent of respondents disagreeing that they trust Wizards with D&D and about 80 percent disagreeing that the company cares about them as players, while feeling about the company's direction had improved sharply since 2024. That is the gap the interview is addressing, in a self-selected but large sample.
For a table, none of this changes a rule. The 2024 Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual are the game, the SRD 5.2 is under Creative Commons and cannot be withdrawn, and the people running the company are, for the moment, the one who ran it during fifth edition's rise and the one who says the licence episode was a mistake. That is a more settled position than at any point since January 2023.
What is unconfirmed
Who the next president of Wizards of the Coast will be, and when. Whether Cocks's direct oversight is a matter of weeks or of the year. Whether the Community Advisory Group's members and minutes will ever be public. And whether the partnership programme extends to the kind of small publisher the OGL once protected, rather than to established names. Ayoub's interview makes commitments about behaviour, not about licences, and the test of a commitment about behaviour is time.