WotC WotC Removes Digital Content Team Credits From D&D Beyond

According to Faith Elisabeth Lilley, who was on the digital content team at Wizards of the Coast, the contributor credits for the team have been removed from DDB.

The team was responsible for content feedback and the implementation of book content on the online platform. While it had been indicated to them that they would not be included in the credits of the physical books for space reasons, WotC apparently agreed to include them in the online credits.

It appears that those credits have now been removed.

I just discovered that I have been removed from book credits on D&D Beyond for books I worked on while at Wizards of the Coast.

Background:

While at Wizards (so after D&D Beyond was purchased) - with numerous books, my digital content team and I worked directly with the book team on the content, reading through rules drafts, suggesting changes, giving ideas, and catching issues. We had a full database of the content and understood exactly how it interacted.

Given that we were contributing to the content in the books, I felt it reasonable to request that team be added to the credits, but was informed the credits section was already too crowded with the number of people involved and many of the marketing team had already been dropped from credits. I felt strongly that anyone actually contributing to what is in the printed book should be credited though, so we agreed a compromise, that the team would be added to the credits page on D&D Beyond only, as there is no issue with "not enough space" on a web page.

I've added screenshots here that I had for some of the books.

At some point recently, those credits pages have been edited to remove the credits for me and the content team. Nobody reached out to let me know - it just happened at some point, and I only just noticed.

We've even been removed from the digital-only releases, that only released on D&D Beyond, such as the Spelljammer Academy drops.

I'm not angry or upset, just yet again, really disappointed, as somehow I expected better.

EDIT TO ADD MORE CONTEXT

It's not just getting the books online. I worked with Kyle & Dan to improve the overall book process from ideation to delivery across all mediums (you should have seen the huge process charts I built out...)

The lead designers would send over the rules for each new rulebook and we'd go through it, give feedback, highlight potential balance issues, look at new rules/design that was difficult to implement digitally and suggest tweaks to improve it etc etc. We even had ideas for new content that was then included in the book.

We'd go through the whole book in detail, catching inconsistencies and miscalculations, and I'm proud to say that we dramatically reduced the need for clarifications or errata on those books.

I'm not saying anyone on the design or book team was careless - far from it, they're consummate professionals - I am just illustrating the role my team and I had in contributing to the content, quality & success of the physical books, let alone the digital versions.

We should have been in the credits section of the physical printed book. We were part of the creative process. That was something we were actively discussing when I was informed I was being laid off.

Adding the team to the credits pages just on D&D Beyond was, as I mentioned above, a compromise while we figured things out.

My team were fully credited on the Cortex: Prime and Tales of Xadia books when D&D Beyond was still part of Fandom, before the Wizards acquisition.

In fact for those books we made sure to credit the entire digital development team, including developers, community managers and so forth - everyone who helped make the book successful.

I know that Wizards has hundreds of people involved and previously hit issues with the number of people in credits for D&D books, so pulled back from crediting some roles.

Would it be so bad to have to dedicate extra space in a book to the people whose contributions made the book successful?

I really don't think it would.

 

[FoolishFrost]

For those of you with D&D Beyond accounts, you can enter a support ticket, saying there is a problem with the content on particular pages. Like, say, the credits page for any of the source books.

https://dndbeyond-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Oh. I LIKE this. Do it. DOOOOO IT.

 

[kenmarable]

Someone talking about unions was my guess as well.

Or whispers of poaching

Not sure about poaching since at least the person who posted about this and led the team was laid off. Not sure about others but wouldn’t be surprised if others were laid off as well given how deep the last one cut.

My personal armchair quarterback guess is some MBA who has never written a creative sentence in their life wanted the physical and digital credits to match and it was easier to edit the DDB pages because they have zero clue how important credit is to creative workers. This reeks of “What? Why are people mad at that? No one reads those pages, right?” uninformed decision making.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Not sure about poaching since at least the person who posted about this and led the team was laid off. Not sure about others but wouldn’t be surprised if others were laid off as well given how deep the last one cut.

My personal armchair quarterback guess is some MBA who has never written a creative sentence in their life wanted the physical and digital credits to match and it was easier to edit the DDB pages because they have zero clue how important credit is to creative workers. This reeks of “What? Why are people mad at that? No one reads those pages, right?” uninformed decision making.

Yeah maybe. It is really hard to understand these type of decisions. Perhaps ignorance. I am hoping WoTC changes course or at least comments. I would be interested to hear what the rationale is. People do bizarre even dumb things all the time and for me it is interesting to see how they got there.

