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.

 

[Minigiant]

So, he put them in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' position.

Basically what I said.

WOTC, like many big corporations and governments, lactic capability to choose to react or not react.

No matter which choice they made they were going to screw it up.

The only way they get out of it unscathed was for it to not happen.

 

[Barantor]

There was a Bob Worldbuilder video where he says he didn't think he was getting a book and then did. I think there was a ton of miscommunication about what was allowed and what wasn't. From what he said there wasn't a lot of guidance on even if they had to do a review at all, just that they encouraged it.

Considering the walkthroughs of other books we've seen in the past, this is a bit odd to me and I think whoever was in charge of contacting and guiding these creators dropped the ball. WotC is mostly at fault for this IMO.

(DnDShorts knew what he was doing and I dunno why he even got a copy tbh)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The only way they get out of it unscathed was for it to not happen.

If only there were a way to avoid it! Like say, a simple list of instructions (do's and don'ts) included with the books... doesn't seem like rocket science.

 

[TiQuinn]

He had a 3.5 hour video, and did in fact display around 85% of the pages. It was not in order, but it was a huge portion of the book. I know, I watched it all, and I included some screenshots of some rules right here in this forum from his video. Yes he skipped some, but it was only a few pages here and there. There isn't any whole section he skipped in the entire book. I recall being frustrated there was I think only one page of spells he skipped, and it was a page I wanted to see

Funny how I watched that same video and saw him flip back and forth across the same pages quite often and did not come away feeling he showed the whole book.

 

[Minigiant]

If only there were a way to avoid it! Like say, a simple list of instructions (do's and don'ts) included with the books... doesn't seem like rocket science.

It is rocket science in you are a major organization whose departments are disconnected from the goods and/services you provide.

This could be the case for WOTC

 

[OB1]

For what it's worth, at my last job our company had a youTube channel where we would repost new trailers from upcoming films (which is allowed) but every month or two one of them would get struck down as a copyright violation and we'd have to spend a little time communicating with youTube and the studio to resolve the issue. It wasn't anything to panic about or get mad at anyone for, it's just the result of the system being extremely sensitive to piracy concerns (and rightfully so).

I will say our CEO would completely freak out every time it happened, and the manager in charge of the channel would have to explain each time that it was fine, just part of the process. The manager had a plan in place that if there were ever two unresolved strikes at once, he'd stop posting to the channel to prevent a full lock-out, but that never happened.

The rules are strong because if they weren't, people could cause real harm to the owners of copyright material. As mentioned, once the coffee is on the floor, it's near impossible to get it back in the cup. Being overly proactive to prevent the spill is the only real way to prevent it. That does mean that sometimes people are unfairly pinged, but as we've seen, it tends to get resolved quickly when the poster was acting in good faith to begin with.

 

[Mistwell]

Funny how I watched that same video and saw him flip back and forth across the same pages quite often and did not come away feeling he showed the whole book.

How are we miscommunicating here? I've said "the overwhelming majority" and "about 85%" now, and even specified a page he skipped that I was frustrated about. And you keep claiming I said "the whole" book.

He didn't show "the whole" book, just the overwhelming majority. DnDShorts showed the whole book.

 

[TiQuinn]

How are we miscommunicating here?

Show me one independent author of a book who wanted EVERY SINGLE PAGE OF THEIR BOOK DISPLAYED ON YOUTUBE IN ORDER before the book is even available to the wider public.

Because that's not what happened and not who we are defending.

Two of the three videos ( Jorphdan and DNDShorts) I'm aware of that's what they did.

Isn't that the 3.5 hour review he did live with people? If so, yes, he showed more than 75% of the book.

That’s why we are miscommunicating. You keep changing your story.

 

[Corinnguard]

DnDShorts knew what he was doing and I dunno why he even got a copy tbh

Good question. It might depend on what kind of vetting process WoTC was using to pick the content creators for the big reveal. Were they picking content creators who had a large following of fans or happen to be the most popular on YouTube and other social media? I am more inclined to believe that it's the former.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Good question. It might depend on what kind of vetting process WoTC was using to pick the content creators for the big reveal. Were they picking content creators who had a large following of fans or happen to be the most popular on YouTube and other social media? I am more inclined to believe that it's the former.

I don't think of DnD Shorts as the devil, as some folks here do -- his video was clearly not intended to be some sort of "I'll hold this real still so you can screenshot every page" affair -- but I do think the wide net that WotC cast suggests that the hired gun PR firm they brought in for this has no real knowledge of the space or of the history a lot of these folks have with WotC, nor with what sort of videos would result.

Someone who had spent even a few hours looking at new RPG product reveals on YouTube would see that "here's what's on many/most/all of these pages" videos aren't exactly unknown, even if they tend to be uncommon. (You can easily find a bunch of videos paging through Mothership 1E, DC20 and Nimble D20 at the moment, for instance.) That they didn't know to say "by the way, don't show more than X% of the pages in your video" in the NDA language really shows that whomever was in charge of the contract at Hasbro and the contractors themselves just don't understand the space they're in.

Again, this is why you retain your subject matter marketing experts that WotC let go in the past year. I cannot imagine cutting those folks actually helped them achieve whatever quarterly goal they were hoping to hit in order to get some approval from Big Daddy Shareholders.

This isn't as big of a deal as the OGL crisis was, but if discussion of this shows up in even one mainstream article next month that accompanies the release of the new PHB (and I think we can rely on the Washington Post, etc., covering the release, as they have throughout the 50th anniversary, with a piece on D&D just this past weekend in the Opinion section) with something like "of course, the company seems to hate many of its biggest fans," that's another needless self-own by WotC.

Are we sure David Zaslav isn't secretly pulling the strings over at WotC?