@@XanderHarris1023 I've heard that they load the blocked adds in a way that gets them paid for supposedly showing them, instead of the site they were supposed to be on. Others claim that they also allow ads that pay them to slip through their ad block and get displayed anyway.
It took years to find out what Honey's actual deal was But everyone should know that because there's no part where they actually charge their users. They have to be making money somehow. Although I think most people just assumed it was data scraping, but that was proven false by mudahar. So the only other theory I saw people have is that they have exclusive honey coupons that work like affiliate links and gift kickbacks to them. It turns out every coupon was an affiliate link that gave kickbacks to Honey 😎👍
Again, it frustrates me - this is about *every content creator who uses any type of affiliate link* - not about those who might have been "sponsored" by HOney. This is far, far, FAR bigger than most people realize. It about the creator with NO subs - just has an affiliate link that can be clicked on by *any* viewer (subbed or not) that Honey swaps themselves in on and takes the creators' share.
The lawsuit by Wendover seems to suggest that whenever honey replaced someone's code they logged it to a database. So, there should be a record of every single person who was stolen from. If they can get that database they can get that creator with no subs paid if they really did have their link replaced.
I think some of the plaintiffs on the complaint have never been sponsored by them, probably to represent that class. (I don't think I've ever seen a Honey ad on a Charismatic Voice video.)
This is the big thing a lot of people miss. Even if you personally never worked with honey if someone who watched your Vids did have honey installed and used ypur affiliate link to any other product they stole your money.
@@Doc_sunI've been saying the same thing and also you should consider the fact that everyone that was tricked into downloading a honeylink even if we didn't go to that item from an affiliate link. Did honey mark themselves as an affiliate and defraud us by claiming affiliate dollars from our purchases? They didn't just steal from creators that sponsored them and that didn't they stole from us the customer. If I found an item on my own honey committed fraud by claiming affiliate status. And honestly this isn't honey. This is PayPal. PayPal needs to be closed down. we all need to recognize what a crooked fraudulent company this is
2:38 One thing you missed is if a youtuber is NOT sponsored by Honey and someone clicks on one of their affiliate links, Honey can STILL poach the affiliate commision if the customer had Honey installed. Honey affects EVERY creator who uses affiliate links.
@FirstLast-wk3kc From my understanding, once the lawsuit becomes a class action lawsuit, you don't need to prove that one of your specific affiliate links was actually poached by Honey in order to join the lawsuit.
@@jonesynarwhal cool! Sounds really useful and important for the case. Thou i don't understand what did you mean when you said that all youtubers with affiliated links are affected, cause I didn't get how so. Mb because I'm a foreigner who hears about Honey literally first time, but my english is supposedly fluent, so i presume it's more about the lack of tech understanding.
@@FirstLast-wk3kc essentially if you have honey installed it asks if you want it to find coupons. You say of course, but regardless of whether it finds any it'll swap whatever affiliate link you were using with it's own. So if you go to buy the cool dice Bob the Worldbuilder points you at, Honey will tell the site "Who's Bob? HONEY sent this person." Then when time comes to hand out sponsorships, the dice company will say "Wow, Bob's audience doesn't like dice. Nobody bought dice with his link! Not going to waste money sponsoring him again." So if you have honey, ALL creators suffer.
@@FirstLast-wk3kc Because Honey would secretly replace affiliate codes and links with their OWN affiliate codes and links (directly tied to Honey, not any creators sponsored by Honey).
Even though D&D youtubers usually weren't sponsored by Honey, the insidious part is that they didn't have to be. All Honey needed was for a D&D enthusiast to click the affiliate link and use Honey and your favorite D&D UA-camrs are out any affiliate money. I think many of these UA-camrs have drivethru rpg links and a few other ones too. Maybe not a ton of money, but money they should have received nonetheless.
It not only affected actual revenue of creators; it also affected potential future revenue based on proven performance. When a creator’s affiliate like is sniped by Honey, it depresses the actual creator’s conversion rate, the metric by which partners measure the profitability of the partnership. Low conversion rates may lead to reduced revenue sharing in future contracts or even non-renewal of contracts. Honey is insidious.
It was obvious that Honey was a scam from the beginning. Many of us just thought it was selling your browsing and purchase history or something. It turned out much worse.
I am in IT. I cannot tell you how often I had to deny the installation requests of honey a couple of years ago. I still use it as an example of extensions not needed or allowed in the office.
It's not just creators who worked with them but literally every creator ever who has done affiliate stuff. It doesn't matter if you worked with them, as long as that viewer clicking on your link had the extension, they were stealing your commission.
When I first heard about Honey my VERY FIRST thought was "that's not a sustainable business model, they must be doing something shady". Props for being able to stick to (mostly) products you respect.
People who play TTRPGs are constantly faced with NPCs who are trying to scam them, so our "Somethin' just ain't right here..." detectors are very highly tuned.
Regarding Established Titles: When I saw the advertising for Established Titles, my intuitive belief was that, by historical happenstance, antiquated laws in Scotland had rendered titles like "lord" as much less significant in modern times than we are used to outside of Scotland. After all, the primary use of the titles was from a period when the lords literally owned the land and the non-lords literally did not, so it's perfectly plausible that it would define the distinction, and that no-one would bother moving the goalpost of "lord" as society evolved past feudalism. I thought "most of us are technically lords and ladies" would be the kind of thing to pop up on a Scottish trivia show. I thought Established Titles was just giving the rest of the world access to this fun novelty of antiquated Scottish law So yeah, it was reasonable to think they were being truthful about the titles.
ESPECIALLY because a lot of the ad reads said "Yes, YOU can become a Scottish lord, legally and technically! You can use it on your driver's license, business cards, etc!" and thus making it seem legit and not the "gag gift" they tried to use as an excuse.
Honey was allegedly doing this well before Paypal bought them out. Why else would Paypal spend billions of dollars to buy out Honey? Paypal has a part to play in this but Honey deserves most of the scorn.
Yeah, I also thought it was fairly obvious from the beginning that "Established Titles" was just selling a fun novelty gimmick. As long as they planted all the trees, I don't think it was a straight up scam.
The reason there's no current lawsuit on behalf of consumers is because the user agreement has an arbitration agreement and an agreement to not participate in a class-action lawsuit against the company built into it. This makes it very difficult (if not impossible) to launch any organized legal action on behalf of consumers. And, how will they track which influencers were impacted? That's what discovery is for. The plaintiff attorneys will subpoena massive amounts of records relating to where all of Honey's income came from related to these allegedly misappropriated commissions.
