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.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I could see accidental in the terms of "the dude who's in charge of this stuff was just rubberstamping and should have looked closer", but not in the terms of "whoops, we don't know how this could have possibly happened!"

 

[Distracted DM]

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.

Yup. Brand Protection companies. You're spot-on.

I could see accidental in the terms of "the dude who's in charge of this stuff was just rubberstamping and should have looked closer"

That's literally it, yup. I can't speak to this specific circumstance obviously, but those things happen.

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.

You don't need docusign to send a DMCA. If you want to call it a failure of process instead of an accident, fine, cuz yes someone somewhere screwed up. It's also possible that it was intentional, I couldn't claim to know that, but as someone that has been part of "a failure of process" like this in the past, yes, it can be accidental (or whatever you want to call it).

Maybe it was intentional and they're backtracking, but to say that it couldn't have happened accidentally, as in through a mistake, that's just incorrect.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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

That's not an accident though.

That's like saying your security guard chasing down and tackling a grandma for "stealing", then handcuffing her, when she hadn't stolen anything is an "accident".

It absolutely isn't an accident.

It's a failure of training and process that results in bad action. Further, let's be real here, if there'd been no pushback on this DMCA, if it hadn't gone public that this mod people like was being slapped down by WotC, WotC wouldn't even have reversed the DMCA. Again, no an accident.

Stop calling bad decisions and bad processes accidents. They aren't.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Maybe it was intentional and they're backtracking, but to say that it couldn't have happened accidentally, as in through a mistake, that's just incorrect.

No, it isn't. A human has to actively decide to sign off and send a DMCA. That's not an "accident". So no, it is not incorrect. Screw-ups of process and bad decisions aren't "accidents". Calling them that is just euphemising in a really unhelpful way that gives excuses to people to keep on making bad decisions and designing bad processes.

If you're sending out DMCAs without anyone signing off on them, well, you may well have problems (albeit temporary ones) if you actually try and enforce them and there's any pushback at all.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I could see accidental in the terms of "the dude who's in charge of this stuff was just rubberstamping and should have looked closer", but not in the terms of "whoops, we don't know how this could have possibly happened!"

That's not an accident though - literally it isn't an accident. You're just misusing the term in a way that absolves a human of responsibility for literally failing to do their job! Best case someone is lazy and not actually doing their one job which is to ensure that what they're signing off on makes sense! This isn't a cannery. This isn't some guy doing 16 hour double-shifts to feed his family. This is someone who WotC has hired to check through possible IP violations, and it won't be a one-button process to go after a specific one either - they'll have to actually do some research, however minor, in order to determine where to send it, how to phrase it, and so on. That's the best case. More likely, this was sent out quite intentionally and consciously, expecting to be successful and have no pushback, but with no checking with WotC. Once it goes public, it immediately becomes embarrassing and WotC say "nix that".

EDIT - to clear, WotC don't seem to be calling it an accident. That's on a few guys here who seem to want it to be one. WotC said it was a "mistake", and I agree, it was a mistake. That's very different to an accident.

 

[Distracted DM]

No, it isn't. A human has to actively decide to sign off and send a DMCA.

Yes, and humans make mistakes. The scale at which DMCAs are sent out by BP companies can be very large and it involves a lot of tools for automation. Does that make it OK that a mistake occurs? No.

Calling them that is just euphemising in a really unhelpful way that gives excuses to people to keep on making bad decisions and designing bad processes.

OK so you refuse to call it an accident due to semantics and ethics- that I can understand.

 

[Steampunkette]

Yeah... An accident is "Oops I pressed the wrong key while writing aarbdark! Woopsies!"

It isn't "Oopsy Doodles! I accidentally paid a team of lawyers and IP hawks to vigorously hunt down and launch DMCAs and legal cases against all potentially infringing activities and they "accidentally" launched a DMCA against this CLEARLY infringing activity! What a big misunderstanding!"

This was WotC doing what WotC does, getting yelled at about it, and handwaving that it was a mistake to dispel responsibility.

I would say deflect. But at this point the C-Suite has to believe magic is real and they can cast Dispel Backlash.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Carelessness is a choice.

 

[BrokenTwin]

To be clear, I don't think the initial takedown notification was an accident, I was just engaging in the thought exercise of how it could have happened "accidentally".

I'm not sure what benefit WotC was imagining in issuing this particular notice though. The mod is essentially just free advertising for their IP, they were never going to make a competing product.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yes, and humans make mistakes. The scale at which DMCAs are sent out by BP companies can be very large and it involves a lot of tools for automation. Does that make it OK that a mistake occurs? No.

OK so you refuse to call it an accident due to semantics and ethics- that I can understand. I just don't think the argument has good footing in this case.

This sort of thing - automating the issuance of legal documents - is literally my job! I'm not saying that makes me better or smarter or to shut up or w/e, I'm just saying that to me, it's extremely important where an error is coming from.

Here, an accident could occur, but it'd be something like the guy incorrectly selected the addressee details, it pulled those in, and thus got sent somewhere nonsensensical. That's an actual accident. And that does happen, but it's trivially resolved - "Did you mean to send this?" "No, we'd appreciate it if you deleted it please!". That's it.

This sort of thing though, where all the details were correct, it was sent to the right people, it was about the right product (mod, in this case), but shouldn't have been, that's no an accident. It likely took a lot of clicking and typing and double-checking things to even send this out, even with pretty good automation. That's not an accident, and that's why WotC didn't call it that. WotC called it a "mistake", and that's a much broader term, that covers a much wider range of potential failings. In this case the failing is likely down to "check before messing with something which might cause public blowback".

The scale at which DMCAs are sent out by BP companies can be very large and it involves a lot of tools for automation.

I am very well aware lol, as someone who works with those tools. That's why I am saying this isn't an accident though. This isn't a misclick or a whoopsy or a malfunction, this is a bad process/decision, which is different.

Like, specifically, say we had a meeting at my law firm to determine whose fault this was if it was us doing it - well it wouldn't be mine or my team's, because it wasn't a misclick or an accident or malfunction in that sense. The fault would lie with either the process, which maybe fails to say "Stop and consult [senior person X] before sending DMCAs out for [free mods]", or where maybe it did, but the senior person said "Sounds good to me" (in which case, they're at fault because now the client is annoyed), or where the junior lawyer or paralegal or w/e said "Eh I don't need to follow process, I got this!" (in case uh oh for said person!).

EDIT - Another possibility is that the process was clear and theoretically followed but that the paralegal or w/e literally didn't understand what a mod was, and so thought "Oh, a videogame is using this IP, that's not allowed!". That's a failure of training (which is ultimately a failure of process).