Third Party Character Creation iOS App Removed

The d20 Fight Club for D&D 5th Edition iOS app has been removed from the Apple App Store by its creator at the request of WotC. The creator reports that he received a Cease & Desist demand (although it's worth noting that some supposed recent C&Ds appear to have turned out to be amicable requests). This follows on from the removal of the D&D Tools website and the more recent online character generator.

The creator reports that "I received a cease and desist order from Wizards of the Coast. All D&D apps will be removed from the App Store as they weren't compliant with WotC's copyrights and trademarks. Hopefully they'll be back in some form someday. Til then, thanks for all the support."

Nobody has actually shared one of these C&Ds yet, and others have indicated that what they actually received was simply a friendly email asking that they respect WotC's trademarks, so it's not entirely clear what is happening. Hopefully somebody will share one soon!

It does look like this particular app contained text and stat blocks copied directly from the D&D books. Below is the DM version of the app (the companion to the character creation app).

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[painted_klown]

Strange how it is so super obvious that WotC would go against 3rd party apps to save the brand, yet other RPGs have no problem with fan made character generators (Chummer for Shadowrun for example).

Are any of those other brands held by a major corporation with public investors who are looking for a return on said investment?

Honestly, I have no idea, but if that anser is "no" then there is your answer.

Hope that helps.

 

[Dannager]

Maybe they should focus on trying to grow their own brand by offering products and value add ons.

Maybe they are. You have no idea, because you don't work there. More importantly, it doesn't matter. Regardless of what you think they ought to be doing to grow their own business (and I'm going to repeat: their own business), you don't get to claim the moral high ground. They have a right to protect their intellectual property, and it is amoral and unjust of you to act as though you have been somehow wronged, or slighted as a consumer, by them exercising that right.

If you say that the value is in the brand then it is up to WotC to grow that brand and if they want my $10 then they have to earn it the old fashioned way.

The "old fashioned way" doesn't include them being forced to compete with someone else stealing their work and selling it for less.

You seriously need to stop for just a few minutes here and spend some time thinking about this. Your position here is flat-out wrong. This isn't something that opinions merely differ on. There is no rhetorical ground for you to stand on. I think you probably don't even believe the things you're arguing at this point; I think you chose to attack WotC for something legitimate, and when people corrected you, you simply decided to double down (repeatedly) on the error. Now you've found yourself with an extreme position and no way to argue yourself out of it.

 

[Hussar]

The arguments that a product being offered for free makes no difference as far as it's effect on their sales, doesn't take into account the realities of modern table top gaming and piracy. Whether someone agrees with piracy or not, they at least need to take into account the realities of it and understand that the table top gaming hobby (and most similar hobbies) are primary made up of computer literate people. Heck, probably more than half of the people who play the hobby and buy the books also casually pirate information.

Additionally the arguments that there is no contractual obligation for them to produce material is true, but like many people in this hobby I need to know that they are producing a product worth investing my time and money into. I was really psyched about 5th edition and I would be perfectly ok if they never produced another book, but I do need the game system I play to either have fan made material and tools readily available or have functional and affordable versions available. Currently there are some of the former available, but if they start removing them without replacing them with the latter I wont have much choice but to jump ship.

I think a lot of the people that are posting against WotC's decision are like me, they really love the game system and are struggling to avoid not having to switch to a different one.

No, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. You do not need any of that. You might and probably do want those things and you are likely very willing to buy such things. But, at no point do you actually need them. Nor are you ever entitled to them. If not having them means that you "jump ship" then fine. Considering they aren't offering what you want, that's exactly what you should do. But, that doesn't mean that they have to provide what you want, nor does it mean that they have to allow others to provide what you want.

 

[Dannager]

Strange how it is so super obvious that WotC would go against 3rd party apps to save the brand, yet other RPGs have no problem with fan made character generators (Chummer for Shadowrun for example).

The key word there is "brand". Shadowrun has a history as a product line and a fictional universe, but as a brand? Not so much. It has been handled, at various points, by FASA, WizKids, FanPro, Topps, and Catalyst Game Labs. There's not a lot of stability there. Compare to D&D, which has been around significantly longer than Shadowrun and has only ever changed hands once.

Heck, look at the history of Shadowrun video games - most of them are titled, simply, Shadowrun, and every last one of them has the word "Shadowrun" in the game's name. There wasn't enough brand presence and staying power for them to develop anything resembling a cohesive line of diversified game products. Compare to D&D, which has series (plural) of games, and most of them had such a strong grounding in the brand that they didn't even need "Dungeons & Dragons" in the title of the game!

 

[Hussar]

Strange how it is so super obvious that WotC would go against 3rd party apps to save the brand, yet other RPGs have no problem with fan made character generators (Chummer for Shadowrun for example).

Yeah, because comparing a multi-million dollar business to someone's garage product makes so much sense. Jeez. Hey Derren, howzabout I photocopy the stuff you've worked on and provide it for free. You'd be perfectly fine with that wouldn't you? After all, if its fine for WOTC, then why should you get paid for your work? Let's go one better. How about you provide all your freelance work for free? After all, no one should have to pay for it should they? I mean, if it's fine for people to provide WOTC material for free, then it should be fine for you too, right?

So, do you work for free Derren? Why do you expect to get paid for your freelance work?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yeah, because comparing a multi-million dollar business to someone's garage product makes so much sense. Jeez. Hey Derren, howzabout I photocopy the stuff you've worked on and provide it for free. You'd be perfectly fine with that wouldn't you? After all, if its fine for WOTC, then why should you get paid for your work? Let's go one better. How about you provide all your freelance work for free? After all, no one should have to pay for it should they? I mean, if it's fine for people to provide WOTC material for free, then it should be fine for you too, right?