I don't know anything about USA laws, but is that really enforceable ? Usually ToS are not treated like this, otherwise no one would be making class action lawsuits bc every single company would have that in the user agreement (if there is one)
@@Just_chucho when it comes to class action waivers and arbitration clauses it is legal. It was meant to be used for niche things and is desperately in need of regulation
A lot of companies do have that in their agreements and it does stop a lot of lawsuits that would otherwise go through, I'm not a lawyer, but I'd guess that lawyers can occasionally get that part thrown out in especially egregious cases, but then again maybe not. A lot of lawsuits are from people who had no agreement with a company. Like if I buy food in the store and it was contaminated and the company knew that it was and a lot of people got sick. That could result in a class action. There's no way to make an agreement for the company to hide behind. The reason this suit can happen is because it affects people who had no agreement with honey. Once it's shown they are stealing, I would hope that it nulls the agreements they did make and opens them up to be sued, but again not sure.
@@sporf_sporf Legal Eagle and Attorney Tom (the two UA-cam attorneys running this lawsuit) stated that the reason they're not currently filing anything on behalf of consumers is because of these clauses in the TOS. They've said that case law is very much on the side of the business in these arbitration agreement and no class-action lawsuit clauses in the agreement.
Hey Bob, just a clarification: Taron's post says that there were 105 100k+ TTRPG kickstarters in 2023 and 106 in 2024. It's only the amount of them that are 5e related that reduced.
Ahh that's what I meant! thank you! Edit: I double checked and I think that's what I said haha, 8:00 "...folks crunched the data and found that the number of *5e Kickstarters* making >100k...decreased from 2023 to 2024." And before that I said how most of m sponsors have been 5e Kickstarters. So yes there's a hope that the non-5e Kickstarters filling in the gap will also run sponsorships for future products, but that's the uncertain part.
@@BobWorldBuilder I think your end argument about it is kind of fallacious though? Half as many are 5e yes, but its about the same number of TTRPG Kickstarters in total. For a channel like yourself that does not focus specifically on 5e, that should mean the overall amount of potential sponsors ("cool RPG books/tools") has not actually decreased.
Pretty much what most people thought that this is sone historical BS for fans is that is technically true but irrelevant. Pretending everyone knew it wasn't real is dishonest
Worth pointing out that the guy actually heading this class action lawsuit is not Devin, but Attorney Tom. His firm (based out of Houston) specializes in Catastrophic Personal Injuries and Class Action lawsuits.
Legal eagle is garbage. If you want a liar to represent your case, he's the guy to go to. I stopped watching his propaganda years ago. I don't care what he supports or doesn't. He has no integrity.
Thanks! Yeah, I feel kinda late to the new here, but I guess the fact that it DIDN'T really affect D&D-tube led to no one really talking about it yet. If they have, I must have missed it.
To your last point. It is likely that the OGL mess plus the 2024 rules changes being in the wings were the major reason 5e kickstarters were down. It mostly seems that stuff has passed on and I would expect some of the bigger 3rd parties and creators to be releasing "Made for 2024 rules set 5e" kickstarters in the not to distant future.
Agreed. This is a lame duck period for 5E, third party projects. Why publish something that's going to be somewhat out of date within a year? I think we see a bounce back once the 5.24 license allows it.
That or many just switched over to other systems. Most prominently pathfinder got a massive boost from the whole ogl debacle, with many players and creators switching boats, and there are also the creators that might switch over to daggerheart once that releases. So yeah, it's not necessarily that there's less material being created, just that it isn't solely based around 5e anymore.
Kudos to you for sticking to your morals and only sponsoring companies that feel right to you. Its got to be hard, both rigourously vetting your sponsors and getting enough money to get by. Big scammy companies offer a lot of money for people to not look too deep. Can see why it tempts so many people in an unpredictable market.
"Allegedly"? Nothing ALLEGED about it. MegaLag reverse engineered the code and showed it in action. Anyone else can do it themselves the same way. It's proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that they did what they're accused of.
If you hear a UA-camr using 'allegedly', it's mostly for legal reasons. Failing to do so could open them up to a lawsuit, since no verdict has been delivered yet, so any wrongdoing is 'alleged' until proven otherwise. But yeah they guilty as hell.
This whole situation is so crazy. I love how you're able to find creative, insightful ways to tie these things into our community. Also, I am not surprised you were approached by a beauty mirror company Bob. Let's be real.
Informative. Flattered to have been included on your thumbnail instead of Matt Mercer. (FYI--if this video underperforms in the first few hours you should replace me with Matt Mercer). Rock on, Bob!
Glad you commented. I am new to the DnD UA-cam space and didn't recognize you. I was looking through comments to see if I could find who you were. I'll be checking out your channel now!! 😅
I think when Critical Role switches out of 5e the entire advertisement space for 5e will become utter misery. And I hope I am wrong but Critical Role is not likely to let 5e sponsors in their show when they run a competing ruleset..... not to mention the OTHER big DnD youtuber who made their OWN ruleset as well, also not linked to WOTC or 5e. Next years are going to be interesting.
8:07 I think this statistic is SUPER misleading. Kobold Press alone went from having 4 kickstarters for 5e in 2023 to 5 ToV kickstarters in 2024, and other companies doing similar things like MCDM probably account for the majority of this statistic. The real important thing to keep track of is the overall TTRPG kickstarters going up from 105 to 106. Bob knows better than anybody this hobby isn’t just DnD, it’s all TTRPGs.
Since TTRPG UA-camrs nearly only deal with niche sponsors for niche products made by indie creators, this is basically the only community where I trust the sponsorships so long as it isn't something everyone on UA-cam is promoting. So love this a lot! It's great! Glad I can trust most sponsorships here :) Otherwise you should never trust ANYTHING a UA-camr promotes, it's basically always a scam or HIGHLY unethical product. Edit: the reason the established titles thing was a scam is A LOT of UA-camrs didn't state it was a gag gift, they instead said that "YES, you ACTUALLY get a lordship in Scotland! You can add it to your driver's license, your documents, and make people call you it, because it's legal!" instead of showing how "haha, obviously this isn't real but it's funny". So yes, it was a scam.
When I first saw Honey, I asked the 'but where does the money come from?" Silly me, though they were stealing my personal information such as where and what I buy or perhaps my browsing history to sell to advertisers. So I did not install and got mad at the damn ads. Now I find out that I dodged a much more poisonous bullet. I am so glad to hear that there were others who found it sus as well.
