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.

 

[KYRON45]

This is a sadly amoral way to live life.

If we all investigated and scrutinized the companies of every product we bought; commerce would grind to a halt.

 

[DEFCON 1]

it’s rational if the only thing (general) you care about is yourself

In this particular case... making game purchases from a game company... I do only care about myself.

What other people choose to do or not do with their money is their business, not mine.

 

[Marandahir]

'Threatening legal action against people helps them'

Oh, I don't think this is something I would generalize. I think in general this is crappy behavior from automation but I'm glad that they reversed it.

 

[mamba]

In this particular case... making game purchases from a game company... I do only care about myself.

What other people choose to do or not do with their money is their business, not mine.

would you still say that if they used slave labor to print the books? I doubt it.

I don’t think there is anything where I would say ‘I only care about myself’, but there are cases where everything else has very little impact on the result

 

[DEFCON 1]

would you still say that if they used slave labor to print the books? I doubt it.

I don’t think there is anything where I would say ‘I only care about myself’, but there are cases where everything else has very little impact on the result

I have no idea. For all I know things produced in China could done by people right now that might as well be considered slave labor if their pay is that bad, and yet I buy stuff that gets made in China all the time. But I have not looked into any of it, nor do I ever plan on looking into it. I'm not going to waste my precious time trying to check out the bona fides or moral turpitude of every single business I deal with or product I purchase.

And I'm also not going to compare and contrast companies that I have heard things about for no other reason than I come onto sites like this where the news breaks on it, versus the thousands of other companies that could be just as bad if not even worse than this one, but I just don't hear about it. To me that's just hypocritical... punish this particular company just because I actually like the products enough to find myself in the news areas where their dirty laundry aired... but remain blissfully unaware of all the other crap that other companies do because I don't go on like Duncan Hines message boards, Subaru discords or Pottery Barn subreddits.

If someone wants to thumb their nose at WotC for their actions... that's fine. But if they aren't spending equal amounts of time looking into the actions of all the other companies they deal with... then I don't see any moral high ground that they think they are standing on.

 

[Faolyn]

If we all investigated and scrutinized the companies of every product we bought; commerce would grind to a halt.

Considering how some companies act, this could be a good thing.

 

[Faolyn]

If someone wants to thumb their nose at WotC for their actions... that's fine. But if they aren't spending equal amounts of time looking into the actions of all the other companies they deal with... then I don't see any moral high ground that they think they are standing on.

I hardly have to spend any time at all looking for bad behavior. You are aware that information about these things pop up all over the place on different newsfeeds, and it only takes a few more minutes to actually confirm them by looking up additional sources. Heck, I don't even subscribe to r/BadCompanies and I still learn about the crappy things various companies do. I found out about this particular event on my reddit front page in between cat pictures, spec evo projects, science news, and two-sentence horror stories, when someone posted to r/rpg looking for game suggestions because they were done with WotC's "blunders". Then I came here to see if there would be a more nuanced view on it, since most of the people on r/rpg really don't like WotC and 5e.

You'd really have to have your head in the sand to not very quickly find out about what things companies have done recently, or are in the process of doing.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

I hardly have to spend any time at all looking for bad behavior. You are aware that information about these things pop up all over the place on different newsfeeds, and it only takes a few more minutes to actually confirm them by looking up additional sources. Heck, I don't even subscribe to r/BadCompanies and I still learn about the crappy things various companies do. I found out about this particular event on my reddit front page in between cat pictures, spec evo projects, science news, and two-sentence horror stories, when someone posted to r/rpg looking for game suggestions because they were done with WotC's "blunders". Then I came here to see if there would be a more nuanced view on it, since most of the people on r/rpg really don't like WotC and 5e.

You'd really have to have your head in the sand to not very quickly find out about what things companies have done recently, or are in the process of doing.

It doesn't take much mental effort to see how the free market is being manuplitated and twisted to take advantage of the decades spent creating consumers instead of freerhinkers that hold corporations to task.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I hardly have to spend any time at all looking for bad behavior. You are aware that information about these things pop up all over the place on different newsfeeds, and it only takes a few more minutes to actually confirm them by looking up additional sources. Heck, I don't even subscribe to r/BadCompanies and I still learn about the crappy things various companies do. I found out about this particular event on my reddit front page in between cat pictures, spec evo projects, science news, and two-sentence horror stories, when someone posted to r/rpg looking for game suggestions because they were done with WotC's "blunders". Then I came here to see if there would be a more nuanced view on it, since most of the people on r/rpg really don't like WotC and 5e.

You'd really have to have your head in the sand to not very quickly find out about what things companies have done recently, or are in the process of doing.

And have you stopped using products from all of them? No EA games? No Google search or YouTube? No Amazon shopping? No clothing from Target or Walmart? No products that say 'Made In China' at all?

If you've given up all of those things and only buy from made-in-America, organic, small, independent producers... good on you. I'm sure you are very proud of yourself. Give yourself a pat on the back.

 

[Faolyn]

And have you stopped using products from all of them? No EA games? No Google search or YouTube? No Amazon shopping? No clothing from Target or Walmart? No products that say 'Made In China' at all?

If you've given up all of those things and only buy from made-in-America, organic, small, independent producers... good on you. I'm sure you are very proud of yourself. Give yourself a pat on the back.

As I said earlier, some things you can't avoid because they're necessities. For instance, I am disabled, can't drive, and am basically house-bound. So yeah, I have to buy from Amazon because they deliver and have a very cheap price for Prime for people with disabilities. And I do shop carefully to avoid buying products from there that are made by dodgy or unethical companies.

But gaming books are not a necessity, and there are literally of thousands of options out there, including 5e compatible books from other companies if you didn't feel like trying a different system.