So, I own everything on D&D Beyond and I pay for a Master Tier Subscription.

No one, in any group I run for, has contributed to this or even asked if they could donate to help with the cost.

But I noticed a couple of weeks ago that three of my players were sneaking characters into either the campaign I'm running or the one I play in (where I share my content) and using it to make characters for other campaigns. 

I told them over Discord and then again at the shop in real life, that they needed to stop doing that, because I have a limited number of slots to share, and I'm about to start running 3 more campaigns for the game shop.

So last night, I went through and Claimed every character that wasn't officially in any campaign and removed them because between 6 people in this one party, they were using a total of 21 slots, when at most it should be 12 (1 character per campaign).

Two of them then proceeded to get upset with me because they no longer have those characters. I simply told them "I told you this two weeks ago on Discord. I told you last week in person at the shop. If you would have done what I told you, it wouldn't be an issue."

Now, I think, since I paid for the books and I'm paying for the subscription, I have every right to do what I did, and they have no right to take up my slots for use in other games. 

So, I'm asking the community, would you have done what I did? Or just let it slide?

Edit: One of the characters was literally named "Ignore. For Another Game."

AFAIK, there's a significantly larger number of character slots available than there are player slots. If they're already a player in that campaign, I see little harm in them saving an extra character there as it's unlikely you'll run out of slots. On the other hand, you are completely within your rights to restrict people's access to material you purchased. A heads-up of "If you don't remove it, I will delete it" would have been particularly appropriate and would have prevented some of the butt-hurt it seems your players are currently feeling. In your post, it's not clear if you said that or just told them to not do it again, which might have left the door open to them leaving that character they already made there.

If, on the other hand, they're not a player in your campaign at all and somehow managed to get your campaign access code... that's a completely different problem. I'd have kicked them out/deleted characters immediately.

I think if someone asked to do that for the stats, I'd be OK with it temporarily.  But if you want to permanently have a character with all the content unlocked, who is NOT a character in my campaign, you need to pay for the books. 

You did what you had to do, they didn't. That seems to sum it up for me. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

As Rellott has said, it does depend on what was exactly said between you and the players. 

As a note you do have the option to remove a character from your campaign, which would have prevented the possibility of deleating a character they'd already used in another campaign.

I would probably have just kicked them to inactive, which also removes them from content.  The character stays as is but is no longer able to progress further if they don't own the content for the subclass.  But you did attempt to give them fair warning so its up to you how to proceed from there.  

I would again explain to them all the money you have put into having this content available, and for them to respect your wishes for limiting the characters they leave in your active campaigns.  Perhaps leaving them unclaimed and inactive would be enough to satisfy you, only you can answer that.

This seems like an abuse of generosity to me. They are taking advantage of you sharing the content for personal gain outside of your games even when you asked them not to do it. You gave them notice twice, and they ignored it; that's on them. Also, DDB depends on sales and memberships to operate as a business, I have to think DDB wouldn't approve of intentional misuse of a feature to circumvent paying for content access, even if the feature is covered for similar use within one of the subscription tiers.

Although it's not strictly the same, because you can always use your own books here no matter how much someone else freeloads...

... but this would be like letting other people use all your books during each session, and then they ask can they borrow in between sessions and you say OK, and they never give them back, and then take them to go play in another game with them. At that point, no, they need to buy their own books and give yours back to you.

If people create characters in your campaign that are not even PCs in your game, you have the right to remove them.

If you had given consent that would be one thing, but you never did because they didn’t ask. After you became aware of the situation and pointedly told them to stop, they ignored you and kept doing it. That is a consent violation, plain as day.

People guilty of violating another person’s consent do not have any right to get upset when the person whose consent they violated takes steps to end the situation. Them being angry at you in this circumstance is an example of “victim blaming,” which is just another way for an assailant to further violate a victim.

If that had instead been an issue about physical touch, we have a special word for that. This may not be anywhere near as serious of a consent violation as that would have been, but your consent was still violated nonetheless, and they are still blaming you for stopping that violation. Maybe it’s just my training that makes me see it that way, but the parallels were too blatant for me to ignore. And maybe when viewed under that lens the situation might appear different to those people too.