8:20 It would be interesting to delve into why we have seen 5e kickstarters dry up. Initial gut thought would be waiting till 5.25E is fully released. More pessimistic thought would be it seems like everyone and their blink hound is doing a kickstarter for some 5E or 5E adjacent product and the market is just getting saturated and buyers are having burnout. Groups only need so many different monster vaults, tomes of foes, etc before they feel they have enough supplemental material to last them for the rest of their lives.
I think these things are all likely, and would add "We're no longer in a pandemic". I know we haven't been in 'active pandemic mode' for a few years, but the further away we get, it seems the less time and energy we have for a big-energy game like D&D. Idk at least that's kinda how it's been for me.
Getting established titles is like buying a star. Or adopting a wild animal as you mentioned. It's fun, not official. Good points about how the sphere promotes things directly related to ttrpg, I definitely noticed it when I started watching and all the ads were now outdated kickstarters haha
I'll say what I say regarding every UA-cam sponsor scandal: 1) If the product is offering something you could not (with reasonable practice and training) do yourself, it is a scam. Period. There are no "magic" products out there. 2) If every youtuber and their dog is promoting the product, it's a scam. Or at best there is some shady backroom issues going on. No one sponsors others for free. 3) Frankly, I outright do not trust ANY product advertised by ANY influencer. As a matter of fact my standard policy is that if a product is mentioned at all as a sponsor, I presume it's a scam. No exceptions. Like I thank them for giving creators money that I follow, but the moment I hear the words "this video is sponsored by..." I either advance the time code manually or make a note of the product's name to add to my list of "Never buy these products EVER."; The only products I've ever heard listed as sponsors for videos as an exception to this I can count on one hand, notably World Anvil and Chepeku, both of whom I only used after watching/reading several reviews (not sponsored videos) and in the case of the latter I mainly chose to subscribe to their patreon after I had literally kept seeing their maps on pintrest and saying, "yup, I'd like a high res version of this" at least a dozen times while prepping my games. Pretty much anyone else? I just assume their are either a scam, stealing/tracking my data, or their company staff eat the flesh of children or something. There is no presumption of innocence in an inherently vampiric capitalist system. Side note: Given how niche the RPG community is, I really do question how much of industry is essentially just recycling money through various creators within the industry. i.e. fans spending money on a kickstarter, rpg product, or patreon for a creator and then said creator sponsoring another creator, who then goes on to sponsor another, etc. Obviously money is still coming in and leaving the community via labor and bills and what not, but I'd be amused if there was some way to actually track how much financial cross pollination is occurring.
When deciding if something is a scam one of the first questions to ask is "Does this service cost money" if the answer is no, there is a very high likelihood it is a scam.
The first time I ever heard (literally) of Mr. Beast was a pre-video ad of him yelling at the top of his lungs with his trademark uncanny valley expressionless face that he had a challenge for me. I knew I hated him, then and there, and I knew not to ever go anywhere near Honey. Glad the DnD creator community by and large seemed to be able to avoid this mess.
I love how people still talk about established titles, even though everyone knew it was a gag gift and you couldn't actually buy a lord or lady title lol. It was a tree planting charity and that's it
If I remember correctly, that was also part of the problem. They got too big too fast and couldn't keep up with the planting, so even that wasn't working.
I had a similar reaction to you to the Established Titles thing. I thought everyone understood that "become a Scottish lord!" was exactly as legally binding as the "buy a plot of land on the Moon!" certificates that went around in the 1990s. In other words, not at all. It was a fun novelty gift that gave a little bit to conservation efforts. (Not quite as much as they claimed, based on the personal research I did, but still a non-zero amount.) I hadn't realized until the uproar that anyone actually was taking them seriously beyond "what a fun gag gift this is!"
i was sure honey was just spying on people's purchases and getting the money from there. it should be a relatively easy and relatively cheap scheme, especially if they also save any other cupon any other person with the extension tried. but i guess paypal was too greedy.
Unrelated to the content of the video, but I've grown to anticipate the little sound at the end when the recording is ended. I hope that if Bob gets another camera that they somehow keep that sound for the ends of videos.
Not gonna lie, I've recorded the sound separately, so when I occasionally use different set-ups, I can still put it at the end lol. Thank you so much for watching til the end! :)
This is why I just use (avoidable) Google ad slots in my video content, and I DO NOT accept sponsors and waste viewers time with that nonsense unless it's promoting small indie RPG gigs.
8:00 Did they clarify if that figure is just 5E vanilla, or includes 5E 24? If it is just a 50% decrease from vanilla it would make sense, if more projects were now being made for the updated version instead, if 24 is counted separately.
I'd say it's more likely that people were delaying projects until after February 2025, (when the new SRD 5.2 releases), so they'll know what the free-to-use parts of the 2024 rules are, and where their third-party content can expand on them.
@@BobWorldBuilder What I'm seeing from other creators is them needing a bit of time to find their feet with the updated rules. I suspect it'll rise again soon. Heck, we're lauching out next Kickstarter in 2025 for more dinosaurs. ^^
2:39 Given the lawsuit (which hopefully gets access to Honey's data), if the data on both sides is good enough, it should be relatively easy to compare when someone clicked on your affiliate link with when Honey received commission from the same IP. It may be even easier if applicable merchant platforms get dragged into it, since they may actually have data directly showing the affiliate reference being change. Without such a lawsuit, you've probably got no chance of seeing when Honey takes your commission (except when doing a specific test for that, like MegaLag did).
@@WeShallLoveOn They likely keep records of the things they'll be paid for. If one were to keep a record of anything, it would be that. They don't record "who they stole it from", they record which customer bought what through which merchant, via their "last click". Then you cross-reference that with creator data, which shows which customer clicked on their link for which merchant to buy what (but didn't end up buying it).
Also, it is in the interest of the streamer community to inform those willing to uninstall Honey. And separately, it is in the viewer interest to uninstall Honey (it’s also bad for us) and streamers would feel compelled by duty to inform us for that as well
I hope this is just another lesson in why you shouldn't ever trust UA-cam sponsorships. Although I'm actually with you here, the only UA-cam sponsorships I ever found to not be an overpriced scam are ttrpg ones. They're usually on par with professional company quality and have a price point that makes sense
Thank you for sheading light on this issue to some that may not watch people like Markaplier or Legal Eagle, and in such a caring way. This is one of the reason's I am a sub on your channel. That and you always have great content. I didn't know I didn't have the "Bell" clicked so that is now fixed.
