D&D 5E D&D Beyond Cancels Competition

D&D Beyond has been running an art contest which asked creators to enter D&D-themed portrait frame. DDB got to use any or all of the entries, while the winner and some runners up received some digital content as a prize.

There was a backlash -- and DDB has cancelled the contest.

Thank you to all of our community for sharing your comments and concerns regarding our anniversary Frame Design Contest.

While we wanted to celebrate fan art as a part of our upcoming anniversary, it's clear that our community disagrees with the way we approached it. We've heard your feedback, and will be pulling the contest.

We will also strive to do better as we continue to look for ways to showcase the passion and creativity of our fellow D&D players and fans in the future. Our team will be taking this as a learning moment, and as encouragement to further educate ourselves in this pursuit.

Your feedback is absolutely instrumental to us, and we are always happy to listen and grow in response to our community's needs and concerns. Thank you all again for giving us the opportunity to review this event, and take the appropriate action.

The company went on to say:

Members of our community raised concerns about the contest’s impact on artists and designers, and the implications of running a contest to create art where only some entrants would receive a prize, and that the prize was exclusively digital material on D&D Beyond. Issues were similarly raised with regards to the contest terms and conditions. Though the entrants would all retain ownership of their design to use in any way they saw fit, including selling, printing, or reproducing, it also granted D&D Beyond rights to use submitted designs in the future. We have listened to these concerns, and in response closed the competition. We’ll be looking at ways we can better uplift our community, while also doing fun community events, in the future.

Competitions where the company in question acquires rights to all entries are generally frowned upon (unless you're WotC).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I was noodling around and I noticed that Inkarnate runs a similar sort of competition. They’re on their sixth one currently.

Why is no one complaining about them? Well I’m glad you asked.

Inkarnate’s contest is a bit different. You use the program provided by Inkarnate to create your entry. IOW you are being given all the tools you need to enter the art contest free of charge.

And all entries are displayed under a Creative Commons Share Alike license, meaning that Inkarnate cannot ever sell them. Nor can the artists either. That’s true. But that licensing is part of using the material provided by the contest runner.

My point is, it’s entirely possible to run art contests without the contest runner gaining rights to the art with zero return for the entrants.

Well, maybe it's for the same reason that people don't understand the issues here. Because they don't bother reading the terms and conditions and understanding them.

https://inkarnate.s3.amazonaws.com/inkarnate-terms-of-use-june-2020.pdf

I pulled them for you for Inkarnate.

Now, if you want to, you can form a twitter mob about this. But this ranks with the whole, "I just read the EULA on the website/software. I can't believe what's in it!" Inkarnate aren't bad actors (IMO), just as D&D Beyond weren't.

“Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.” -Maple Cocaine

 

[Fox Lee]

It was in response to a poster claiming that the competition was pulled because enough artists complained. My point was that not all the people complaining were artists, we don’t know how much of this was a wider PR issue and how much was the result of people who would have been affected by the specific competition. You seem to be confirming that it was an ideological point for you and you would never have seen the competition otherwise for your friend posting as well.

My point stands then, that It’s a shame that a competition to draw something - that was never for sale - was spoiled for amateurs because professionals who had no intention of entering, kicked up a stink.

And I spoke up, as an artist, because you seemed to be claiming that the majority were not artists, but voices outside the community just wanting some drama. I wanted to make the point that I criticised them, as a huge fan of D&D and an artist both, not as some outsider interfering because I want woke points.

You don't seem to understand that "people who would have been affected" includes all of us. Every time a well-financed company gets away with running spec work competitions instead of just paying artists, it further devalues our time and skill. It reinforces the idea that illustration and graphic design are just hobbies people do for funsies, and don't represent skill worth paying for (or certainly not worth paying a living wage for at least).

You assert (groundlessly) that the competition is only for amateurs and not for professionals, but that doesn't actually help; that's like shrugging and saying hiring scabs is fine because they're only temps and this isn't their real job. If anybody in an industry is available to be exploited, then everybody is.

 

[Fox Lee]

Do you use D&D Beyond for your 5e games?

I don't use DNDB because I don't play 5e, and they won't support 4e. However, I am part of the broader D&D online community which will always be represented first and foremost by the officially sanctioned faces of the current edition, of which DNDB is a critical one. I have been deeply invested in this community for decades, and I will do what I can to make it a community that does not support dodgy corporate nonsense like spec work.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I don't use DNDB because I don't play 5e, and they won't support 4e. However, I am part of the broader D&D online community which will always be represented first and foremost by the officially sanctioned faces of the current edition, of which DNDB is a critical one. I have been deeply invested in this community for decades, and I will do what I can to make it a community that does not support dodgy corporate nonsense like spec work.

Yep, that's what I thought. You won this time, but the world became a little bit less fun and more restrictive.

 

[Hussar]

Well, maybe it's for the same reason that people don't understand the issues here. Because they don't bother reading the terms and conditions and understanding them.

https://inkarnate.s3.amazonaws.com/inkarnate-terms-of-use-june-2020.pdf

I pulled them for you for Inkarnate.

Now, if you want to, you can form a twitter mob about this. But this ranks with the whole, "I just read the EULA on the website/software. I can't believe what's in it!" Inkarnate aren't bad actors (IMO), just as D&D Beyond weren't.

“Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.” -Maple Cocaine

Huh? I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say here. Can you please speak clearly without trying to be funny? Because, frankly I’m totally not understanding what your point is.

