WotC WotC Removes Digital Content Team Credits From D&D Beyond

According to Faith Elisabeth Lilley, who was on the digital content team at Wizards of the Coast, the contributor credits for the team have been removed from DDB.

The team was responsible for content feedback and the implementation of book content on the online platform. While it had been indicated to them that they would not be included in the credits of the physical books for space reasons, WotC apparently agreed to include them in the online credits.

It appears that those credits have now been removed.

I just discovered that I have been removed from book credits on D&D Beyond for books I worked on while at Wizards of the Coast.

Background:

While at Wizards (so after D&D Beyond was purchased) - with numerous books, my digital content team and I worked directly with the book team on the content, reading through rules drafts, suggesting changes, giving ideas, and catching issues. We had a full database of the content and understood exactly how it interacted.

Given that we were contributing to the content in the books, I felt it reasonable to request that team be added to the credits, but was informed the credits section was already too crowded with the number of people involved and many of the marketing team had already been dropped from credits. I felt strongly that anyone actually contributing to what is in the printed book should be credited though, so we agreed a compromise, that the team would be added to the credits page on D&D Beyond only, as there is no issue with "not enough space" on a web page.

I've added screenshots here that I had for some of the books.

At some point recently, those credits pages have been edited to remove the credits for me and the content team. Nobody reached out to let me know - it just happened at some point, and I only just noticed.

We've even been removed from the digital-only releases, that only released on D&D Beyond, such as the Spelljammer Academy drops.

I'm not angry or upset, just yet again, really disappointed, as somehow I expected better.

EDIT TO ADD MORE CONTEXT

It's not just getting the books online. I worked with Kyle & Dan to improve the overall book process from ideation to delivery across all mediums (you should have seen the huge process charts I built out...)

The lead designers would send over the rules for each new rulebook and we'd go through it, give feedback, highlight potential balance issues, look at new rules/design that was difficult to implement digitally and suggest tweaks to improve it etc etc. We even had ideas for new content that was then included in the book.

We'd go through the whole book in detail, catching inconsistencies and miscalculations, and I'm proud to say that we dramatically reduced the need for clarifications or errata on those books.

I'm not saying anyone on the design or book team was careless - far from it, they're consummate professionals - I am just illustrating the role my team and I had in contributing to the content, quality & success of the physical books, let alone the digital versions.

We should have been in the credits section of the physical printed book. We were part of the creative process. That was something we were actively discussing when I was informed I was being laid off.

Adding the team to the credits pages just on D&D Beyond was, as I mentioned above, a compromise while we figured things out.

My team were fully credited on the Cortex: Prime and Tales of Xadia books when D&D Beyond was still part of Fandom, before the Wizards acquisition.

In fact for those books we made sure to credit the entire digital development team, including developers, community managers and so forth - everyone who helped make the book successful.

I know that Wizards has hundreds of people involved and previously hit issues with the number of people in credits for D&D books, so pulled back from crediting some roles.

Would it be so bad to have to dedicate extra space in a book to the people whose contributions made the book successful?

I really don't think it would.

 

[LordEntrails]

How about this example since it's more realistic.

A DMsGuild product. A team of a dozen creatives get together to make a player's options book. It takes them 8 months to gather ideas, write, layout, playtest and have the product ready for release. One of the people involved drop out after 3 weeks and ghosts the team. But they contributed a list of a dozen feats with one sentence summaries to the project. 4 of the feats, are used after other people fully flesh them out, playtest them and make them usable.

It that enough of a contribution to get credited?

 

[Deset Gled]

How about this example since it's more realistic.

A DMsGuild product. A team of a dozen creatives get together to make a player's options book. It takes them 8 months to gather ideas, write, layout, playtest and have the product ready for release. One of the people involved drop out after 3 weeks and ghosts the team. But they contributed a list of a dozen feats with one sentence summaries to the project. 4 of the feats, are used after other people fully flesh them out, playtest them and make them usable.

It that enough of a contribution to get credited?

The short answer is: this should all have been communicated at the start of, or as part of, the project. Whether in the contract for a freelancer, union negotiations, or other communications (which could be an email or just an informal conversation), the amount of work to be completed and how it is credited is part of the communication involved in making the product. And yes, this communication includes the "what happens if you drop out" part. For freelancers, the default answer is "if you don't finish, you don't get paid, and that includes credit". For employees, the default is the opposite: if you even touch the project before you leave the company, you get the credit.

As a side note, it's worth noting that this is one of the reasons why unions are important for creatives. One of the critical things a union does is provide clear guidelines (i.e. communication) about exactly what role a person plays and how it is credited.

I know the obvious follow up is "but what if they didn't communicate ahead of time?" As a hypothetical, it becomes an exercise in liability. But in the actual case with WotC, it doesn't matter. By publishing the names the first time, and by having those credits used in previous cases, WotC has communicated to those involved that they should expect credit. The only way to change that expectation would be with an explicit change to the contract/employee agreement, which clearly has not happened as part of this case.