I figured it would be something like that - 90% of sponsored TTRPG videos I see are sponsored by a Kickstarter, Czepeku, World Anvil or Only Crits (...With occasional sightings of Campfire, though I think that tended to more be world building channels. I haven't seen anything from Campfire for a while, come to think of it, but they seem to still be a functioning website)
It’s pretty cool that dnd and fantasy writers get sponsored by tools to help with running campaigns or keeping track of your own worldbuilding. It’s a cool way to stay on topic when discussing how things work, and here’s a sponsor that could help you with it.
The real crime for these apps is that they get to see EVERYTHING you're purchasing, probably everything you are looking at buying, and even see all your financial transactions!
This is really cool of them! Would be great if they'd cover more games that aren't part of the biggest corporate stranglehold on the RPG hobby in history, as well. Especially games that aren't just similar alternatives but drastically different to D&D!
I want to point out that a 50% decrease is a statistically significant decrease and should absolutely be investigated. The Titles thing I always assumed was like the "name a star" thing that was around for a while. A BS novelty that grandparents buy gor their grandchildren because thety don't know better.
If honey has been found guilty of swapping other people‘s promo codes with their own. The best way to deal with it is to have them either give up all of their data showing the swap so that you can accurately determine exactly how much money they owe everyone or the company is dissolved because it was criminally stealing from somebody else. If honey was a person they would go to jail for a very long time for theft. After that, then each individual can sue them for damages and interest on top of the money that they stole.
Yeah, I can let "Lordship" slide. It's like "Name A Star". I buy a spinosaurus tooth, I expect it to be a spinosaurus tooth. I "Adopt a Stream", I'm pretty sure I can put up "No Trespassing" signs on the stream.
Disclosure proves who they ripped off, but the class action lawsuit deals with also potential loss by the scam existing, if your channel is monetized, more or less. Everyone approved gets a cut if the case winds, but only if monetized in the period listed.
Greetings. I am here watching the full video and commenting on an effort to protect Bob from the wave of destruction crashing through TTRPGTube right now. Please don't kill this channel, Google! Please don't retire, Bob!
I received a Scottish "title", a Laird, or landowner, bootstrap to a "Lordship" as a gift from my English brother in law, and visited Buckingham, Windsor and Balmoral, with a tour of HMY Brittania, so quite pleased with my Lordship! Some even call me Sir...
The only thing the DnD channels avoided by being smaller fish is "getting back" some of the money in the form of payment for the actual ads. The losses are about which viewers used Honey, not about who advertised it.
Big fan of the channel, especially when you discuss non-WOTC content. I do want to share that the sound bites during your talking are more distracting than helpful.
There are still two parts of MegaLag’s original exposé which haven’t been released yet, but I suspect since those won’t be the consumer and UA-cam influencer side of things, they won’t get the same massive reaction from the UA-camr community.
The issue with sponsorships is that youtube is a community with much closer ties to its audience than some other media so a bad sponsorship does more damage to the creator than say a celebrity doing a tv endorsement. BetterHelp is another one with a shady history that suckers in alot of youtubers.
Where were we? Oh yes! I was clicking "Like" because I love the video and the channel. Thank you Bob. I love you like a brother, but will never call you "honey".
Hey Bob! I've only been following the niche for a couple years now and I want to tell you that in that time I've seen you really mature and come into your own. Stay creative my friend!
@@BobWorldBuilder This video, Professor DM's video, and Esper's video while negative may result in positive outcomes for D&D UA-camrs and the watchers of these channels. Channels have to adapt to stay alive.
what i don't understand is, how has almost no one of these big youtubers questioned their business model what did they think where the money comes from?
That the TTRPG community supports its members is a good thing. I mean I remember things like Beanz and other web token currencies that promised discounts and affiliate specials from the 90's, all failed. Though I am waiting for the Nord:Shadowlegends crossover because someone has to!
Your point about how we have to remember that while we are a large niche, we are still a niche reminds me of conversations I've had with others in the video gaming community. Some people have acted outright SHOCKED to find someon that doesn't know who The Kratos or Mister Chef is, and what I have to tell them is "your favorite video game is niche, outside of the gaming community". You know which characters the average joe who spends their time actually out and about in the real world knows about? Mario. Sonic. Donkey Kong. Pac-Man. Football Man. Call of Shooty man. That's it. If they aren't a preexisting sports star or one of the foundational elementals of gaming itself, no one outside that community knows the character exists! Normal people have no CLUE what a Cloud or a Sebembermoth is, I don't care how many millions of copies the FF7 remake sold for! Heck, most people still call him "King Koopa" and now "Bowser". (That may change now that the new Mario movie has been such a success.) Frankly, if it didn't end up becoming a cultural zeitgeist that covered store shelves in merchandise culminating in a major movie, no one knows it exists. So please, gamers of both table top and video game varieties, stop acting shocked that someone doesn't know who the Drizzle Elf or the spikey haired giant sword guy is. Heck my sister, who only just plays SLIGHTLY more games than the average person, just renamed Cloud and every other character to "Bort" when she played that game ages ago. That's what she knows them as, and that's the most POPULAR Final Fantasy game of all time! There is no chance in hell that anyone outside our niche community knows who or what an ExDeath is, or what gate Baldur owns, or why they would name a town in the negative like "Neverwinter" instead of "Everspring". (Okay, SOME of that is our fault. No one names a place for what it isn't, that's not how people work!)
I mean it's not like they we're going to do anything harmful to you specifically. They don't even take customer data. It only affects people who make money through affiliate links because It replaces their affiliate link with Honey's
Nice PSA! I avoid most browser add-ons anyway, but especially ones related to shopping. I don't need "help" to shop. I don't "shop". I I want/need something, I'll look up prices on my own.
I still don't quite get how established titles was seen as a scam. I thought it was almost perfectly clear that what they were selling was novelty certificates, gag gifts, stuff like that. There weren't people who bought into it thinking they were becoming actual lords and ladies, were there?
Amazon and other retailers might have logs of when affiliate cookies were set, which could be used to track who Honey style from. Honey might have their own logs too, if they're incompetent.
💥 Our legit sponsor! Czepeku Tokens: www.czepeku.com/tokens/subscribe
💪 Join Patreon: www.patreon.com/bobworldbuilder
Have to appreciate them even more 🙏 I'll definitely subscribe when I find time to DM again
Their maps are fantastic. Very detailed, full of lore, lots of variants to fit different play styles.
somebody figured out how to make pogs useful. I'll have to check that out.
"where is honey getting the money?"
That was a high DC wisdom save
That's why I never even tried it. Couldn't figure out what was in it for them.
Where is Pie getting the money?
