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.

 

[Parmandur]

fine, make it 60, that is less than 20% of the book, still a far cry from a nearly full page-through


the two are not mutually exclusive

This might be unclear, but it was no more than 75% of a given page on screen.

And I recall other reviewrds of older books doing flip throughs doing weird contortions to avoid full page views explaining they were avoiding whole pages to avoid strikes.

 

[Yaarel]

Miscommunication between the marketing and legal people, feels like.

Probably, WotC became aware of the stitched-together Players Handbook that had been compiled from the complete walkthru in the YouTube video. Then WotC went into panic mode with excesses that harmed innocent, enthusiastic, influencers.

I suspect these overreactions are directly from the top down, from the executive who are less confident about how an open-gaming business strategy works, and less sensitive to the persons who play D&D, whose enthusiasm and commitment make the physical WotC products desirable and able to become part of popculture.

The executives and stockholders could benefit from sitting thru a "sensitivity training" to remind themselves how the open-gaming business model works, and to treat customers and promoters with sincere appreciation and respect.

Fortunately, the missteps dont seem too egregious. WotC is already making an effort to remedy some of them.

 

[mamba]

From what Sly Flourish said in his most recent video about what happened, it sounds like they got the Rules As Interpreted version instead.

he said they got nothing whatsoever…

 

[mamba]

Its not about stopping it this time.

They have 2 other core books to publish.

it won’t stop it next time either, it will possibly delay it a little and then a better version will be available. All that happened this time is the low res version clogging up the search results, making a decent version harder to find

 

[mamba]

Probably, WotC became aware of the stitched-together Players Handbook that had been compiled from the complete walkthru in the YouTube video. Then WotC went into panic mode with excesses that harmed innocent, enthusiastic, influencers.

if they became aware, then they might as well not bother with restricting videos… that is like looking into fire insurance after your house burned down

 

[Minigiant]

Probably, WotC became aware of the stitched-together Players Handbook that had been compiled from the complete walkthru in the YouTube video. Then WotC went into panic mode with excesses that harmed innocent, enthusiastic, influencers.

I suspect these overreactions are directly from the top down, from the executive who are less confident about how an open-gaming business strategy works, and less sensitive to the persons who play D&D, whose enthusiasm and commitment make the physical WotC products desirable and able to become part of popculture.

The executives and stockholders could benefit from sitting thru a "sensitivity training" to remind themselves how the open-gaming business model works, and to treat customers and promoters with sincere appreciation and respect.

Fortunately, the missteps dont seem too egregious. WotC is already making an effort to remedy some of them.

Nah. To me at least.

It feels like one totally different department than the marketing department dropped the copyright strikes. Or another line of hierarchy in the department.

 

[KYRON45]

I've been there since the OGL debacle.
I'd just prefer not having the needs of shareholders put above fans and the community at nearly every turn. I'd rather not support a company that just posted a job opening for a "monetization expert" (no joke).
I'm not begrudging anyone who likes D&D (the official brand), but it won't be appearing at my table again.

If you think any corporation puts the needs of anyone above the shareholders you are going to have your heart broken every day of your life.

 

[mamba]

If you think any corporation puts the needs of anyone above the shareholders you are going to have your heart broken every day of your life.

some might not be as blatant about it as WotC however, and plenty TTRPGs are created by something other than a big greedy corporation, whether a single person or a small team

I rather give my money to eg Rob Schwalb or Matt Colville than Chris Cocks

 

[Yaarel]

if they became aware, then they might as well not bother with restricting videos… that is like looking into fire insurance after your house burned down

If I understand correctly, the "stitch" was very poor quality. So the panic mode would be to shut videos down before someone made a high quality one.

The panic seems to relate to discomfort with open gaming generally. It focused on a specific product, rather than growing the community that will make use of the product. I get it that the initial lauch of a product is sensitive tho. It is ethical to have "early access" for those who are paying and financially supporting the business that makes the products.

Nah. To me at least.

It feels like one totally different department than the marketing department dropped the copyright strikes. Or another line of hierarchy in the department.

Before the panic went too far, wisdom seems to have prevailed.

Heh, regarding who the panickers were. The hostility against the OGL is reported to be from the top down. Probably the Pinkerton incident was too. It is easy for me to believe a top down decision caused the roughhandling of influencers as well. Perhaps Cocks personally initiated it, and in any case, the buck stops with him.

Meanwhile, some WotC departments seemed to try mitigate the situation on behalf of the influencers and customers, whereas the lawyers were probably filling out legal forms without dealing with human contact. In any case, the lawyers did later retract their legal claims.

The panic was brief during a weekend, and already seems to be over by now.


For me personally, I would like clear guidance from WotC for what I should or shouldnt do when discussing a page in the core books. Because few people have seen the new Players Handbook, it is sometimes important to show what the rules look like, and on a page in their context. From what I understand showing upto 75% of a two-page spread is ok. (So as safety rule an image with 50% of a page is ok, to avoid approaching 75%?) Even for a casual discussion such as here in Enworld, it would be nice to have a rule of thumb for images. In the culture of D&D players, the important content is freely and publically available via SRDs, and the fan generated commentary and content are valuable for everyone, thus the boundary between "fair use" and unfair is less clear than it would be for other groups.

 

[mellored]

after WotC insisted on that

It's entirely within WotCs right to say you can't show pages the book we made online.

To me the perfect compromise would have been to just leave it up as it initially was, no blur needed. So what if there are parts of 30 or so pages from the PHB shown in it.

That's not really your choice to make.

sure, you can do that, but I don't think that most people would consider showing some pages as part of the review to not be ok, esp.

You can't buy a DVD and stream yourself watching the movie, collect money, and claim it's just free marketing for the movie studio.

That's basic copywrite law. Not something WotC, or anyone else need to spell out.


Feel free to blame the education system for not teaching it.