I hope that helps.

PS- If anyone here is ever a victim of assault, it was not your fault, you did nothing to deserve it. Reporting the crime will only hurt them, not you, so please speak out. If anyone here ever witnesses such a situation, please do your part and call 911.

That's one of the main things. No one asked if I had a problem with it, they just did it. 

Now, I like these people, they were all at my wedding, but none of them even asked if I was okay with it. 

And yes, I did tell them two weeks ago to stop doing it on Discord. Then when I saw them in-person I told them I was going to start clearing space, so they had two weeks to fix it. 

Even when I said, "Okay, we're about to finish Avernus, tonight at the shop we'll make characters for Rime. Someone has already claimed Rogue."

The first thing I got was a message from someone who couldn't make it that night, a complete and ready to go character, built in the other campaign I play in and share for, and was a rogue. 

So, you know, typical DM headache there. 

Quote from The_Glimpse >>

So, you know, typical DM headache there. 

 It is. Which means they might not be upset about the free ride ending so much as they just didn't pay attention (which is annoying, but pretty common) and got into trouble in their other campaign. Maybe they'll learn, maybe they won't, but either way this is not on you. You needed the slots, which is a perfectly legitimate reason, and you gave them fair warning.

I can say using your resources to make characters for games in which you're not involved without your permission is taking advantage of your generosity.  If you are really short of _character_ slots, or you have players "in" your campaign who actually aren't and are just using your account for other game character generations, or the practice of using you to play elsewhere otherwise bothers you, I'd grant the offending character sheets to the players, but remove them from your campaign so they can't develop.

Personally, I run two campaigns.  I don't mind if my players use my resource sharing as a way to test out ideas and maybe play those ideas out elsewhere than my campaign, largely because some of those players are kids or otherwise are in a tight spot these days and in the broader calculus of life those social connection to provide benefits to my life that balance everything out.

Having said that, I think it's entirely fair to explain to your offending players that one, on top of paying for all the books you've made available to the rest of the group, you also pay an annual subscription to enable that.  That subscription is actually designed so you can manage your game and the presence of the players' characters, which are of no benefit to your game, clutter your management of your campaign, and you'd appreciate if they'd stop doing that or work out this admin burden on your game management another way.  Basically, you and your friends are a club.  You own the infrastructure in terms of the bundle.  The master tier is over head, and you're currently providing that free too.  I see nothing wrong with treating the master tier as "dues" which can be shared among the club (some members's circumstances may encourage other members to cover or subsidize).  That gives your players some more literal "purchase" into your game and it will probably make you feel less taken advantage of (which is an understandable feeling and entirely appropriate given the circumstances you've outlined).

Quote from The_Glimpse >

So last night, I went through and Claimed every character that wasn't officially in any campaign and removed them.

Edit: One of the characters was literally named "Ignore. For Another Game."

 Just to be clear why did you feel the need to claim the characters? had you previously removed them and they rejoined with them?

If they rejoined after you asked them not to, it's fair enough.

If you didn't know you could remove characters without claiming them, it's also fair enough, but perhaps admit that to the player and as others have said, remind them this is something you pay for annually.

If you chose to claim the characters to make a point they may have some grounds for being irritated by it, still they should recognise that they were taking advantage of something you had been giving freely and they need to accept a decent portion of the blame.

Quote from Col0005 >>

If you chose to claim the characters to make a point they may have some grounds for being irritated by it

 No, they don’t. They were told to stop, they were given advanced notice that they needed to clear their shit out, and they chose to disrespect someone they call a friend by ignoring that person’s wishes and doing whatever they felt like anyway. They have no grounds for being salty that their behavior resulted in them loosing the things they had gained through dishonest practices in the first place. Especially when when they were warned in advance, multiple times, and in different ways including in person, and were given a lengthy opportunity to remove those characters. If they wanted to keep them, they should have listened.

