Wizards Of The Coast Reportedly Forcing Applicants To Sign A “Surviving Non-Disparagement Clause” To Join Official ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Commander Rules Committee: “It Limits What I Can Say About Them Forever, Even If The Contract Ends”
In a move that feels like it was ostensibly done solely in order to help the tabletop publisher retain full control of any and all narratives surrounding the popular trading card game, Wizards of the Coast is reportedly asking potential members of their new Magic: The Gathering Commander rules committee to agree to a “surviving non-disparagement clause” which, in theory, would prevent them from ever saying a negative word against the game or company for the rest of their respective lives.
Created by the late Sheldon Menery in 2011 and beginning life as a completely fan-run format, the ‘Commander’ play style of Magic: The Gathering differs in comparison to the standard ’60 card, up-to-four-of-the-same-card-per-deck’ rules format invites players to use a 100-card deck, as made up of only single copies of cards (excluding basic lands), thus allowing for even the most gimmicky and combo-heavy jank decks having a viable chance of coming out on top.
In other words, the Commander format is a slightly more casual and accessible format for Magic, which has in turn lead it to not only rapidly rising in popularity, but also managing to snag the title of ‘the only non-official format to be recognized by Wizards proper’.
That was, until September 2024, when the Commander playerbase found itself in an uproar after the format’s unofficial-official rules committee handed down a number of extremely controversial card bans.
As a result of this uproar, at the end of the month, the existing Commander rules committee officially announced that they would be “giving management of the Commander format to the game design team of Wizards of the Coast.”
“Commander has always been a community-focused format, and this move in management does not change that,” said Wizards at the time of the announcement. “While ownership of the format may be changing, members of the Rules Committee and others in the community will continue to be involved, and the vision for a social format will not change. We’ve had some preliminary conversations already about what we would like to accomplish and have some ideas we will be rolling out together in the months to come.
Fast forward to October, and according to a new report from the founder of the previous Commander fan-rules committee Gavin Duggan, it seems Wizards of the Coast is moving along with their attempts to bring the format fully under their control.
However, per Duggan, it seems that rather than truly embracing the ‘fan-centric’ nature of the format, Wizards is seeking to prevent anyone who may serve on the new, ‘official Commander rules committee’, from ever again bad-mouthing any aspect of Magic.
Taking to his personal Twitter account on October 16th, Duggan asked his followers, “Looking for input: The vendor contract for the Commander panel includes a *surviving* non-disparagement clause, which means it limits what I can say about them forever, even if the contract ends. I don’t mind the NDC, but I’m uncomfortable with it in perpetuity. Thoughts?”
“Since ‘I think WotC is doing a bad job of managing Commander’ could reasonably be considered disparaging the company, this seems kind of important,” he continued, “and they’ve said that ALL members of the new ‘RC Panel’ will receive the same contract, no exceptions.”
Adding a caveat to his initial thoughts, Duggan added, “(For the sake of clarity, I’m optimistic they will do a good job of it…but I want to preserve the right to be public with that opinion if it goes wrong)”.
And for clarity’s sake, when asked by a follower if this clause was specifically for the official Commander committee, Duggan confirmed, “Yeah, this is for the new ‘advise WotC on how to run Commander’ group.
Duggan also noted that on the topic of the clauses’ actual legal viability, he was currently having his lawyer look over the paperwork – though this did nothing to qualm his overall unease towards Wizards’ request.
“My lawyer is looking into whether it’s enforceable but I’d rather not sign it at all,” he explained. “I was hoping they’d redline just the survivability for me (or better, everyone) but looks like that’s not on the table.”
Sadly, rather than this being anything close to a small, legal slip-up, given another bit of interesting insight from Duggan, it seems the official Wizards take-over of Commander has been going less than smoothly.
When met with sympathy over his frustration by Twitter user @SteelCitySteph, who lamented, “I think this would stress you out. I’m just not sure if it would stress you out more than not being involved in the future of the format,” the Commander format veteran admitted, “I’ve swallowed my words and played nice for the past month for the good of the format. At some point, there has to be a line, and this might have to be it.”
As of writing, Wizards of the Coast has yet to offer any public comment on their supposed non-disparagement clause.
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