 

[Hussar]

I have to admit to being utterly bewildered here. From my point of view, this is how the conversation went:

Me: Companies that are running contests like this should provide something of value to entrants in return for the value they are getting from the entrants. This contest is predatory because it provides nothing of value to the entrants while the company gains everything.
Snarf: Companies must protect themselves, that's why they require the rights.
Me: Here's an example of a company, Inkarnate, who is doing the right thing. They are providing something of value to the entrants in return for what the entrants produce. No one is exclusively benefiting.
Snarf: READ THE EULA!! Go form a Twitter mob!!
Me:

 

[TheSword]

And I spoke up, as an artist, because you seemed to be claiming that the majority were not artists, but voices outside the community just wanting some drama. I wanted to make the point that I criticised them, as a huge fan of D&D and an artist both, not as some outsider interfering because I want woke points.

You don't seem to understand that "people who would have been affected" includes all of us. Every time a well-financed company gets away with running spec work competitions instead of just paying artists, it further devalues our time and skill. It reinforces the idea that illustration and graphic design are just hobbies people do for funsies, and don't represent skill worth paying for (or certainly not worth paying a living wage for at least).

You assert (groundlessly) that the competition is only for amateurs and not for professionals, but that doesn't actually help; that's like shrugging and saying hiring scabs is fine because they're only temps and this isn't their real job. If anybody in an industry is available to be exploited, then everybody is.

At no point did I say that the majority of complainants weren’t artists. But it’s becoming more and more clear that a lot weren’t anything to do with d&d beyond.

Comparing amateurs - who don’t get paid… to scabs who do get paid. Is quite poor taste. Amateurs aren’t scabs. They’re nothing like scabs.

You’re talking about controlling the methods of production and the terms that are allowed to be offered. If this was a union and there was a strike there would need to be agreement by those affected. You wouldn’t just be able to impose the restrictions on everyone because you don’t like it.

I have no problem with artists making a living, I have no problem with them campaigning for people not to enter or working to improve terms for artists. I just thinks it’s unreasonable when people shut things down because it’s not to their taste. It’s not very pluralistic.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I have to admit to being utterly bewildered here. From my point of view, this is how the conversation went:

Me: Companies that are running contests like this should provide something of value to entrants in return for the value they are getting from the entrants. This contest is predatory because it provides nothing of value to the entrants while the company gains everything.
Snarf: Companies must protect themselves, that's why they require the rights.
Me: Here's an example of a company, Inkarnate, who is doing the right thing. They are providing something of value to the entrants in return for what the entrants produce. No one is exclusively benefiting.
Snarf: READ THE EULA!! Go form a Twitter mob!!
Me:

Or, perhaps, this is what the conversation is like:

Hussar: I don't understand what these terms and conditions mean.
Snarf: Here, let me do a full analysis and pull the documents D&D Beyond and explain it.
Hussar: Don't condescend to me! Also, look at this other awesome contest.
Snarf: Did you look at the terms & conditions for the company?

In another thread, someone posted about foreigners buying land in Japan; something you happened to know about. Well, either you can look at the actual documents (the T&C) and understand what the point is, or you just want to argue? I'm not sure which it is- any time people try to explain things to you, you accuse them of being condescending or not being clear, or not agreeing with you.

But to recap:

1. This is what actually happened with D&D Beyond.

D&D 5E - Anatomy of a Snafu- D&D Beyond and the Curious Contest

Is it snafu or snarfu? I digress.... The following two threads are probably relevant to this thread, and will explain why I am doing a deep dive on this issue: Thread about pay in the TTRPG Industry Thread about D&D Beyond Canceling an Art Competition I realized today that while many people...

www.enworld.org

If you look in that thread, all the source documents and links were provided. If you understood what those documents meant, it was simple to understand. To the extent I thought it was funny, it was because it was glaringly obvious to me; much like (I am sure) issues regarding Japan are to you.

2. In approximately 3 minutes, I googled the contest (assumedly the farm contest) and the T&C for Inkarnate, which were typical for a company like that. Now, maybe you think there is some defining difference in a company that provides online mapmaking tools running a contest with a single winner getting an extension to the product that lets them make more maps (valued by the company at $25), and a requirement that the asset be available for free, but you also have to read it in pari materia with the terms & conditions of the product/website itself which I provided to you which apply to all art made with the product and to all submissions to the company. Or not! You can just ignore that because it has lots of words and I don't feel like making another deep dive- but even if you do, then:
You just gave your approval to a company running a contest that gave a virtual grandprize of letting you continue to use the company's tools ($25 value!), in exchange for making your own art freely available for use by the company's customers and allowing the company to market your art as an example of what the company's product does.


I personally don't think Inkarnate did anything wrong. I think it is quite possible to support better wages (and actual employee status, when possible) for artists, and to understand that the issues regarding liability and contests are different than the issues surrounding the gig economy.

I think it should be possible to discuss some of these issues and realize that there is nuance that is missed, and that twitter always manages to miss the nuance.

 

[Gnarlo]

Yes; but he's exploiting you-as-player in return, so it all neatly cancels out.

“I used her, she used me, but neither one cared; we were getting our share” — Bob Segar

 

[Gnarlo]

I guess that means enworld is exploiting us because they aren't paying us for our posts

(Sarcasm)

Hell, some us are paying them for the privilege of posting here; what does that make us??