@@XanderHarris1023 I've heard that they load the blocked adds in a way that gets them paid for supposedly showing them, instead of the site they were supposed to be on. Others claim that they also allow ads that pay them to slip through their ad block and get displayed anyway.
@@JMcMillen Same. I assumed they were just harvesting my data to sell, turned out to be worse.
More of a Nat 20 on the insight check :) lol
you're sweet enough without Honey, Robert the World Builder 🔥🔥
So true
So smooth 😜
Aye, agreed!
no u! :)
name of your ship, sirs? @dndshorts @bobworldbuilder
The markiplier’s prediction in the monitor is chef kiss
Too good to be true lol
It took years to find out what Honey's actual deal was But everyone should know that because there's no part where they actually charge their users. They have to be making money somehow. Although I think most people just assumed it was data scraping, but that was proven false by mudahar. So the only other theory I saw people have is that they have exclusive honey coupons that work like affiliate links and gift kickbacks to them.
It turns out every coupon was an affiliate link that gave kickbacks to Honey 😎👍
Again, it frustrates me - this is about *every content creator who uses any type of affiliate link* - not about those who might have been "sponsored" by HOney. This is far, far, FAR bigger than most people realize. It about the creator with NO subs - just has an affiliate link that can be clicked on by *any* viewer (subbed or not) that Honey swaps themselves in on and takes the creators' share.
The lawsuit by Wendover seems to suggest that whenever honey replaced someone's code they logged it to a database. So, there should be a record of every single person who was stolen from. If they can get that database they can get that creator with no subs paid if they really did have their link replaced.
I think some of the plaintiffs on the complaint have never been sponsored by them, probably to represent that class. (I don't think I've ever seen a Honey ad on a Charismatic Voice video.)
This is the big thing a lot of people miss. Even if you personally never worked with honey if someone who watched your Vids did have honey installed and used ypur affiliate link to any other product they stole your money.
@Doc_sun THIIIIIIIIIIS
@@Doc_sunI've been saying the same thing and also you should consider the fact that everyone that was tricked into downloading a honeylink even if we didn't go to that item from an affiliate link. Did honey mark themselves as an affiliate and defraud us by claiming affiliate dollars from our purchases? They didn't just steal from creators that sponsored them and that didn't they stole from us the customer. If I found an item on my own honey committed fraud by claiming affiliate status. And honestly this isn't honey. This is PayPal. PayPal needs to be closed down. we all need to recognize what a crooked fraudulent company this is
2:38 One thing you missed is if a youtuber is NOT sponsored by Honey and someone clicks on one of their affiliate links, Honey can STILL poach the affiliate commision if the customer had Honey installed. Honey affects EVERY creator who uses affiliate links.
I don't get it, could you explain?
@FirstLast-wk3kc From my understanding, once the lawsuit becomes a class action lawsuit, you don't need to prove that one of your specific affiliate links was actually poached by Honey in order to join the lawsuit.
@@jonesynarwhal cool! Sounds really useful and important for the case. Thou i don't understand what did you mean when you said that all youtubers with affiliated links are affected, cause I didn't get how so.
Mb because I'm a foreigner who hears about Honey literally first time, but my english is supposedly fluent, so i presume it's more about the lack of tech understanding.
@@FirstLast-wk3kc essentially if you have honey installed it asks if you want it to find coupons. You say of course, but regardless of whether it finds any it'll swap whatever affiliate link you were using with it's own. So if you go to buy the cool dice Bob the Worldbuilder points you at, Honey will tell the site "Who's Bob? HONEY sent this person." Then when time comes to hand out sponsorships, the dice company will say "Wow, Bob's audience doesn't like dice. Nobody bought dice with his link! Not going to waste money sponsoring him again." So if you have honey, ALL creators suffer.
@@FirstLast-wk3kc Because Honey would secretly replace affiliate codes and links with their OWN affiliate codes and links (directly tied to Honey, not any creators sponsored by Honey).
Even though D&D youtubers usually weren't sponsored by Honey, the insidious part is that they didn't have to be. All Honey needed was for a D&D enthusiast to click the affiliate link and use Honey and your favorite D&D UA-camrs are out any affiliate money. I think many of these UA-camrs have drivethru rpg links and a few other ones too. Maybe not a ton of money, but money they should have received nonetheless.
It not only affected actual revenue of creators; it also affected potential future revenue based on proven performance. When a creator’s affiliate like is sniped by Honey, it depresses the actual creator’s conversion rate, the metric by which partners measure the profitability of the partnership. Low conversion rates may lead to reduced revenue sharing in future contracts or even non-renewal of contracts. Honey is insidious.
Can we all give MegaLag props for his thorough work? His "colorblind" glasses series is also worth a watch for everyone.
He's not even done. That was a part one and look at the Impact
It might be on pause because of the lawsuit 🤔
It was obvious that Honey was a scam from the beginning. Many of us just thought it was selling your browsing and purchase history or something. It turned out much worse.
Oh, they‘re definitely doing that, too.
@ArDeeMeeboth_is_good_meme.gif
You know what they say; if a product or service claims to be free, it's because you (& your personal data) are the price.
That's basically why I never downloaded it. I figured it was some sort of spyware type thing...somehow what happened is stranger.
I am in IT. I cannot tell you how often I had to deny the installation requests of honey a couple of years ago. I still use it as an example of extensions not needed or allowed in the office.
It's not just creators who worked with them but literally every creator ever who has done affiliate stuff. It doesn't matter if you worked with them, as long as that viewer clicking on your link had the extension, they were stealing your commission.
Thats even more insidious
That seems like it would be so obviously illegal it can't even be argued. But I also know how the US legal system works.
When I first heard about Honey my VERY FIRST thought was "that's not a sustainable business model, they must be doing something shady".
Props for being able to stick to (mostly) products you respect.
This is exactly why its important to get good quality, locally sourced honey from beekeepers you can trust.
People who play TTRPGs are constantly faced with NPCs who are trying to scam them, so our "Somethin' just ain't right here..." detectors are very highly tuned.
Regarding Established Titles:
When I saw the advertising for Established Titles, my intuitive belief was that, by historical happenstance, antiquated laws in Scotland had rendered titles like "lord" as much less significant in modern times than we are used to outside of Scotland. After all, the primary use of the titles was from a period when the lords literally owned the land and the non-lords literally did not, so it's perfectly plausible that it would define the distinction, and that no-one would bother moving the goalpost of "lord" as society evolved past feudalism. I thought "most of us are technically lords and ladies" would be the kind of thing to pop up on a Scottish trivia show. I thought Established Titles was just giving the rest of the world access to this fun novelty of antiquated Scottish law
So yeah, it was reasonable to think they were being truthful about the titles.