Quote from IamSposta >>

Quote from Col0005 >>

If you chose to claim the characters to make a point they may have some grounds for being irritated by it

 No, they don’t. They were told to stop, they were given advanced notice that they needed to clear their shit out, and they chose to disrespect someone they call a friend by ignoring that person’s wishes and doing whatever they felt like anyway. They have no grounds for being salty that their behavior resulted in them loosing the things they had gained through dishonest practices in the first place. Especially when when they were warned in advance, multiple times, and in different ways including in person, and were given a lengthy opportunity to remove those characters. If they wanted to keep them, they should have listened.

Let's be a little clearer, the OP claims to have communicated their irritation _twice_ once over a Discord channel and once verbally in the context of a game store, over a two week period.  Do we know how the other parties responded, or whether the OP was truly heard within whatever other context was being communicated in either of those environments?  The OP then took action, based on their feelings regarding property (your conflation of disregard to a property claim and what seems to be bodily or at least personal autonomy, I can see the logic, but it's a bit of a stretch) and now some of their players think the OP over reacted.  So we got bad blood.  How to resolve that?  They could hold the present action and maintain the feeling of being offended, and the other players feelings of being too harshly sanctioned.  That in all likelihood will fester and have repercussions to the whole play ground beyond the DM and offending players.  Or, as has been pointed out, the DM could restore the characters to the player, removed from the DM's campaigns, and work out how to best go forward.  Going forward tends to be a more positive, progressive motion than standing entrenched in what is ultimately a personal _slight_ to which reasonable people have offered remedies.

OP came here to be validated.  The feeling of being taken advantage of was validated.  The course of action or how to advance beyond that action is open and I tend to the side of repairing things rather than going nuclear and keeping it that way.

I stated that The_Glimpse has every right to feel upset, and I implied that there were some rough parallels to a different situation that involves a lot of the same behaviors as a means of framing their feelings. I also specifically pointed out that the one circumstance is by no means any direct parallel to the other in terms of severity. It isn’t. One is kinda unfortunate, the other objectively abominable.

And I pointed out that those mentioned in the OP really don’t have any real right to be angry at The_Glimpse. They did something without permission, they were told to stop, and they were given advanced notice that steps were going to be taken.
   If I’m zipping 110mph down the highway, and I see signs specifically warning me that it is a targeted speed enforcement zone, and I choose to not slow down, then I have no right to be upset at the cop who gives me the ticket.
   If your boss tells you to stop coming in late every day or they’re gonna fire you, and they give you two weeks to sort yourself out, and you keep showing up late AF, you can’t get mad at them for firing you. 
    If someone is doing something they know they shouldn’t be doing, are warned about their behavior, are given time to correct the situation, and choose to continue their behaviors anyway, then they have nobody to blame but themselves in that situation.

I made absolutely no comment whatsoever as to what should happen next. The_Glimps may choose to give those folks their characters back with a simple “have you got the point?” They may ask for an apology in addition. They may agree that they overreacted. They may decide to dance the hokey pokey and turn themselves around. What comes next is up to them. I have made no comments about it one way or another, nor have I dissuaded anyone else from making suggestions on how to move forward.

So far none of them have apologized, so I expect we'll have a discussion about it tomorrow night at our weekly game. 

I did explain to them that I was paying for the resources and the subscription, and I was sharing with them out of kindness, and they were abusing that.

 The access I share is for games I run or games I play in. I made that abundantly clear during Dragon Heist, during Mad Mage, during the other GMs last campaign and the one she is running now. I also made it clear for Avernus and when we were making characters for Rime.

My sharing is not for a game with people no one else at the table knows or plays with. 
I'm sorry they can't play a Hexblade Leonine Urban Bounty Hunter because their other DM doesn't have a subscription, but that isn't my fault.

No one has a "right" to have content shared with them. It's a courtesy. The OP is not under any obligations to extend that courtesy to anyone.

Don't get me wrong, totally agree that booting them and cutting them off is completely reasonable, and the players weren't being considerate by removing their characters themselves.

I'm just pointing out if the OP actually claimed the characters and deleted them, rather than simply remove them from the campaign which is an option, I can see why they may have a grievance. 

P.s. as far as I'm aware, once removed from the campaign you still have access to say race, class features and any equipment the character currently has, but I believe spells and feats are removed, which would make it easy to re-activate the character if the content was purchased. (Maybe a bit harder for a wizards spell book)