We are excited to announce that D&D Beyond will soon be joining Hasbro as part of the Wizards of the Coast family!
On May 18, 2022 or soon after, your D&D Beyond account will transfer to Wizards of the Coast, at which point (and going forward) the Wizards Terms of Use will apply to your use of D&D Beyond, and the Wizards Privacy Policy will apply to the personal data associated with your account. If you are located in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, Wizards of the Coast LLC will become the “data controller” of your personal data once it transfers.
For more information on this transaction, please click here. If you wish to delete your account prior to the transfer, you will find instructions for doing so here.
Frequently asked questions
When will the D&D Beyond Terms of Service be updated?
The Terms of Service will be updated to Wizards of the Coast Terms of Service on or around May 18, 2022.
Why are they being updated?
As part of Wizards of the Coast acquiring D&D Beyond, we will extend the Wizards Terms of Service to cover this new service.
What is changing in them?
We need your permission to put your user content on D&D Beyond and operate the D&D Beyond service, and we’re working to ensure that the scope of the permission you give us is tailored to that goal. The Wizards Terms of Service will therefore be updated with a section specific to D&D Beyond to allow us to host your content and otherwise operate the D&D Beyond service.
Will Wizards own my homebrew content created on D&D Beyond?
Wizards has no intent of taking ownership over user content you put on D&D Beyond, and the Terms of Service will not grant us such rights. The permissions we will need for user content will relate to allowing us to operate the D&D Beyond service, including displaying that content on our site.
Do these changes affect homebrew content that was created before May 18?
Any content that remains on the D&D Beyond service will be subject to the updated Wizards Terms of Service. The updated Terms of Service should not impact how you've used the site or owned your content prior to May 18.
If I delete my D&D Beyond account, will my homebrew content remain on D&D Beyond? If so, will my username still be credited?
While your homebrew content will remain on D&D Beyond, the credited username will change to “user-[number].”
Will Wizards own any character or account information I upload (e.g. character sheets, profile pictures)?
Wizards has no intent of taking ownership over user content you put on D&D Beyond, and the Terms of Service will not grant us such rights. The permissions we will need for that content will relate to allowing us to operate the D&D Beyond service, including displaying that content on our site.
Will I need a Wizards account to access or sign up for D&D Beyond after May 18?
No. You can continue to use your Twitch or Google account or Apple ID to sign into D&D Beyond. New users will still need a Twitch or Google account or Apple ID to sign up for D&D Beyond after May 18.
is the transfer going to change the website or just the data controller?
Will Wizards' accounts be an option for authentication in DnDBeyond in the future? I already have one and would prefer it to Twitch and the other authentication options currently available.
I don't have a WotC account. Will I need to create one before the transfer?
I watched your video but what about homebrew items? They weren't specifically included in the things that won't change or be deleted and I have spent countless weeks on my homebrew will these stay unchanged?
It doesn't sound like it, at least not yet; this announcement sounds like data protection legalese, where you need to be kept aware who is managing your data.
I do hope they'll integrate the accounts at some point, though I also hope they do it in a way that can account for different e-mail addresses, and cope with D&D Beyond's weirdly flaky subscriptions page.
So, under the new ToS am I understanding that WoTC will own my characters and content also? If so I see a deactivation coming soon.
Is this what you are referring to?
"5.2. 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."
Seems a valid concern. Would be good to get clarification.
Any plans for posibility of adding phisical books to your library (dunno if the books have some universal id and all its real)?
@MDN74
Under section 5.2 of the WoTC ToS, it appears to be saying that content you publish on their website can be claimed by WoTC. You still own the content and can distribute it as you see fit as your content, but cannot prevent WoTC from distributing it as they see fit. You're not forfeiting ownership, you're granting an indefinite licence for use commercially and non-commercially. To take out the legalese, you can use your homebrew however you want. By uploading it, you give WoTC the right to slap it in the next UA, and potentially sell it in a future sourcebook without credit.
As for your characters and unpublished content, where you post them is irrelevant. Any parts of your content that is based on existing copyrighted material can technically be considered theirs if they bother to come knocking. Any parts of it that aren't, are solely yours (though you may potentially need to contend with third parties if using their content. If you write up a brand new world that's fine, it's yours. If you create a stat-block for your own creatures, you keep the rights to the creature, but WoTC has rights to use that stat-block for their own purposes.
This isn't specific to WoTC either, but general copyright, and is standard practice with any published work. Books, movies, games, etc., all give you a licence to personal use of the content, but distribution and modification aren't permitted without express permission from licence holders (not creators, mind you), and only to the extent granted.
(The amount of LeagleEagle videos I've been watching recently gives me the urge to point out that I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, and I make no guarantee to the accuracy of this information. Act upon this information at your own risk, I cannot be held liable.)
PS: I'm already sick of the word licence. Licence licence licence, licence, licence, licence-licence. I also could have sworn it was liscence, not licence.
Thank you
Not even sure how that would be implemented. Plenty of people would just walk into stores, take a photo of the code on the inner cover, and cheese it.
There's so many differences between digital and physical products, that making a 2-for-1 deal is almost certainly going to result in either digital retailers or physical retailers get screwed over. If you can get a free digital copy from the physical book, why pay for the digital version and vice-versa? (My assumption of the general public, not my personal statement. I personally found myself in a situation of buying both, but that came from my refusal to "get with the times" biting me in the rear under special circumstances.)
Clauses like this are A) Almost always written in this overly-broad, scary way, and B) Almost always intended to allow the company to just do the normal things you expect them to do on the web site- i.e. "reproduce" and "publish" your work by making it visible to other users on the site when you ask for it to be.
This crap is exactly what I was afraid of when Beyond was being purchased. WotC effectively owns my characters and homebrew. What a waste of all my money. Expect to lose a ton of customers if that ToS does not change.
To all those being alarmist about the new Terms & Conditions and about giving Wizards a license to your homebrew.... you ALWAYS gave someone such a license, even under Fandom--it's a necessary term for how websites that host third-party-content function. Without this license, they cannot distribute your materials to you, let alone anyone else who might want to view your published homebrew.
Personally surprised this didn't happen sooner.
Thank you! I really didn't understand the backlash because this was my thought process as well!
So, if my characters have copyrighted material in them, for example portraits, Wizards is claiming the right to use, royalty-free, the content that I do not own the rights to and the IP holder never consented to place on this website? That's a bold claim.
Also, I would point out the difference between Old Beyond claiming the right to use user content and Wizards doing so. Old Beyond is/was not creating content for sale. There was the possibility they could have mined user content and sold it, but it wasn't likely to ever happen. It wasn't really a conflict of interest.
I mean, It's not like Old Beyond particularly cared about fairness and administration in my experience, but still.
Does this mean that the subscription prices will go up? I don't see anything written or seen about this.
"You also represent and warrant that you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, releases, consents, and permissions to permit the Company to copy, store, publish, display, and distribute your content via the Services, in accordance with the license rules that are applicable to such content"
You were never allowed to use that material here in the first place.
And yet, how many people's profile pictures are pictures they own the rights to? How many people use images from the internet for their character portraits? How many people have characters who are a tribute to a preexisting character? How are they going to police content that I might have a liscence to use but not the rights to allow our corporate overlords to use?
Are they going to hire lawyers to vet every single character and upload? Sounds expensive.