ESPECIALLY because a lot of the ad reads said "Yes, YOU can become a Scottish lord, legally and technically! You can use it on your driver's license, business cards, etc!" and thus making it seem legit and not the "gag gift" they tried to use as an excuse.
I thought of it like how if you own a boat, you are the "captain" of your own ship, but that doesn't give you the rank of "Captain" in the military.
"Honey" isn't a company. It's PayPal. Don’t give them a pass.
Honey was allegedly doing this well before Paypal bought them out. Why else would Paypal spend billions of dollars to buy out Honey? Paypal has a part to play in this but Honey deserves most of the scorn.
Yeah, I also thought it was fairly obvious from the beginning that "Established Titles" was just selling a fun novelty gimmick. As long as they planted all the trees, I don't think it was a straight up scam.
The reason there's no current lawsuit on behalf of consumers is because the user agreement has an arbitration agreement and an agreement to not participate in a class-action lawsuit against the company built into it. This makes it very difficult (if not impossible) to launch any organized legal action on behalf of consumers.
And, how will they track which influencers were impacted? That's what discovery is for. The plaintiff attorneys will subpoena massive amounts of records relating to where all of Honey's income came from related to these allegedly misappropriated commissions.
I don't know anything about USA laws, but is that really enforceable ? Usually ToS are not treated like this, otherwise no one would be making class action lawsuits bc every single company would have that in the user agreement (if there is one)
@@Just_chucho when it comes to class action waivers and arbitration clauses it is legal. It was meant to be used for niche things and is desperately in need of regulation
A lot of companies do have that in their agreements and it does stop a lot of lawsuits that would otherwise go through, I'm not a lawyer, but I'd guess that lawyers can occasionally get that part thrown out in especially egregious cases, but then again maybe not. A lot of lawsuits are from people who had no agreement with a company. Like if I buy food in the store and it was contaminated and the company knew that it was and a lot of people got sick. That could result in a class action. There's no way to make an agreement for the company to hide behind.
The reason this suit can happen is because it affects people who had no agreement with honey. Once it's shown they are stealing, I would hope that it nulls the agreements they did make and opens them up to be sued, but again not sure.
@@sporf_sporf Legal Eagle and Attorney Tom (the two UA-cam attorneys running this lawsuit) stated that the reason they're not currently filing anything on behalf of consumers is because of these clauses in the TOS. They've said that case law is very much on the side of the business in these arbitration agreement and no class-action lawsuit clauses in the agreement.
Hey Bob, just a clarification: Taron's post says that there were 105 100k+ TTRPG kickstarters in 2023 and 106 in 2024. It's only the amount of them that are 5e related that reduced.
Ahh that's what I meant! thank you!
Edit: I double checked and I think that's what I said haha, 8:00 "...folks crunched the data and found that the number of *5e Kickstarters* making >100k...decreased from 2023 to 2024." And before that I said how most of m sponsors have been 5e Kickstarters. So yes there's a hope that the non-5e Kickstarters filling in the gap will also run sponsorships for future products, but that's the uncertain part.
@@BobWorldBuilder I think your end argument about it is kind of fallacious though? Half as many are 5e yes, but its about the same number of TTRPG Kickstarters in total. For a channel like yourself that does not focus specifically on 5e, that should mean the overall amount of potential sponsors ("cool RPG books/tools") has not actually decreased.
I was gonna point out the same thing. I don't think D&D channels are going to need to take non-TTRPG sponsorships, just more non-D&D ones.
I 100% thought the lordship was real but largely irrelevant to daily life.
Pretty much what most people thought that this is sone historical BS for fans is that is technically true but irrelevant. Pretending everyone knew it wasn't real is dishonest
Thank you for spreading the word about Honey. The faster everyone can remove their malware, the faster they stop stealing.
Legal Eagle is a fuckin' champ. We need fewer ambulance chasers and more Legal Eagles.
Worth pointing out that the guy actually heading this class action lawsuit is not Devin, but Attorney Tom. His firm (based out of Houston) specializes in Catastrophic Personal Injuries and Class Action lawsuits.
Legal eagle is garbage. If you want a liar to represent your case, he's the guy to go to. I stopped watching his propaganda years ago. I don't care what he supports or doesn't. He has no integrity.
I’m glad you’re raising awareness about Honey!
Thanks! Yeah, I feel kinda late to the new here, but I guess the fact that it DIDN'T really affect D&D-tube led to no one really talking about it yet. If they have, I must have missed it.
To your last point. It is likely that the OGL mess plus the 2024 rules changes being in the wings were the major reason 5e kickstarters were down. It mostly seems that stuff has passed on and I would expect some of the bigger 3rd parties and creators to be releasing "Made for 2024 rules set 5e" kickstarters in the not to distant future.
Agreed. This is a lame duck period for 5E, third party projects. Why publish something that's going to be somewhat out of date within a year?
I think we see a bounce back once the 5.24 license allows it.
Smart KSers were starting the projects before the 2024 rules were released to be first out of the gate afterwards during 2025.
That or many just switched over to other systems. Most prominently pathfinder got a massive boost from the whole ogl debacle, with many players and creators switching boats, and there are also the creators that might switch over to daggerheart once that releases. So yeah, it's not necessarily that there's less material being created, just that it isn't solely based around 5e anymore.
Kudos to you for sticking to your morals and only sponsoring companies that feel right to you.
Its got to be hard, both rigourously vetting your sponsors and getting enough money to get by. Big scammy companies offer a lot of money for people to not look too deep. Can see why it tempts so many people in an unpredictable market.
"Allegedly"? Nothing ALLEGED about it. MegaLag reverse engineered the code and showed it in action. Anyone else can do it themselves the same way. It's proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that they did what they're accused of.
If you hear a UA-camr using 'allegedly', it's mostly for legal reasons. Failing to do so could open them up to a lawsuit, since no verdict has been delivered yet, so any wrongdoing is 'alleged' until proven otherwise.
But yeah they guilty as hell.
This whole situation is so crazy. I love how you're able to find creative, insightful ways to tie these things into our community. Also, I am not surprised you were approached by a beauty mirror company Bob. Let's be real.
Those flowing locks! ❤😊
Informative. Flattered to have been included on your thumbnail instead of Matt Mercer. (FYI--if this video underperforms in the first few hours you should replace me with Matt Mercer). Rock on, Bob!
