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).

 

[PsyzhranV2]

If you’re an artist. Stop telling amateurs they can’t enter open competitions because you think you should just be invoiced for the work (even though you probably won’t because it isn’t that kind of commission).

Where the goddamn hell did this "amateur/lawman vs professional" dichotomy come from? It's been popping up again and again throughout the thread and I don't feckin get it in the slightest. There were plenty of amateurs who were calling out Curse for opening this contest. In fact, I'd say in this digital social media age, the vast majority of artists on Twitter and other platforms are amateurs, even if they have a Ko-Fi open and are taking single or double digit price commissions. Those are the people that Curse was targeting with their contest, and those were the people who responded unfavourably. Not famous artists who charge upwards of $1000.00 for a commission or who have found an extended contract or employment with a steady salary.

All this"vocal minority ruining things for everybody nonsense"; what, do think everybody who callrd out this as spec work was a sockpuppet for Paizo or Modiphius or Chaosium trying to sabotage Curse's attempts at free advertising? Yes, there were a few RPG industry people who did weigh in, but they were all freelancers and made no attempt to hide who they were.

 

[TheSword]

Are you just openly ignoring the 'And we also own your stuff' portion of this? It's a pretty big component.

If the competition operator isn’t going to use it, and the originator still has their own rights the work. What difference does it make if the operator also owns it?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Is anyone making that argument? The setting competition didn't seem at all exploitative at the time because throughout the process the author(s) retained ownership until WotC actually purchased it from them. If my setting idea was rejected by WotC they did not retain the rights to it to do with what they wish in the future. If DDB has set up their contest so that they didn't have the right to publish entries in perpetuity I don't think this thread would be nearly so long.

In fairness, this isn't driven by a desire to screw over artists. Or to get art for free.

I think that I've established my bona fides in terms of treating creatives in the TTRPG industry better (see, e., my other thread on the topic). But let's look at this from a more general point of view:

1. Companies generally don't run these types of contests to get "free stuff." At all. It's not like Hasbro would be like, "Hey, let's get an entirely fan created Monster Manual by running contests!!!!" Do you know why?

Because it's not worth it. You have to pay attorneys to set up these contests. You have to pay your staff to sift through the entries. And the vast, vast majority of contests solicit a lot of stuff that ... sucks. Most people that aren't professional artists (or writers, or whatever) aren't nearly as good as they think they are. It's a lot cheaper to pay someone (especially given how little professional creatives make) to create art or writing on spec than to run these competitions.


2. So why do it? Because there is always an ulterior motive. If you peer behind the scenes, it's always for marketing. To get contact information for customers. To build excitement and brand loyalty. The actual contest itself is almost always secondary to the company. To use a famous example, there is that "free" NCAA bracket contest that allowed you to win a BILLION dollars- of course, the insurance on the contest that Quicken Loans paid wasn't a billion dollars (given the odds of payout) and to enter the contest, you had to provide all of this information- which normally they would have to pay a pretty penny for. They made out like bandits. It's the same here- DDB isn't doing this for the art- they don't care. It will cost them more to set this up and run it than it would to get the art themselves. Instead, they are doing it for the (they had assumed) good publicity and brand loyalty and so people would be talking about DDB.


3. If this is the case, why have the onerous terms? Because lawyers, that's why. Look at any contest in which you submit something to a "real company" now, and you will find similar language. Here's the basic issue- companies don't want you to sue them. Most of these contests aren't cost-effective to begin with; add in lawsuits, and it's stupid to run them. And America runs on lawsuits.

So why would people sue? Well, either the company uses the work when showing people what was submitted (I know!), or the company later produces something that a person will claim is similar or derivative to what they submitted. No company wants to take the risk of asking for submissions from the public at large and then, ten years later, have someone sue them because they claim that their awesome stick-figure drawing was the basis for the in-depth artistic piece the company commissioned. You think this is a joke, but it's not. It's America. Companies will always have protective language in competitions.


