D&D (2024) D&D Player's Handbook Video Redactions & Takedowns

There's a lot of YouTube videos looking at the brand new Player's Handbook right now, and some of them include the YouTuber in question flipping through the new book on screen. A couple of those video creators have been asked by WotC to redact some of the content of their videos, with one finding that their video had been taken down entirely due to copyright claims from the company. It appears to be the folks who are flipping through the whole book on-screen who are running into this issue which, it seems, is based on piracy concerns.

Jorphdan posted on Twitter that "Despite fulfilling [WotC's] requests for the flip through video I was issues a copyright strike on my channel. Three strikes TERMINATES your channel. I don't think going over the 2024 PHB is worth losing my channel I've been working on since 2017. I'm pretty upset as none of this was said up front and when notified I did comply with their requirements. And I see other creators still have their videos up. Videos that are not unlike mine. Covering WotC is not worth losing my channel... Meanwhile please subscribe to my D&D free channel the Jocular Junction, where I'll most likely be making the majority of my TTRPG videos."

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Mike Shea, aka Sly Flourish, also posted a walkthrough of the Player's Handbook. While he didn't receive a copyright takedown action, after an email from WotC he has blurred out all the page images. "Note, I blurred out pictures of the book after Hasbro sent me an email saying they worried people would take screenshots of the book and build their own. Yes, it's complete b******t, but we must all do our part to ensure four billion dollar companies maximize shareholder value."

Popular YouTuber DnD Shorts had a video entitled 100% Walkthrough of the New Player's Handbook in D&D. That video is no longer available. However, his full spoilers review is still online.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

What's the old saying about never to assign to malice that which can be explained by stupidity?

Indeed. Of course, sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

 

[Dire Bare]

Important things to me are the order of things, the apology from the WotC D&D creative team and that Jorohdan isn’t upset at this point.

He's a nice guy, I've met him. We were both involved in the Boise community theatre scene (he might still be, I'm no longer).

 

[Orius]

Questing Beast posted a video about this Friday:


I haven't read this entire thread, but it comes off as a bit ridiculous. If WotC is worried about piracy, they're wasting their time chasing YouTube videos. I saw a video in my feed a few that claimed the PHB already has pirated PDFs out there. I didn't watch that video because I don't care, but this looks like 2023 WotC behavior.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I haven't read this entire thread, but it comes off as a bit ridiculous. If WotC is worried about piracy, they're wasting their time chasing YouTube videos. I saw a video in my feed a few that claimed the PHB already has pirated PDFs out there. I didn't watch that video because I don't care, but this looks like 2023 WotC behavior.

Know where that pirated PDF came from? The youtube video from DnD shorts that started this entire mess.

 

[Corinnguard]

Know where that pirated PDF came from? The youtube video from DnD shorts that started this entire mess.

More like it was copied from his video.

 

[Retreater]

Questing Beast posted a video about this Friday:


I haven't read this entire thread, but it comes off as a bit ridiculous. If WotC is worried about piracy, they're wasting their time chasing YouTube videos. I saw a video in my feed a few that claimed the PHB already has pirated PDFs out there. I didn't watch that video because I don't care, but this looks like 2023 WotC behavior.

I watched Questing Beast's video. Seems like he was like a week late and operating with about half the information.
Some key errors from his video:
"No one's going to screen capture a PDF from a video."
"WotC is going to be releasing the PDF in September anyway."
I was thinking, "dude, just go back to your OSR bubble."

 

[Chaosmancer]

I watched Questing Beast's video. Seems like he was like a week late and operating with about half the information.
Some key errors from his video:
"No one's going to screen capture a PDF from a video."
"WotC is going to be releasing the PDF in September anyway."
I was thinking, "dude, just go back to your OSR bubble."

Yeah, like, a single google search showed me the reddit thread where multiple people were talking about screen capturing the PHB to make a PDF, until one guy got a cease and desist and had to take it down. I don't understand how people can keep saying "this would never happen" after it happened and it is trivially easy to find the evidence of it happening.

 

[mamba]

Yeah, like, a single google search showed me the reddit thread where multiple people were talking about screen capturing the PHB to make a PDF, until one guy got a cease and desist and had to take it down. I don't understand how people can keep saying "this would never happen" after it happened and it is trivially easy to find the evidence of it happening.

Yeah, saying this would not happen when it clearly did is a lack of information.

From my understanding WotC was aware of the PDF by the time they contacted the other Youtubers however, if so contacting them has become pretty pointless.

With 3000 PHBs in the wild now and an 'infinite' number in a few weeks, there is no way they can prevent a PDF from becoming available, they could only have prevented a pretty low quality version from being made in the best case.

 

[GreyLord]

More like it was copied from his video.

If I was going to pirate, I wouldn't do it from a Video. It's FAR easier (and Occam's razor would probably indicate it is FAR more likely) that one of those 1000's of copies from Gen Con would be one of the culprits. Far more people with a decent copy to be able to make a decent pirated version if they actually wanted to.

I have no idea if pirated copies are out there or not (and if they are, I encourage everyone to actually NOT use them and simply either browse your FLGS's copy when it comes out to determine whether you want the new PHB, or actually go out and buy it and SUPPORT the creators who worked on it so that maybe in the future they will have the means to make MORE STUFF that you may enjoy), but I would hope that people would buy the new PHB rather than pirate it.

 

[SteveC]

With 3000 PHBs in the wild now and an 'infinite' number in a few weeks, there is no way they can prevent a PDF from becoming available, they could only have prevented a pretty low quality version from being made in the best case.

This is definitely going to be the case. I have heard (but by no means verified: I don't want to go down the rabbit hole at this point in life) that there is already one available. Whether that's true, we are only days away from that being the case. RPG products get pirated and made into PDFs. What you need to do is come up with a way to mitigate the problem.

The D&D Beyond system is a pretty decent way of dealing with that situation, since if you want access to the books to build characters, you need to buy them. It would make a lot more sense if the VTT was up and running, and you would use D&D Beyond directly to play the game, but that's not the case yet, is it?

There's nothing WotC can reasonably do to stop their product from being available online. The effort to stop this horrible and borderline unusable effort to get a PDF to market a month early has hurt the launch by what it's done to content creators who weren't doing anything wrong. And by that, I'm not talking about showing off each page of the book, I'm talking about the authors who are now very skittish about showing support for the new edition.