D&D 5E D&D Beyond Cancels Competition

D&D Beyond has been running an art contest which asked creators to enter D&D-themed portrait frame. DDB got to use any or all of the entries, while the winner and some runners up received some digital content as a prize.

There was a backlash -- and DDB has cancelled the contest.

Thank you to all of our community for sharing your comments and concerns regarding our anniversary Frame Design Contest.

While we wanted to celebrate fan art as a part of our upcoming anniversary, it's clear that our community disagrees with the way we approached it. We've heard your feedback, and will be pulling the contest.

We will also strive to do better as we continue to look for ways to showcase the passion and creativity of our fellow D&D players and fans in the future. Our team will be taking this as a learning moment, and as encouragement to further educate ourselves in this pursuit.

Your feedback is absolutely instrumental to us, and we are always happy to listen and grow in response to our community's needs and concerns. Thank you all again for giving us the opportunity to review this event, and take the appropriate action.

The company went on to say:

Members of our community raised concerns about the contest’s impact on artists and designers, and the implications of running a contest to create art where only some entrants would receive a prize, and that the prize was exclusively digital material on D&D Beyond. Issues were similarly raised with regards to the contest terms and conditions. Though the entrants would all retain ownership of their design to use in any way they saw fit, including selling, printing, or reproducing, it also granted D&D Beyond rights to use submitted designs in the future. We have listened to these concerns, and in response closed the competition. We’ll be looking at ways we can better uplift our community, while also doing fun community events, in the future.

Competitions where the company in question acquires rights to all entries are generally frowned upon (unless you're WotC).

 

[Malmuria]

It sounded to me like a company trying to leverage its size to get some basically free art in exchange for mostly for publicity. This kind of behavior harms freelance artists more generally, as it devalues their work even if some are in a desperate enough situation to give it away for free. Ideally, they would have a union to negotiate fair rates industry wide, but they don't (I don't think) so some people leveraged what they do have, social media, to give dnd beyond a different kind of publicity. The other group that probably gave negative feedback ("complained") were dnd beyond customers, and I assume the company has an interest in retaining them.

Now they seem to have people who unironically use terms like "twitter mob" defending them based on principle, which I promise you the company does not want, unless they are trying to pull a TSR3.

 

[Mercador]

They wouldn't have to use the material, and they may never have actually used it, but they reserved the right to use it to protect themselves from the inevitable "you stole my design!" claims. Without such protection, it's way less of a hassle and much less risky to simply cancel the contest.

Wow, that's really sad. Contests like that help find new talents, not stole their stuff. I can't believe that kind of argument (not you, the DNDB).

 

[Minigiant]

Then don't. Find some boring job where you sit in a cubicle and type numbers into one ERP system or another.

Just don't ruin contests aimed at such cubicle-excel-jockeys who feel like maybe doing a drawing one in a lifetime to have a chance to win some price related to their hobby

I'm sure DDB didn't want the work of amateurs and throwaway pieces from professionals.

DDB wanted to good art made from hardworking artists. That costs money.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This (bolded) IMO would be just fine.

Another, and perhaps even better, option would be something like "Unless specific permission to retain and use submitted art has been granted to D&D Beyond by the submittor, D&D Beyond will not retain copies of non-winning submitted art in either digital or hard-copy form and claims no right to use or redistribution."

(there's better ways of wording that, I'm sure, but you get the drift)

I see two problems with that language: 1) It requires a small staff to proactively keep track of, in theory, hundreds or thousands of entries and handle them in one of several different ways and 2) it also opens them up to lawsuits if they ever produce something that arguably resembles something submitted in a contest.

In this case in particular, there's really only so many things one can do with a ring around a character portrait, and thus the odds that DDB would release on that at least superficially resembles a contest entry is very high.

 

[GreyLord]

I think the issue was that even if you dont win anything they would be free to use your artz free of charge.

That is something WotC did in the past as well as well as Hasbro from the very beginning of it's ownership of D&D (for example the campaign setting contest which brought you Eberron).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But not full creative control over distribution.

"You understand and agree that the Sponsor...shall have the right...to print, publish, broadcast, distribute, and use in any media now known or hereafter developed, in perpetuity and throughout the World, without limitation...or consent."

While that sweeping language is scary, it's meant to combat things like how music rights and changes in distribution models have meant a number of television shows can no longer be legally seen anywhere, since the rights that were negotiated don't cover streaming or DVDs/Blu-Rays and tracking down the various rights-holders, many of which have been sold or merged or gone out of business, is too much trouble.

So you can no longer see the real WKRP in Cincinnati, where rock songs of the 1970s were important not just for the jokes in the show, but sometimes the plots of whole episodes. Northern Exposure isn't even available in a bowdlerized form.

DDB is not intending to use someone's circle art in 2300 when character sheets are all beamed directly into someone's brain. They just don't want a new platform or distribution method to arise in a few years and, again, get sued because they didn't track someone down who may have changed email addresses or names or died and deeded their artistic output to their heirs or something, to make sure a tiny piece of art won't get them in trouble.

My company has had to create new cumbersome systems to deal with works that we licensed years ago for print, but once it appeared on the web, we had people saying that those rights didn't include us using them on the web. They're not a key part of our website, but they're attached to other materials we do own and did create. So we have the choice of either not using our own works on our website (which is why we use the "in perpetuity" phrase in our own new licensing agreements) or going through a tremendous amount of work to disentangle these works by freelancers from the larger products, all for stuff that's often years old and isn't a big money maker at this point, but which is useful for archival purposes.

Legal stuff definitely sounds scary, but there's rarely a grand conspiracy behind the terms. (The grand conspiracies won't use these legal agreements to ensnare you -- they'll come at you from different angles, like the TOS no one reads when they sign up for a social media account or, more importantly, the updated ones they don't read when they change, several years into using Instagram/Tumblr/whatever.)

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Any reason that couldn’t have just changed the terms of the contest without cancelling it?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It would be a shame if contests became a thing of the past. But maybe this snafu will just result in legal boilerplate that is a bit less thoughtlessly CYA for companies, and a bit more favorable for creators & participants.
One can dream.

I don't think DDB is nearly big enough of a company for it to have an impact. It'll likely take someone in a much bigger space than RPG fan art to sue a much bigger company and for that company to lose, big time, for it to set a precedent that will change corporate behavior on a wide scale.

I would think the film/television industry would be a more likely place to see something like that occur.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

That is something WotC did in the past as well as well as Hasbro from the very beginning of it's ownership of D&D (for example the campaign setting contest which brought you Eberron).

This is exactly what I was thinking - Hasbro and Wizards now 'own' all the submissions that were sent in, even if they never went past the first stage. Plenty of ideas to be harvested from all that data, if nothing else being able to plan marketing and sales strategies going forward.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Any reason that couldn’t have just changed the terms of the contest without cancelling it?

My thinking is that any alteration would run the risks of people pointing out that when they submitted these items, these new terms aren't what they agreed to, so it feels like then there becomes a rights issue.