4. Finally, there is a benefit to the general public for these competitions. Yes, the vast majority of the submissions are not going to be good. But ... some will be. For many non-professionals, the first step to realizing that they are good, that they can have a career, is winning some silly competition- to get that type of confidence. For others, the act of competing, of sitting down to create, provides the structure to see if they can keep doing it. It's provides some benefit, IMO.


Conclusion- look, if companies really did use these types of competitions to get a whole bunch of art for free, I'd have a real problem with that. But that's not the reality. So long as this is something that is done sparingly, and for fun, I think that we really need to calm down. Maybe some thought needs to be given to the boiler-plate lawyer's language ... but we also need to at least take into account the reason companies put that language in.


As always, IMO, YMMV, etc.

 

[Azzy]

If you’re an artist. Stop telling amateurs they can’t enter open competitions because you think you should just be invoiced for the work (even though you probably won’t because it isn’t that kind of commission).

Right after you tell children that they should be exploited for labor.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Right after you tell children that they should be exploited for labor.

For real?

voluntary art contest = child labor?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

This (the original issue, not the cancellation as a response) coming right around the same time DDB is running that sweepstakes to win some content shows a pattern.

For those that aren’t familiar, the sweepstakes gives you (if I understand and remember correctly) chances to win one grand prize Legendary Bundle, or one of 10 prizes that includes a digital book and dice set of your choice.

You get one entry just by showing up and filling out the sweepstakes. You can get up to another 30 or so entries by doing a variety of social media things that give you 1 or 2 entries each. Two or three of the 1 entry actions are as simple as visiting a webpage. All the rest of them involve following, retweeting, or otherwise using your social media accounts to provide advertising for DDB. If you perform all of the possible entry options, that’s how you get the extra 20 entries to put you at the max number.

As a marketing tactic this is incredibly efficient for DDB. The content they are giving away costs them maybe $1,000 in lost purchases and pennies at most in the combined technical costs of authorizing those digital downloads plus a share of the product development costs at this point in the product lifecycles. They also have to pay the employees who put together the sweepstakes and run it (I have no way to estimate the cost of that). In return, everyone who enters the sweepstakes directly gets exposed to advertising which increases their likelihood of making more DDB purchases. But more importantly and lucratively, millions of applicants are flooding social media with advertising for DDB.

I can only imagine the immense profitability of offloading all of that advertising to your customers at virtually no cost to yourself.

Taken in isolation, there’s nothing wrong with that. When I saw what they were doing I had to give them credit for the efficiency of the idea. But once I saw what they were doing with this art contest, it seems like there is a pattern here of trying to get their customers to do an inordinate amount of their work for them. (Are they planning on dropping their prices to pass some of the savings on to us? That would be cool, but I seriously doubt it.)

It‘s good that they were called to account for it and that they took it seriously. It‘s entirely possible there was no ill intent behind it, and it looked like a win for everyone to whoever was running those projects. Or maybe not. What‘s important is that at a certain point that sort of behavior is exploitative and it‘s good that it was nipped in the bud now before it continued to get worse.

 

[TheSword]

DDB: We think this contest will be fun for our community.

Community: We have problems with the contest.

DDB: After listening to our community, we are pulling the contest, and will find other ways to engage.

@TheSword I really don't see a problem here. The contest did not serve the needs of the community, based on community feedback. DDB is now serving their community by canceling the contest and trying something else. They're not canceling it because a bunch of outsiders made a stink - as far as we know (based on the statement by DDB), their choice to pull the contest is based on feedback from the community they were targeting with the contest.

Please don’t take DDB’s capitulation as any vindication of a fair outcome. That will have been a simple question of PR utility by a company that means well on an issue blown out of all proportion.

There is a wider question about competitions in general for our community here. By the arguments posited in this thread, Wizard of the Coasts DM contest would absolutely have also been cancelled. Morrus alludes to it in his warning posted to thread advertising it.

