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).

 

[Hussar]

My DM is unpaid too. Am I exploiting him?

I don't know. Are you making millions of dollars playing D&D with him?

 

[Hussar]

So, @Snarf Zagyg - I read the other thread. And, am I understanding correctly in saying that the contract in this specific instance (I never meant to be speaking in general terms, but about this specifically although I think I may have drifted a bit) isn't actually doing what it's supposed to do? Or, to put it another way, I was right to question the base assumption that this boilerplate language was doing what it was supposed to do?

Or, am I missing something among the condescension and patronizing tone?

From my admittedly totally armchair lawyer position, it seems to me that the need to protect the company against the contest entrants could pretty easily be served without taking the rights away from the creatives. As I said, the software exists right now, for free, on every Windows 10 machine, to double check against future products. Is this sort of boilerplate actually necessary since it doesn't protect the company at all from being sued by anyone else and it doesn't seem terribly difficult to not copy work that was already submitted to you.

Or, again, have I missed something in my bumbling, uneducated way?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Or, again, have I missed something …?

sigh

Yes. So very yes.

I tried.

 

[Hussar]

So, what did I miss?

You stated that the boilerplate was automatically generated and didn't actually fit with the contest. It's not like it was well written boilerplate, like in the Apple example.

So, please, without the condescension and patronizing attitude if you wouldn't mind, and in plain English for those poor folks of us that are having a hell of a time separating out the attempts at humour from the actual point, could you explain why this boilerplate language is a good thing? How it is the only way to protect D&DB? That it is apparently the best and only way a company could protect itself from future lawsuits?

And please type slowly for the slow of understanding.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't know. Are you making millions of dollars playing D&D with him?

No, but I am saving money not having to hire a dm

Though now I am even more curious how you view not paying dms as different than not paying artists.

 

[Hussar]

No, but I am saving money not having to hire a dm

Though now I am even more curious how you view not paying dms as different than not paying artists.

What money are you making from your DM? What profit are you making? Is your DM producing something that you could turn around and sell later?

So, if nothing of marketable value is being received or transferred in any way, how can it be considered exploitation?

I'm actually getting more and more confused the longer this thread goes on. Apparently questioning basic assumptions is bad, because I'm too stupid to understand the answer, and now people are pointing to situations which are not even remotely equivalent like how WotC was apparently exploiting people by allowing people to use their intellectual property without paying for it and creating things and then even allowing those people to turn around and sell these things to other people without taking any payment of any kind. But, that's exploitation?

Now, apparently a DM is being exploited somehow. No money is changing hands. Nothing is being produced that could be resold. I suppose if you were video taping the sessions and then selling them to other people, that might be considered exploitation.

 

[SkidAce]

Now, apparently a DM is being exploited somehow. No money is changing hands. Nothing is being produced that could be resold. I suppose if you were video taping the sessions and then selling them to other people, that might be considered exploitation.

Not siding on this issue, but you do not need "marketable" things to exploit someone.

Exploitation also means "taking advantage of".

 

[J.Quondam]

I'm actually getting more and more confused the longer this thread goes on.

You've been on ENWorld since 2004, and you're only now getting confused at long, meandering, off-topic threads?
That's pretty impressive, in its own way!

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Not siding on this issue, but you do not need "marketable" things to exploit someone.

Exploitation also means "taking advantage of".

Don't know what everybody else in the thread has been thinking when they read "exploitation", but this is the definition I've been using internally: "workers in a capitalist society are exploited insofar as they are forced to sell their labor power to capitalists for less than the full value of the commodities they produce with their labor."

Exploitation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

plato.stanford.edu

 

[TheSword]

Don't know what everybody else in the thread has been thinking when they read "exploitation", but this is the definition I've been using internally: "workers in a capitalist society are exploited insofar as they are forced to sell their labor power to capitalists for less than the full value of the commodities they produce with their labor."

Exploitation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

plato.stanford.edu

It’s a nice link. But almost certainly doesn’t cover large swathes of exploitation. Unsurprisingly as you just picked that definition from halfway through one section of the linked article.

It is helpful to see where you’re coming from though so I can back away slowly in another direction. Capitalist bashing isn’t really of much interest to me.