 

[Clint_L]

I’m actually finding this little controversy harder to understand than the OGL fiasco. That one was a terrible decision, but it had a clear motive. This one, I just don’t get. What’s the upside for WotC?

 

[LordEntrails]

The short answer is: this should all have been communicated at the start of, or as part of, the project. Whether in the contract for a freelancer, union negotiations, or other communications (which could be an email or just an informal conversation), the amount of work to be completed and how it is credited is part of the communication involved in making the product. And yes, this communication includes the "what happens if you drop out" part. For freelancers, the default answer is "if you don't finish, you don't get paid, and that includes credit". For employees, the default is the opposite: if you even touch the project before you leave the company, you get the credit.

As a side note, it's worth noting that this is one of the reasons why unions are important for creatives. One of the critical things a union does is provide clear guidelines (i.e. communication) about exactly what role a person plays and how it is credited.

I know the obvious follow up is "but what if they didn't communicate ahead of time?" As a hypothetical, it becomes and exercise is liability. But in the actual case with WotC, it doesn't matter. By publishing the names the first time, and by having those credits used in previous cases, WotC has communicated to those involved that they should expect credit. The only way to change that expectation would be with an explicit change to the contract/employee agreement, which clearly has not happened as part of this case.

THANK YOU!
I very much appreciate you replying with a usable answer. Truly appreciate it and now I know

I totally agree with your logic on this use case. Removing credit once it was given is something that should indeed be part of an explicit and well communication change.

 

[FoolishFrost]

So your partner(s) friends and fellow gamers get credited in every product you release? Because surely they contribute something to your creativity that you use on a regular basis in your products. I don't believe it. Not because I think you are being deceitful, but because to you the line is clear as to who has "contributed" and who has not. But to those outside the industry, the line is not clear. Not at all.

Nope. Not following you down that rabbit hole. You want to try that route, you do it without me.

Good luck on your quest for the holy grail.

 

[LordEntrails]

Nope. Not following you down that rabbit hole. You want to try that route, you do it without me.

Good luck on your quest for the holy grail.

Thanks for the reply letting me know you won't help. But as demonstrated prior to your post by Desert Gled and my response, it wasn't a search for a Holy Grail. And actually wasn't even very difficult to answer.

 

[Staffan]

I’m actually finding this little controversy harder to understand than the OGL fiasco. That one was a terrible decision, but it had a clear motive. This one, I just don’t get. What’s the upside for WotC?

Devils advocateing real hard here:
1. Lilley posted earlier that putting the credits online but not in the physical books was "a compromise while we figured things out." So clearly, having the D&D Beyond team credited wasn't set in stone.
2. Wizards really doesn't want the online and physical credits to differ.
3. They don't think there's room for the D&D Beyond team in the physical credits. (Edit: My understanding is that they're expanding the D&D Beyond team significantly in order to work on the new VTT and more integration between it and online book access, and I can totally see someone in charge going "It was a maybe when there were ten of them, but now there are a hundred, and that's a no go.")
4. So since there's no room for them in the physical credits, and they want the credits to match, they have to be disappeared from the online credits as well.

Note: I'm not saying that Wizards are right to do this using the above justification. Just that I can see how it would be a path to a bad call where every step makes sense in isolation.

 

[SteveC]

It's interesting to see this thread still going. It's been quite a while since the thread broke, so we know that WotC is aware of the issue. So I take from the silence that this was a deliberate decision, and management feels that they are getting something back from it, enough to make it a better decision than just putting the names back in. It would be interesting to hear what that something they get actually is, but I don't expect to hear anything about that at this point.

The practical effect of this is painting WotC in a negative light for consultants. I'm not sure if the fact that they are the "big dog" will mean that people will still want to consult with them anyway, but it is a mark against them.

I think this whole situation is just another example of how WotC as a corporation has creative people trying to make games, and management who has their own interests that don't necessarily align with that at all. I think we really should be mindful of the difference between those two groups. I say mean things about WotC from time to time, but I don't want the creative people to feel like that's coming down on them. If anything, I feel for them. It must be incredibly difficult to work to create content for a game you love in this environment.

 

[Nikosandros]

One thing that seems interesting to me is that the credits still include the Organized Play team. Unless I'm mistaken, they wouldn't be directly involved in the production of the material.

 

[Umbran]

Why? Why do you ignore my repeated statements that I am not trying to figure out if Faith's team should be credited or not?

You are posting in a thread about that team - it is right there in the title. Why should you have a problem with what you are doing being tied back to the actual topic of the thread?

I am trying to educate myself with opinions from people who claim to have knowledge on a subject. My hypotheticals are purely examples to show that there is, somewhere, a line the industry uses to indicate who should be credited and who should not.

Which is it - are you trying to educate yourself, or are you trying to show something? If you are uneducated, you should not be trying to show things, should you?

But there is a line or criteria used to put 'contributions' in or out. What is that line/criteria?

Then just ask that.

Trying to pin people to specific answers to select hypotheticals looks extremely aggressive, while not actually revealing underlying principles. The underlying principles will be found in large collections of real-world examples, not in speculative situations these people haven't actually been in.