There is clearly a desire to enter these competitions. The principle of “use it and pay for it”, is a reasonable one. That isn’t the question here. It seems to be a matter of… “if you host a contest for creative content you have to pay participants. Or better yet don’t hold the competition. That sucks for amateurs for which it could be a lot of fun.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

1. Companies generally don't run these types of contests to get "free stuff." At all. It's not like Hasbro would be like, "Hey, let's get an entirely fan created Monster Manual by running contests!!!!" Do you know why?

Because it's not worth it. You have to pay attorneys to set up these contests. You have to pay your staff to sift through the entries. And the vast, vast majority of contests solicit a lot of stuff that ... sucks. Most people that aren't professional artists (or writers, or whatever) aren't nearly as good as they think they are. It's a lot cheaper to pay someone (especially given how little professional creatives make) to create art or writing on spec than to run these competitions.

So if it's a net loss for them, surely they could find a better method?

2. So why do it? Because there is always an ulterior motive. If you peer behind the scenes, it's always for marketing. To get contact information for customers. To build excitement and brand loyalty. The actual contest itself is almost always secondary to the company. To use a famous example, there is that "free" NCAA bracket contest that allowed you to win a BILLION dollars- of course, the insurance on the contest that Quicken Loans paid wasn't a billion dollars (given the odds of payout) and to enter the contest, you had to provide all of this information- which normally they would have to pay a pretty penny for. They made out like bandits. It's the same here- DDB isn't doing this for the art- they don't care. It will cost them more to set this up and run it than it would to get the art themselves. Instead, they are doing it for the (they had assumed) good publicity and brand loyalty and so people would be talking about DDB.

Right, and this being pointed out was part of the criticism Curse received for the DDB art contest.

3. If this is the case, why have the onerous terms? Because lawyers, that's why. Look at any contest in which you submit something to a "real company" now, and you will find similar language. Here's the basic issue- companies don't want you to sue them. Most of these contests aren't cost-effective to begin with; add in lawsuits, and it's stupid to run them. And America runs on lawsuits.

So why would people sue? Well, either the company uses the work when showing people what was submitted (I know!), or the company later produces something that a person will claim is similar or derivative to what they submitted. No company wants to take the risk of asking for submissions from the public at large and then, ten years later, have someone sue them because they claim that their awesome stick-figure drawing was the basis for the in-depth artistic piece the company commissioned. You think this is a joke, but it's not. It's America. Companies will always have protective language in competitions.

Just because something is legal, or legally necessary to protect yourself from litigation, doesn't make it ethically right. This is a running theme with... the Left as a whole (and I don't mean liberals), but especially when it comes to independent creative work and creators' rights vs client demands.

4. Finally, there is a benefit to the general public for these competitions. Yes, the vast majority of the submissions are not going to be good. But ... some will be. For many non-professionals, the first step to realizing that they are good, that they can have a career, is winning some silly competition- to get that type of confidence. For others, the act of competing, of sitting down to create, provides the structure to see if they can keep doing it. It's provides some benefit, IMO.

Isn't that just the exposure argument? And we all knoe how much artists hate having to work for exposure, a lot of them from personal experience.

 

[Azzy]

For real?

voluntary art contest = child labor?

A conest that requires artists signing off the rights to their work without being compensated = exploitation.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Just because something is legal, or legally necessary to protect yourself from litigation, doesn't make it ethically right. This is a running theme with... the Left as a whole (and I don't mean liberals), but especially when it comes to independent creative work and creators' rights vs client demands.
.

shrug I think in your rush to argue, you completely misunderstood what I was saying. Which is fine.

I will only say this- you are correct. Not everything that is legal is right- far from it! However, the issue here is that companies don’t want to get sued- not that they want own (usually cruddy) art work in perpetuity that they will not use. Your arguments will simply get rid of fan contests- which, if that’s your goal, fair enough.