Wizards Of The Coast Accused Of Copyright Striking YouTubers Reporting on New Dungeons & Dragons And Paying Others For Positive Coverage

One DnD may be in trouble if WotC is engaging in deceptive media tactics ahead of release.

Wizards of the Coast is embroiled in another controversy. The company has copyright struck a Dungeons & Dragons YouTuber for showing content from the new One DnD Player's Handbook after Gencon. The strike has led to allegations that WotC is playing favorites with some YouTubers while trying to control negative feedback on the new role-playing system. 

If you ask long-time tabletop gamers' opinions on the subject, Dungeons & Dragons has been on a steep decline since AD&D. From continually attempting to water down the game, simplify the system, and make it nearly impossible to kill a player character in the latest edition to adding in woke content to destroy their settings, it's been a bad decade and more for the biggest RPG in the world. 

Part of the issue is that DnD is owned by Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, a company infamous for pushing woke content onto its consumers. With recent scandals of removing any racial benefits or drawbacks so all races are, in essence, "the same" to try to make a political point, they've taken away the fun of playing different races like elves or orcs by removing any of their uniqueness. Instead of diversity, they've ended up with a muddy mess. 

The lore has changed as well. In an effort to make orcs "less racist," new art leaked earlier this year showing orcs to be strangely Mexican as a culture, which was mocked soundly by players and online influencers as it was clear where this new edition of Dungeons & Dragons would be headed. 

This was compounded by a former executive stating that he wanted the roleplaying game to look less white on a podcast, signaling that WotC wanted to shift to a famed "modern audience" for the property.

Now, matters have gotten worse as YouTubers and influencers were given a sneak peek at the new One DnD Player's Handbook, and WotC has struck a channel for reporting on the system. DnD influencer Jorphdan posted on X as the strike hit his channel with a screenshot of the strike saying, "Despite fulfilling @Wizards_DnD requests for the flip through video I was issues a copyright strike on my channel. Three strikes TERMINATES your channel. I don't think going over the 2024 PHB is worth losing my channel I've been working on since 2017."

He followed up by posting, "I'm pretty upset as none of this was said up front and when notified I did comply with their requirements. And I see other creators still have their videos up. Videos that are not unlike mine."

The strike led to speculation that WoTC would be trying to tightly control the narrative surrounding One DnD and that critics would be struck while those posting with their approved narrative would be rewarded. As gamers have seen similar happening with the Ubisoft video game, Star Wars: Outlaws, it looked to be a trend of corporations messing with reviews of their games to muddy the waters to where people can't expect honesty from influencers. 

Bob World Builder tried to run damage control for Wizards of the Coast, posting a video along with saying on X, "There's a conspiracy that Wizards of the Coast has paid off every TTRPG content creator (and YouTube itself) to promote the new #dnd 5e 2024 Players Handbook, so here's a behind-the-scenes look at how sponsorships actually work in the RPG community."

But Grummz corrected the record with his experiences from the video game industry, saying, "WotC and DnD are being accused of a massive paid influencer campaign, paying off YouTubers to cover the new Players Handbook while simultaneously hitting non-sponsored channels with copyright strikes for covering the book "out of network."

He added, "The paid allegations are being denied by some, even though this is standard promotional practice for other industries like videogame companies and sponsored streamers."

Grummz concluded, "Wotc and Hasbro largely ignored youtubers last year, only to find out how much leverage they wield during the OGL debacle. It seems they learned the PR lesson and  are now taking a carrot and stick approach to craft the PR around the new book's release."

Whether Wizards of the Coast is involved in a conspiracy to silence dissent and prop up shills with access and other bribes is unclear, but as more gets exposed about corporate media, we see more instances where the narrative behind corporate entertainment is anything but organic.

What do you think of Wizards of the Coast copyright striking a channel for showing One DnD? Is Dungeons & Dragons in trouble from the controversy? Leave a comment and let us know and restack this post. 

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