Glad you commented. I am new to the DnD UA-cam space and didn't recognize you. I was looking through comments to see if I could find who you were. I'll be checking out your channel now!! 😅
I think when Critical Role switches out of 5e the entire advertisement space for 5e will become utter misery. And I hope I am wrong but Critical Role is not likely to let 5e sponsors in their show when they run a competing ruleset..... not to mention the OTHER big DnD youtuber who made their OWN ruleset as well, also not linked to WOTC or 5e. Next years are going to be interesting.
8:07 I think this statistic is SUPER misleading. Kobold Press alone went from having 4 kickstarters for 5e in 2023 to 5 ToV kickstarters in 2024, and other companies doing similar things like MCDM probably account for the majority of this statistic. The real important thing to keep track of is the overall TTRPG kickstarters going up from 105 to 106. Bob knows better than anybody this hobby isn’t just DnD, it’s all TTRPGs.
Since TTRPG UA-camrs nearly only deal with niche sponsors for niche products made by indie creators, this is basically the only community where I trust the sponsorships so long as it isn't something everyone on UA-cam is promoting. So love this a lot! It's great! Glad I can trust most sponsorships here :) Otherwise you should never trust ANYTHING a UA-camr promotes, it's basically always a scam or HIGHLY unethical product.
Edit: the reason the established titles thing was a scam is A LOT of UA-camrs didn't state it was a gag gift, they instead said that "YES, you ACTUALLY get a lordship in Scotland! You can add it to your driver's license, your documents, and make people call you it, because it's legal!" instead of showing how "haha, obviously this isn't real but it's funny". So yes, it was a scam.
When I first saw Honey, I asked the 'but where does the money come from?" Silly me, though they were stealing my personal information such as where and what I buy or perhaps my browsing history to sell to advertisers. So I did not install and got mad at the damn ads. Now I find out that I dodged a much more poisonous bullet. I am so glad to hear that there were others who found it sus as well.
8:20 It would be interesting to delve into why we have seen 5e kickstarters dry up. Initial gut thought would be waiting till 5.25E is fully released. More pessimistic thought would be it seems like everyone and their blink hound is doing a kickstarter for some 5E or 5E adjacent product and the market is just getting saturated and buyers are having burnout. Groups only need so many different monster vaults, tomes of foes, etc before they feel they have enough supplemental material to last them for the rest of their lives.
I think these things are all likely, and would add "We're no longer in a pandemic". I know we haven't been in 'active pandemic mode' for a few years, but the further away we get, it seems the less time and energy we have for a big-energy game like D&D. Idk at least that's kinda how it's been for me.
Getting established titles is like buying a star. Or adopting a wild animal as you mentioned. It's fun, not official.
Good points about how the sphere promotes things directly related to ttrpg, I definitely noticed it when I started watching and all the ads were now outdated kickstarters haha
Good on ya for this video, in cases like this large-scale bad coverage can really make a difference!
💪
I'll say what I say regarding every UA-cam sponsor scandal:
1) If the product is offering something you could not (with reasonable practice and training) do yourself, it is a scam. Period. There are no "magic" products out there.
2) If every youtuber and their dog is promoting the product, it's a scam. Or at best there is some shady backroom issues going on. No one sponsors others for free.
3) Frankly, I outright do not trust ANY product advertised by ANY influencer. As a matter of fact my standard policy is that if a product is mentioned at all as a sponsor, I presume it's a scam. No exceptions. Like I thank them for giving creators money that I follow, but the moment I hear the words "this video is sponsored by..." I either advance the time code manually or make a note of the product's name to add to my list of "Never buy these products EVER.";
The only products I've ever heard listed as sponsors for videos as an exception to this I can count on one hand, notably World Anvil and Chepeku, both of whom I only used after watching/reading several reviews (not sponsored videos) and in the case of the latter I mainly chose to subscribe to their patreon after I had literally kept seeing their maps on pintrest and saying, "yup, I'd like a high res version of this" at least a dozen times while prepping my games. Pretty much anyone else? I just assume their are either a scam, stealing/tracking my data, or their company staff eat the flesh of children or something. There is no presumption of innocence in an inherently vampiric capitalist system.
Side note: Given how niche the RPG community is, I really do question how much of industry is essentially just recycling money through various creators within the industry. i.e. fans spending money on a kickstarter, rpg product, or patreon for a creator and then said creator sponsoring another creator, who then goes on to sponsor another, etc. Obviously money is still coming in and leaving the community via labor and bills and what not, but I'd be amused if there was some way to actually track how much financial cross pollination is occurring.
You sound like a careful customer
Too bad that's not the norm
When deciding if something is a scam one of the first questions to ask is "Does this service cost money" if the answer is no, there is a very high likelihood it is a scam.
@@kdavidsmith1 I don't even trust that. Better Health is one of the most well known scams out there and it certainly wasn't free.
I LOVE ALL Bob World Builder videos! And no one pays me to say that. (All serious $$$ offers will be considered).
The first time I ever heard (literally) of Mr. Beast was a pre-video ad of him yelling at the top of his lungs with his trademark uncanny valley expressionless face that he had a challenge for me. I knew I hated him, then and there, and I knew not to ever go anywhere near Honey.
Glad the DnD creator community by and large seemed to be able to avoid this mess.
fandom and the convention circuit generally has its own pdf problem, we don't need to borrow Mr Beast's
I love how people still talk about established titles, even though everyone knew it was a gag gift and you couldn't actually buy a lord or lady title lol. It was a tree planting charity and that's it
If I remember correctly, that was also part of the problem. They got too big too fast and couldn't keep up with the planting, so even that wasn't working.
I had a similar reaction to you to the Established Titles thing. I thought everyone understood that "become a Scottish lord!" was exactly as legally binding as the "buy a plot of land on the Moon!" certificates that went around in the 1990s. In other words, not at all. It was a fun novelty gift that gave a little bit to conservation efforts. (Not quite as much as they claimed, based on the personal research I did, but still a non-zero amount.) I hadn't realized until the uproar that anyone actually was taking them seriously beyond "what a fun gag gift this is!"
Thanks! Uninstalled (but *not* unsubscribed!!!! enjoy every video of yours)
i was sure honey was just spying on people's purchases and getting the money from there. it should be a relatively easy and relatively cheap scheme, especially if they also save any other cupon any other person with the extension tried.
but i guess paypal was too greedy.
Unrelated to the content of the video, but I've grown to anticipate the little sound at the end when the recording is ended.
I hope that if Bob gets another camera that they somehow keep that sound for the ends of videos.
