D&D 5E D&D Beyond Self-Censorship: Pride Month Digital Dice Blocked In Some Countries

[Vaalingrade]

On the one hand, it's pretty obvious why the self-censorship happens. On the other, I'm of the mind that making asshats double down on the public record is way more valuable in terms of not only just plain social responsibility, but good karma, PR and yes, eventual customer loyalty.

Even putting it aside, kneeling to chumps who discriminate like this is a long term mistake. Do you really thing they'll allow activities like D&D once they're done stomping out the minorities?

 

[Morrus]

I've been seeing the notification on my D&D Beyond account about the free pride-month dice that I could claim (there's a post about it on ENWorld here as well), but when I finally got around to clicking that link to claim my dice, I got this:

View attachment 250444
So I clicked on the link to see what was going on, and apparently they made this annoncement 4 days ago, alongside their Pride Dice announcement:
Regionally Blocked Content on D&D Beyond

Now, my country (Turkey) isn't doing too great on LGBT rights, I'll grant you that. Pride Walks are banned with little to no reason despite there being a constitutional right for free assembly, and without going too political, the current government is not pro-LGBT rights. That said, there is no law banning homosexual relations or their "propaganda" (as it is in some countries) that would require WotC to block access to some rainbow-coloured dice here. On the contrary, there is a vibrant LGBT community in big cities, and people's opinions are changing, albeit slowly. This kind of regressive attitude that puts pride flags in European or American accounts and not only ignores LGBT people in Turkey but actively blocks content that celebrates them seems inane to me. I hardly doubt WotC was contacted by the government to this, since D&D isn't that known outside the tight-knit TTRPG community, so it really looks like they decided to label Turkey as "one of the backwards ones" and blanket ban access to their own page.

I don't know what can be done about this, but I thought this kind of hypocritical behaviour should've been made known.

I can’t see it either here in the U.K.

 

[Ondath]

I can’t see it either here in the U.K.

You mean you can't claim the dice from the link here? If so, that's mind-boggling.

 

[darjr]

@Ondath yes. Please share and I’ll retweet.

 

[Morrus]

You mean you can't claim the dice from the link here? If so, that's mind-boggling.

Oh, hang on. Yes that link works. I think I was just looking at the announcement.

 

[Ondath]

@Ondath yes. Please share and I’ll retweet.

Here's my tweet, I really appreciate the help!

 

[Professor Murder]

I'm curious. Are there workarounds like there are for say streaming services?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Once again all these corporate pride geastures prove hollow, fake geastures. Its all PR. Same with every other movement they pretend to care about.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm curious. Are there workarounds like there are for say streaming services?

It depends on how the content is structured at D&D Beyond. I mean, this is really a gross simplification, but basically there are two broad possibilities:

1) "You own what you own", i.e. it doesn't matter what region you're in now, just what region you were in when you bought it. So in that case, you can use a VPN to put yourself in a better jurisdiction, get to the thing, and then you have the thing, period.

2) "We check every time", i.e. the content availability is checked based on your location every time you attempt to access it. This is legally dicey in a lot of places. I suspect trying to pull it on anyone in the EU would not end well. But it is not uncommon.

There's more complexity to it of course. A VPN should be able to settle the issue. I don't have any installed atm or I'd use one to teleport to Turkey and see if my Pride dice still worked. They are kind of cool-looking.

 

[Burnside]

I'm curious. Are there workarounds like there are for say streaming services?

I'm guessing you could get around it with a VPN.