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.
I believe you're conflating something they can do with something they will do, however the permissions you grant them are the ones required to even publish your comment on the website, or to allow your characters to be shared. The changes are basically with who controls the data and that's all.
This is just the standard legal boilerplate; it means if someone kicks up a fuss because you used a picture that didn't belong to you or whatever, it's your fault rather than the company's. In practice it just means they take down anything reported to them, and close the account of anyone who repeatedly offends.
It's essentially the same terms DDB has always used, it just doesn't apply only to DDB anymore.
No, I am talking about the practicality of doing the act. You CAN drive your car into your house. You have the potential to undertake that, but doing so is impractical and could result in serious damage to costly investments as well as loss of life. Wizards CAN throw their weight around with our content but its utterly impractical to do so because its a legal minefield. Claiming unenforceable legal rights is a questionable practice and seems a bit like violating consumer rights for sport.
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1. This is the exact same obligation that already existed under Fandom, so you are making an issue out of something you probably never gave a second thought before, even though it already applied to you.
2. This language is not an "unenforceable right"--it is language there to protect Wizards of the Coast. As noted, Wizards (and before Fandom or any third party they wanted), has a legal right to use any content you upload to D&D Beyond. Let's say they take advantage of that right and it contains someone else's copyrighted material. The copyright holder has the right to tell Wizards to knock it off, and could even go so far as to request damages or compensation from Wizards for using the copyrighted material. This language allows Wizards to say "we trusted our users to police themselves, let's shift the blame onto them, instead of onto us." It is a shield from their own liability specifically to PREVENT them from having to police their content; it does not create an obligation for them to police their content.
Will we have to start paying even if we don’t do the subscription premium thingy
My gosh, they make it sound like they're gonna own our Souls. I would like clarification too, since I'm a writer and the characters I use in games become beloved enough to be converted to stories. For understandable reasons, I'd prefer to NOT have a copyright issue with my own characters
It's the same license you give to Fandom under the current Terms of Service you agreed to when you signed up. Namely, this is required to reproduce your content for display and sharing. Because we live in a highly litigious land. Something like https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1181-community-spotlight-10-homebrew-spells-to-bring would be impossible without granting that permission.
Ahhh, ok. Thank you for the clarification!
You still own the copyright to your writings and art. You still own the copyright to everything you write outside of D&D Beyond. You still own the copyright to everything you own inside D&D Beyond, and could protect it from any third-party other than Wizards, who has license to use whatever content you have uploaded to D&D Beyond.
So, let us say you have a D&D character, we'll call them Sally the Sorcerer. In D&D Beyond, you upload art you drew yourself, write out a bunch of backstory elements in your character sheet, and you have a forum post that is basically a blog where you update people on what Sally did in your D&D sessions. Wizards could use all of this material if they so wished.
You also have an image you drew of Sally that was not uploaded to D&D Beyond and you write fiction about Sally that you share with your friends. Wizards could not use any of this material, even if Sally originated as a concept in D&D Beyond.
I don't know what all the fuss is about personally, the last thing WotC want to do is piss off a mahoosive community... they've got to cover themselves either way, but at the same time not cheese off a community.
So since I have a WOTC account for MTGA does that account merge with my DnDbeyond account now?
There is no news either way, this is simply a change in who owns and controls the data.
I could have sworn it was liceinincense myself. Attorney tom would be proud of your breakdown.
WOTC...if you're reading these. I'm aware you think there is a massive oppurtunity for hollywood movies off the back of D&D property. If you are combing D&D beyond for material, and actually use someone's ideas/characters/etc, you would be doing yourself a disservice by just stealing it. If you offered a % of the income of said property in a contract to use in their material, you instantly have millions of people writing scripts FOR YOU to just read through and pick out the good stuff. As a business decision, that % only works out if the idea works out, so it's really should be no skin off your back.
I can guaren-damn-tee me and everyone here will bust out lawsuits if we see our characters on Amazon Prime after The Adventures of Vox Machina...but I'll be promoting the ever living shit out of you guys if I'm raking in .5% of the revenue brought in by the show and a decent cut of merch sales.
Does this mean that physical copies of sourcebooks can now be somehow used on the platform?
No. It means that Wizards of the Coast will own the data when the transfer is complete.
Will you let us delete our published Homebrew before the move?
You don't seem to understand my take. I was never okay with DnDBeyond's ToS. I merely tolerated it the same way one stays a citizen of a nation despite hating its policies and leaders, or going with family despite disliking certain members, because it was one of the few ways to legally have online books from WotC (just give us PDFs!) and create character sheets very easily. However, there were limits in actual use of my data. Since WotC is so anal with 3rd parties like DnDBeyond using other 3rd party stuff, such as with League of Legends Bilgewater content, I knew members were at ease that their homebrew content could not be used for UA or official WotC content. That is no longer the case. Which is a hard shame. The whole point of even stuff like DMsGuild is to still give at least partial credit to creators, including income. But now WotC can just shift through all the stuff that's been created by players all these years and use it as their own, given they don't have to worry about 3rd party complications.
I seek for the days when WotC can go full mod-friendly past their fears of them not getting their piece of the pie, even beyond the SRD. Its what funds the popularity of so many games, from Minecraft to Skyrim (before it was legally tangled), and if they want to see even more amazing growth, I believe that is the way to go.
You mean sift, not shift.
Also it kind of doesn't matter if you're okay with it or not, you agreed to their terms the moment you made your account to use their homebrew creator to make your stuff and again when you uploaded. That was the deal Fandom set in place in order for their tools to be used by us. Now it's WoTC in charge.
to use your analogy for a second, you're beholden to the law no matter who is president at the time so long as the law doesn't change. Not liking who's in charge all of the sudden is not justification for breaking the law willingly (not by itself anyway).
the best way to keep the rights to your material as you see fit would be to not use DnD beyond to publish it, or Wizard's books/tools to create it. That's the price one pays for convenience, you gotta play by other's rules when you use their tools.
Hopefully this means we can start having UA options in character creation again. A lot easier to playtest when you don't have to homebrew it from scratch.