 

[Queer Venger]

Someone talking about unions was my guess as well.

Or whispers of poaching

are there unions for game writers? there's unions for scriptwriters.
maybe its time to unionize!!!

 

[MonsterEnvy]

To be exact the D&D Beyond people’s jobs on the books was transferring all the text and making the links and such. They didn’t write any of the book or make any decisions on it.
Still nothing wrong with crediting them for putting the book in Beyond. I can’t think of much of a reason to remove the credits unless they have gotten even stricter with Beyond exactly matching the books.

I remember years back on one of the feedback threads for mistakes, they informed me they couldn’t correct the writing issue in one paragraph because they had to match the book including its mistakes until official errata comes.

 

[jerryrice4949]

To be exact the D&D Beyond people’s jobs on the books was transferring all the text and making the links and such. They didn’t write any of the book or make any decisions on it.
Still nothing wrong with crediting them for putting the book in Beyond. I can’t think of much of a reason to remove the credits unless they have gotten even stricter with Beyond exactly matching the books.

I remember years back on one of the feedback threads for mistakes, they informed me they couldn’t correct the writing issue in one paragraph because they had to match the book including its mistakes until official errata comes.

That’s an interesting distinction if true. I certainly think there is a difference between creating the content and formatting the content for a digital platform. They are both valuable but do website design/layout people usually get credited? I don’t know, no judgement, just wondering.

 

[Parmandur]

That’s an interesting distinction if true. I certainly think there is a difference between creating the content and formatting the content for a digital platform. They are both valuable but do website design/layout people usually get credited? I don’t know, no judgement, just wondering.

Ideally, credits should be pretty expansive, which you do see in film or in video games.

But there are a ton of playtestwrs for each book that don't get any named credit, and other back-end people.

Interesting to note thst rhe two people Faith names as having worked with on this are Dan Dillom and Kyle Brink...and neither of them are WotC anymore.

 

[MNblockhead]

While I can see why some manager may want to limit credits in printed material to avoid needing extra pages, removing from D&D Beyond makes no sense to me. Especially since they already had it up there and then decided to edit it to remove credits. I'm leaning towards the theory others have expressed above that this was likely someone pulling out some policy or SOP about how the content in D&D Beyond must match the print material. But I even find that hard to buy as erata gets applied to D&D content even if that changes it from currently available print versions, and regardless of customer preference.

And, just to be clear, I'm not defending the cost-saving arguments for being stingy on the amount of credits they put in print. I've backed a lot of Kickstarters and have some beautiful books where EVERY backer is listed. The fact that I have credits on TTRPG prints books where those who have contributed to these books do not, further puts this in a bad light.

I will say that the one positive thing about this is that it brought to my attention that contributors are not being given credit in the print material. Buy removing credits from D&D Beyond, which cost them nothing, they just further damaged their goodwill and will have to scramble to fire up the PR machine to address it.

I predict that they will put the credits back in D&D Beyond. It will be the least expensive way to address this. But even better would be to include in the print book. I'm sure its too late for that. But going forward, couldn't they at least have a link to a page of full credits to everyone involved?

 

[Faith Elisabeth Lilley]

To be exact the D&D Beyond people’s jobs on the books was transferring all the text and making the links and such. They didn’t write any of the book or make any decisions on it.
Still nothing wrong with crediting them for putting the book in Beyond. I can’t think of much of a reason to remove the credits unless they have gotten even stricter with Beyond exactly matching the books.

I remember years back on one of the feedback threads for mistakes, they informed me they couldn’t correct the writing issue in one paragraph because they had to match the book including its mistakes until official errata comes.

Except that's not the case here.

• We contributed you the physical books.
• We were credited only on D&D Beyond.
• The credits were recently removed.

My content team and I were actually working on these books pre-print, and actively contributed to what's in the printed books.
As senior producer at Wizards, I led multiple teams, but a core part of my role was working directly with my counterpart on the book team.
I was actively discussing the position of the team within the organisation and how to get them into the credits of the printed books. I say was because, like so many, I was laid off (as were many on the team since).

As for removing the credits now - like, why?
And if there's a good reason? Why not talk to those people in advance? It's not like they don't have our contact details.

Removing credits on the digital only content like Spelljammer Academy? That just feels petty.

 

[Azzy]

are there unions for game writers? there's unions for scriptwriters.
maybe its time to unionize!!!

It's always time to unionize.