D&D (2024) D&D Player's Handbook Video Redactions & Takedowns

There's a lot of YouTube videos looking at the brand new Player's Handbook right now, and some of them include the YouTuber in question flipping through the new book on screen. A couple of those video creators have been asked by WotC to redact some of the content of their videos, with one finding that their video had been taken down entirely due to copyright claims from the company. It appears to be the folks who are flipping through the whole book on-screen who are running into this issue which, it seems, is based on piracy concerns.

Jorphdan posted on Twitter that "Despite fulfilling [WotC's] requests for the flip through video I was issues a copyright strike on my channel. Three strikes TERMINATES your channel. I don't think going over the 2024 PHB is worth losing my channel I've been working on since 2017. I'm pretty upset as none of this was said up front and when notified I did comply with their requirements. And I see other creators still have their videos up. Videos that are not unlike mine. Covering WotC is not worth losing my channel... Meanwhile please subscribe to my D&D free channel the Jocular Junction, where I'll most likely be making the majority of my TTRPG videos."

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Mike Shea, aka Sly Flourish, also posted a walkthrough of the Player's Handbook. While he didn't receive a copyright takedown action, after an email from WotC he has blurred out all the page images. "Note, I blurred out pictures of the book after Hasbro sent me an email saying they worried people would take screenshots of the book and build their own. Yes, it's complete b******t, but we must all do our part to ensure four billion dollar companies maximize shareholder value."

Popular YouTuber DnD Shorts had a video entitled 100% Walkthrough of the New Player's Handbook in D&D. That video is no longer available. However, his full spoilers review is still online.

 

[Theory of Games]

What's crazy?

WotC has been doing this for YEARS. Just spitting in the community's face. Then we complain. Then they apologize and promise to do better.

Then the next time they spit even harder.

I'm tired of defending it.

I'm done.

 

[overgeeked]

Really? I find that unbelievable. Like literally unbelievable.

You sure that it wasn't made by scanning one of the 3000 copies?

Yes.

 

[Minigiant]

Did you miss the part of this thread where @SlyFlourish talked about how blindsided he was by their reaction after doing exactly as he was originally asked to do?

And I said WOTC was wrong and they should have been clear of how much to show.

But when I saw the preview of some other people's videos, I knew WOTC would react. And they suck at reaction and prediction.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I definitely think that the bad PR from this is entirely likely to lose WotC (and possibly even me) more money than the shoddy PDF will.

Personally, I think a company should treat their paying customers (and free-labour promoters) with respect and not spray fire at them hoping that they might hit a robber.

But I'm sure @Theory of Games would tell me that I "don't know business". (In spite of me being very successful in a challenging field).

 

[Eric V]

I don't think we can assume "no" in this case. I'll be interested to see if more info comes out.

And your second point seems obviously wrong when some fairly major creators, who've created content for many years, got into trouble on this. You seem to be pretending this is some common problem - it isn't. And you've been providing incorrect information about YouTube's TOS and copyright strikes and I wish you'd stop that.

EDIT - I need to point out that @Parmandur has blocked me whilst he is repeatedly providing incorrect information. Politely I would suggest to all readers that you should not believe what @Parmandur is saying re: copyright strikes or YouTube's TOS. I can't counter future misinformation on this front unfortunately, but so far there has been misinformation from @Parmandur.

Agreed. We have @SlyFlourish telling us exactly what happened on the one hand, and on the other we have misinformation being peddled by someone who wouldn't criticize WotC if the fate of the world depended on it.

I'll go with @SlyFlourish, myself.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Is this why I'm seeing a bunch of replies to an empty message? I was wondering what was going on.

Oh wow did they block you too?

 

[Nijay]

From the PackTactics videos I’ve seen, WotC told them they were allowed to discuss the book’s contents but were warned not to show the book’s pages. Was this warning not sent out to all the YouTubers?

No, to paraphrase another comment, there were two circumstances. One where a creator signed up for receiving an earlier PDF copy at the end of May, which apparently contained all the rules about not showing x% of y, and another where a creator signed up to get a promo copy of the physical book, which only communicated to hold off on talking about it until August 1st.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos and it's so common for creators to flip through a book and show large portions of it on camera. The entire point of these videos is to promote the book. I have bought books and backed the designer's crowdfunding projects because of such videos. Maybe there was an outlier here or there but on the whole nothing unusual was being done.

I recently happened upon a bootleg upload of the Deadpool & Wolverine movie on YouTube. Great quality 1080p cam, and it took me about 4-5 hours to watch the whole thing. I kept thinking it would come down partway through, but no. At the end, I checked the view count. 833k views! There were comments saying stuff like they immediately downloaded the video. My point being, you can get videos taken down or modified, but you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. The books come out to the rest of us really soon and I can only wonder how many upcoming videos might break whatever guidance that creators that get the books via purchasing them won't have.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Jorphan was talking about talking with WotC.

 

[TiQuinn]

Wow. Jorphdan strikes me as one of the thoughtful, empathic, fun and just generally decent folks in the RPG space. To strike his work in this way without communication, forewarning, or reasonable cause is just… I’m… Geez WotC. Just geez.

Yeah, his videos are always top notch. Lots of fun lore, lots of good insight.

 

[Quickleaf]

Yeah, his videos are always top notch. Lots of fun lore, lots of good insight.

Indeed. I listened to both Jorphdan’s and Mike Shea’s videos on the PHB - absolutely nothing in those videos that isn’t/hasn’t been done for plenty of other D&D products. They were flipping back and forth, the cameras don’t reveal the whole page most of the time, they don’t flip through every single page, there’s intelligent commentary, they’re pulling out their old PHBs to compare changes side by side. Hard to see any reasonable case for censuring either Jorphdan or Mike Shea.

Anyone painting Jorphdan and Mike with the same paintbrush as D&D Shorts… uh pffff…. to adopt my kindest voice, D&D Shorts is standard salacious YouTube drivel that happened to get an aura of legitimacy due to breaking the OGL crisis leak. D&D Shorts is a YouTube creator first and foremost - Mike and Jorphdan are fans/GMs/authors first and foremost. It’s night and day.