D&D General WotC is at it again

[Indagare Nogitsune]

From the official Wizards of the Coast Terms and Services Update:

5. USER CONTENT.

2. License to Wizards. By posting or submitting any User Content to or through the Websites, Games, or Services, you hereby irrevocably grant to Wizards a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such User Content (in whole or in part) in any media and to incorporate the User Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed. The foregoing grants shall include the right to: (i) exploit any proprietary rights in such User Content, including but not limited to, rights under copyright, trademark or patent laws under any relevant jurisdiction; (ii) your name, likeness, and any other information included in your User Content, without any obligation to you. You waive any and all claims that any use by us or our licensees of your User Content violates any of your rights, including moral rights, privacy rights, rights to publicity, proprietary, attribution, or other rights, and rights to any material or ideas contained in your User Content.

Apparently they never learn that people really hate this sort of thing. One would think after the last disaster they'd not want to put their hands in the fire again, but apparently it really is too much to ask. Anyway, if you have content there, you might want to remove it or, at least, give them an earful.

 

[Alzrius]

All WotC learned from the OGL scandal was that they needed to be subtler in their attempts to exploit their customer base.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

This is pretty boilerplate stuff for a social media website. If you post something on Reddit, Reddit owns it.

 

[GarrettKP]

This is pretty boilerplate stuff for a social media website. If you post something on Reddit, Reddit owns it.

Won’t stop people online from overreacting.

 

[Morrus]

This is pretty boilerplate stuff for a social media website. If you post something on Reddit, Reddit owns it.

Licenses it, not owns it. You still own it. That’s an important distinction.

(Well in this case you do, I haven’t seen the Reddit agreement).

 

[Umbran]

This is pretty boilerplate stuff for a social media website. If you post something on Reddit, Reddit owns it.

Yeah.

If they don't have such terms, their own publishing can be paralyzed. Even if they never actually look at user-posted content, if they publish something, someone will have posted something similar, and claim WotC owes them for it.

 

[Marc17]

Ya, I doubt this is new because it seems like lots of other stuff other sites have. They mainly don't want somebody to jump on D&D Beyond Board (Or whatever) and lay out their game, monster, or idea, and then sue WotC later when something similar is put out (which was probably in the works prior to the posts). Authors of series are espcailly like that as they can't have people thorowin out ideas constantly on their website and later have somebody claim an idea was stolen by them.

 

[Steampunkette]

This license gives Wizards the power to:

1) Publish your posts online.
2) Authorize other people to quote your posts.
3) Publish your posts relating to other copyrighted works (such as references to Tunnels and Trolls and their game mechanics)
4) Host profile pictures for you to attach to your account.
5) Publicly display the name you've chosen to use on their forums.
6) Publicly display streams they host.
7) More of the above, defined in a dozen different ways.

This license is related to the User Content section directly above the License section you linked. Here it is as an image file:

This does not relate to WotC stealing the body of a novel you've written and putting it as a copy-paste into their next book without paying you royalties.

Though they could do something like that with your forum posts and any pictures you upload.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Good grief I was still under the assumption that Wizards did not have a forum anymore from when they closed it years ago...

 

[MonsterEnvy]

What is this even from, the D&D beyond Fourms?