WotC WotC (Mistakenly) Issues DMCA Takedown Against Baldur's Gate-themed Stardew Valley Mod

Wizards of the Coast recently issued a DMCA takedown notice against Baldur's Village, a popular fan-created Stardew Valley mod which was based on Baldur's Gate 3.

Created by a modding team called Nexus Mods, the mod featured BG3 characters such as Astarion and Shadowheart, 20+ NPCs, and various locations and events. The mod, which has had over 4,000 downloads, took over a year to make, according to the team, and garnered praise from Swen Vincke, the CEO of Larion, the company which made Baldur's Gate 3, who also posted about the situation on Twitter:

“Free quality fan mods highlighting your characters in other game genres are proof your work resonates and a unique form of word of mouth. Imho they shouldn’t be treated like commercial ventures that infringe on your property. Protecting your IP can be tricky, but I do hope this gets settled. There are good ways of dealing with this.”

The mod went into "moderation review" on March 29th. However, it seems this was a 'mistake'--WotC has since issued a statement:

"The Baldur's Village DMCA takedown was issued mistakenly—we are sorry about that. We are in the process of fixing that now so fans and the Stardew community can continue to enjoy this great mod!"

So, the mod is back again! To use it you need the have the Stardew Modding API, the Content Patcher, and the Portraiture mod.

This isn't the first time WotC has 'erroneously' issued takedown notices against fans. In August 2024, the company took action against various YouTubers who were previewing the then-upcoming 2024 D&D Player's Handbook. A few days later, after some public outcry, WotC reversed its decision.

 

[Maxperson]

Automated response.

That's not really something you leave solely up to a computer. Especially since it's only for work used without permission. A computer would probably be used to scan for uses of the content, but I would think that someone would have to look at whatever the computer flags in order to make a final determination on whether it's a violation or not.

 

[Morrus]

That's not really something you leave solely up to a computer. Especially since it's only for work used without permission. A computer would probably be used to scan for uses of the content, but I would think that someone would have to look at whatever the computer flags in order to make a final determination on whether it's a violation or not.

That, sadly, is not how a lot of these things work. Especially on YouTube and the like.

 

[Dausuul]

People need to stop buying anything made by WotC.

Eh, this isn't really in "boycott" territory IMO. More like "Your periodic reminder not to assume WotC always has the community's interests at heart, and check that money you're spending on them is still giving you value."

(Of course, if you do that check and the answer is no, then you should absolutely stop buying from them.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That, sadly, is not how a lot of these things work. Especially on YouTube and the like.

Yeah, YouTube has a particularly crap system, which is routinely exploited by corrupt and criminal actors, and whilst YouTube have improved their protections slightly, this still happens to countless people every day. The big difference with YouTube is that they let entirely automated systems make claims on things that the operators of those systems have absolutely no proof of ownership of, and just assume they're being told the truth. My wife did a YouTube lets play of The Sims, carefully muted the sound and music (as you had to back then), just had her voice on it, and got repeatedly copyright claimed by some Estonian crooks who claimed they had the copyright to the faint sound of rain falling on our roof in one of the videos and/or the sound of her voice (which is most assuredly not Estonian!). Almost poetically evil! We did manage to reject it eventually because said crooks didn't want to try proving their ownership in court, but it was a ridiculous situation that caused a lot of unnecessary stress, and solely because YouTube makes so few efforts to police bad actors on their platforms.

DMCA is a much higher standard though. It can't be fully automated and actually be legal, because you have to sign it. If you have a system automatically sending them out with a fake signature, but if the person who it claims "signed" it didn't actually even press a "sign here" button, yeah that's not actually legal. And WotC probably wouldn't hire a company so unprofessional as to do stuff like that. There should have been at least one human who stopped and thought "Huh, never sent a DMCA to these guys before, maybe we should consider/check with WotC before doing so", but apparently not? Or worse, they did, and WotC said "Go ahead and file that!".

I'm also intrigued by the fact that WotC attempted to make the copyright claim here at all. Surely that should have been Larian? The BG3 copyright resides with Larian, and that still seems to be the case right now and there's no reason that would change. My understanding was that WotC were licenced to use the characters, but that doesn't normally mean you get to issue DMCAs etc. - rather you'd normally (as I understand it) ask the actual copyright owner (Larian) to issue the DMCA. Perhaps I'm out of date.

 

[DEFCON 1]

People need to stop buying anything made by WotC.

No we don't.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I mean, I'm not exactly a fan of WotC. And I haven't played or bought a 5E product in ages (outside of a xmas gift for my niblings). But they're objectively nowhere near as evil as, say, Nestle. If something like this was the final straw for me, I'd have had to boycott Nintendo decades ago.

 

[Distracted DM]

Accidental DMCAs happen. It's usually because someone new did it, or they're using a crappy Brand Protection company, or it's something automated/AI-based (been out of the IP game for a few years now, not sure what's been advanced in that field).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If something like this was the final straw for me, I'd have had to boycott Nintendo decades ago.

Nintendo at least have the excuse that they're run by a bunch of literal fuddy-duddy Japanese granddads and Japan has fairly silly ideas about copyright in the first place. Whereas a relatively modern and theoretically in-touch West Coast USA company has rather less of an excuse.

Also Nintendo, for all their failings re: copyright, have been slowly but steadily improving, at least over the last decade or so. Whereas WotC have this weirdly random mistake pattern where they don't - superficially at least - appear to learn from mistakes. Maybe they are and are just finding strange new ways to screw up but who knows?

Comparing them to Nestle is fairly silly though imo. That's like "Well he's not one of Satan's worst devils, even if he does kind of smell of brimstone and sulphur!". Nestle are at the point where they often actively hide their identity, because they know a lot of people avoid buying their products where possible. I know I do. I've literally seen the Nestle logo before gone "Ugh" and put stuff down and bought an alternative product.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Accidental DMCAs happen. It's usually because someone new did it, or they're using a crappy Brand Protection company, or it's something automated/AI-based (been out of the IP game for a few years now, not sure what's been advanced in that field).

No.

No truly accidental DMCA can ever happen. As I pointed out, this is NOT the same as YouTube copyright strikes or the like, which can be fully automated.

People need authorisation and sign off to send out DMCAs. If they then send them to people they shouldn't, that's failure of process, that's not an accident. Misclicking is an accident. Selecting the wrong recipient is an accident. But then it would be clear to the person receiving it that you were talking nonsense, and quickly cleared up.

There was nothing accidental here. This was intentional, but when blowback occurred, people at a higher level got involved and the decision was reversed.

Also, as I explained, an automated/AI-based DMCA wouldn't carry legal weight - most likely you'd at least involve DocuSign/AdobeSign or similar and have a lawyer sign off on it. That's a human who should be at least thinking "Hmm do I do this?". If they're not trained to check - again, not an accident, a failure of process.

 

[jeffh]

How does that happen accidentally?

This was probably a firm they hired to patrol the internet, looking for DMCA violations. It's a pretty common problem for those firms (which probably automate nearly all of their work) to shoot first and ask questions later.

That's how. The hiring firm doesn't necessarily know about, much less specifically intend, these sorts of things.