So, do you work for free Derren? Why do you expect to get paid for your freelance work?

I thought WotC and Hasbro was printing money, they could pay a ton of employees, never lay anyone off, never downsize or restructure, have the best highest paid talent, AND let people steal there IP, or just give stuff away..

 

[pemerton]

Sending out C&Ds with no clear intention of doing so is just bullying.

I think there are two ways of responding to this.

The first involves denial: it's not bullying for a commercial publishing house to try and stop another commercial publisher from profiting, without licence, from intellectual property produced by the first of the two publishers. And it's not as if WotC is just squatting on its rights: it's selling thousands, presumably tens or hundreds of thousands, of books.

The second involves modus tollens: Let's add to your claim the premise that WotC is not a bully; and then we get the conclusion that WotC has clear intentions to release some sort of character generator. Sound pretty plausible to me!

The fact that the Wizards legal department doesn't know the difference is what really bothers me here.

I think it's more likely that Wizard's legal department just doesn't share your view that fans should be able to reproduce WotC's copyrighted text without permission.

If you have your own company, never punish your fans for producing something that promotes your product or producing something that you don't have, such as an online character generator. That is just basic business sense.

I don't think it's that straightforward. All WotC has to make money from, on the D&D side, is its IP - trademarks + copyrighted text and images. If they just decided to squat on it all and stop others enjoying it, that might be one thing. But manifestly they are not doing that. They are publishing rulebooks, and adventures, and almost certainly in due course will publish some sort of digital tools.

It's their prerogative to decide what the best way to do this is. That's the nature of a market economy: private property owners get to decide what to do with their property. In this case, that means that WotC gets to decide who can digitally publish their rules text.

Wizards seems to me to be an unethical disloyal group that does not respect its employees who created the game, nor does it respect its fans that spent years playtesting the game for free, nor does it respect fans such as Pathguy who put out a Character Generator to help people create characters and navigate through the game and learn how to play it.

The relationship between WotC and its employees is a topic for another time and place. I gather that by American standards they are a relatively respectable employer as far as salaries and benefits go. The broader merits of American labour laws is something that forum rules preclude expressing an opinion on.

I suspect that WotC doesn't regard Pathguy as deserving respect. They want to control how people encounter their game and come to their material. That is their prerogative: they are the publisher.

As for their fans, most fans didn't spend years playtesting the game for free. They spent years playing the game for free, ie without having to pay for it. If that's hardship, sign me up for more of it!

 

[Sunseeker]

The second involves modus tollens: Let's add to your claim the premise that WotC is not a bully; and then we get the conclusion that WotC has clear intentions to release some sort of character generator. Sound pretty plausible to me!

Never assume. And "their intentions" could be to release a character building tool two years from now that's half baked and requires fans to "fix" it ala the original 4e character builder, until which time WOTC discontinues the product because they realize they can skim more money off the top through subscription fees instead of one-time sales of a singular product. AND release that product on a platform that half the computer users can't even use and even web developers don't like (Silverlight).

Yes, I have a low expectation of WOTC because they have a reputation of not seeing the bar very high to begin with.

I assume Wizards has no intention of doing anything until they actually state specific intentions. "We're going to release something something digital something." is not that.

 

[Dannager]

Never assume.

Okay. You guys first.

Or are we not counting pretending to know the thoughts and motivations of multiple departments within a company no one in this thread works at as "assuming"?

 

[pemerton]

There is a weird line in there which says that if you use *anything* from wizards.com you agree to the rules, which sounds fairly weak a far as enforceability goes to me (a lawyer might weigh in).

I'll have a go, though American contract law is not exactly my field.

The Fan Site Kit Policy defines itself as being part of the Website Terms of Use. And the Terms of Use (that are linked to on the Fan Site Kit Policy page) talk about compliance with the Fan Site Kit Policy.

So if the Terms of Use are binding, then that line in the policy is probably binding also.

On general principles as they apply in Anglo-Australian contract law I don't see how the Terms of Use could be binding, and hence don't see how that line in the policy could be binding. For instance, neither the WotC home page nor the D&D page prominently display the Terms of Use: you have to scroll to the bottom of the page and then follow a link to find them. Only once you start reading the Terms of Use do you find the line that "Your use of our Websites or Services constitutes your acceptance of these Terms of Use . . ."

That said, anyone who has read the Terms of Use or the Fan Site Kit Policy is probably bound at that point. There may also be special rules that apply to online/website contracts that I'm not aware of, that override the general rules about display of fine print that I am applying in my reasoning in the previous paragraph.

But in any event being bound by the policy doesn't seem to amount to much: the prohibitions on altering downloaded Tool Kit material or on merchandising material bearing WotC trademarks or material probably already apply as part of general IP law.

The other rules seem to apply only to Fan Sites, which are defined as being "for your own personal use" as one of the game's "fans, collectors and commentators". So I don't think they apply to someone running a site like ENworld. Hence, for instance, I don't see that - say, by reading the 5e Basic PDF - you as owner of ENworld have contractually promised not to "publish, display, exhibit or use any information about products (including any photographs, game text, rules, or drawings of such new products or their prototypes) that has not already been released to the general public by Wizards or that Wizards has otherwise expressly authorized for release to the collector community".

Another possible construction would be that, if you use the tool kit material on your site - and hence bring your site into the category of "fan site" - you have promised not to also have that prohibited material on your site.

(A further complexity is that most such material wouldn't count as "Wizards Material" (which is defined as the stuff in the tool kit), but the prohibition appears under the heading "guidelines and policies for use of Wizards Material". But this wouldn't be the first time a contract had an unhelpful heading.)