Not gonna lie, I've recorded the sound separately, so when I occasionally use different set-ups, I can still put it at the end lol. Thank you so much for watching til the end! :)
This is why I just use (avoidable) Google ad slots in my video content, and I DO NOT accept sponsors and waste viewers time with that nonsense unless it's promoting small indie RPG gigs.
You forgot to mention the vigilance of Numenorean rangers who have patrolled the borders of the dungeontube Shire for lo these many years
Deep cut. Almost as deep as when Beren cut a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown.
The true heroes!!
as soon as the ad started I just sighed and grabbed my wallet
So literally a “Honey Trap” 😂🤣.
Starring Tom Manks
8:00 Did they clarify if that figure is just 5E vanilla, or includes 5E 24? If it is just a 50% decrease from vanilla it would make sense, if more projects were now being made for the updated version instead, if 24 is counted separately.
Can't say for sure, but even D&D is calling it all 5e, so I would think it was all counted the same.
I'd say it's more likely that people were delaying projects until after February 2025, (when the new SRD 5.2 releases), so they'll know what the free-to-use parts of the 2024 rules are, and where their third-party content can expand on them.
@@BobWorldBuilder What I'm seeing from other creators is them needing a bit of time to find their feet with the updated rules. I suspect it'll rise again soon. Heck, we're lauching out next Kickstarter in 2025 for more dinosaurs. ^^
2:39 Given the lawsuit (which hopefully gets access to Honey's data), if the data on both sides is good enough, it should be relatively easy to compare when someone clicked on your affiliate link with when Honey received commission from the same IP.
It may be even easier if applicable merchant platforms get dragged into it, since they may actually have data directly showing the affiliate reference being change.
Without such a lawsuit, you've probably got no chance of seeing when Honey takes your commission (except when doing a specific test for that, like MegaLag did).
only if they save that data...if you were stealing affiliate money why would you record who you stole it from
@@WeShallLoveOn They likely keep records of the things they'll be paid for. If one were to keep a record of anything, it would be that.
They don't record "who they stole it from", they record which customer bought what through which merchant, via their "last click".
Then you cross-reference that with creator data, which shows which customer clicked on their link for which merchant to buy what (but didn't end up buying it).
@@blueredingreen right but the info needed would be who they stole it from
I do love how friendly and tight the youtubers in our little community are. Thanks for the video Bob!
I guess this is the new UA-cam trend to inform people about this. Not a bad thing just something i noticed
Also, it is in the interest of the streamer community to inform those willing to uninstall Honey. And separately, it is in the viewer interest to uninstall Honey (it’s also bad for us) and streamers would feel compelled by duty to inform us for that as well
Haven't noticed any RPG folks talking about it yet, so it seemed like a good idea!
With the lawsuit going on and ANYONE with affiliate links being able to join, the more people who know the better!
Czepeku's stuff is so high quality and there's so dang much of it that it astounds me that it doesn't cost more than it does to be a patron.
It's so funny, just yesterday I was watching an older video of yours and had this exact thought when it got to the sponsored segment.
Thx for sharing this information. Still too many people are oblivious of those scammers.
I hope this is just another lesson in why you shouldn't ever trust UA-cam sponsorships. Although I'm actually with you here, the only UA-cam sponsorships I ever found to not be an overpriced scam are ttrpg ones. They're usually on par with professional company quality and have a price point that makes sense
Thank you for sheading light on this issue to some that may not watch people like Markaplier or Legal Eagle, and in such a caring way. This is one of the reason's I am a sub on your channel. That and you always have great content. I didn't know I didn't have the "Bell" clicked so that is now fixed.
I figured it would be something like that - 90% of sponsored TTRPG videos I see are sponsored by a Kickstarter, Czepeku, World Anvil or Only Crits (...With occasional sightings of Campfire, though I think that tended to more be world building channels. I haven't seen anything from Campfire for a while, come to think of it, but they seem to still be a functioning website)
It’s pretty cool that dnd and fantasy writers get sponsored by tools to help with running campaigns or keeping track of your own worldbuilding. It’s a cool way to stay on topic when discussing how things work, and here’s a sponsor that could help you with it.
The real crime for these apps is that they get to see EVERYTHING you're purchasing, probably everything you are looking at buying, and even see all your financial transactions!
Thanks for explaining the hubbubb. I heard something about it but had not run into a real answer on what was going on
This is really cool of them! Would be great if they'd cover more games that aren't part of the biggest corporate stranglehold on the RPG hobby in history, as well.
Especially games that aren't just similar alternatives but drastically different to D&D!
I want to point out that a 50% decrease is a statistically significant decrease and should absolutely be investigated. The Titles thing I always assumed was like the "name a star" thing that was around for a while. A BS novelty that grandparents buy gor their grandchildren because thety don't know better.
All browser extensions are scams...How to avoid them? Don't install them.
But my Bonzi Buddy 😢
If honey has been found guilty of swapping other people‘s promo codes with their own. The best way to deal with it is to have them either give up all of their data showing the swap so that you can accurately determine exactly how much money they owe everyone or the company is dissolved because it was criminally stealing from somebody else. If honey was a person they would go to jail for a very long time for theft. After that, then each individual can sue them for damages and interest on top of the money that they stole.
Not just customers and UA-camrs, but their clients allegedly got scammed as well. They went for the trifecta!
Yeah, I can let "Lordship" slide. It's like "Name A Star". I buy a spinosaurus tooth, I expect it to be a spinosaurus tooth. I "Adopt a Stream", I'm pretty sure I can put up "No Trespassing" signs on the stream.
Look, I would never question Lord Bob, The Worldbuilder.
Well if i see an Ad that has Mr. Beast telling me to install something on every device my family owns...you better believe I thought it was a scam!
Somehow...I managed to never see a Honey sponsorship before. It wasn't until the big scandal that I learned that it even existed.
Disclosure proves who they ripped off, but the class action lawsuit deals with also potential loss by the scam existing, if your channel is monetized, more or less. Everyone approved gets a cut if the case winds, but only if monetized in the period listed.
Greetings. I am here watching the full video and commenting on an effort to protect Bob from the wave of destruction crashing through TTRPGTube right now. Please don't kill this channel, Google! Please don't retire, Bob!
I received a Scottish "title", a Laird, or landowner, bootstrap to a "Lordship" as a gift from my English brother in law, and visited Buckingham, Windsor and Balmoral, with a tour of HMY Brittania, so quite pleased with my Lordship! Some even call me Sir...
The only thing the DnD channels avoided by being smaller fish is "getting back" some of the money in the form of payment for the actual ads. The losses are about which viewers used Honey, not about who advertised it.
Big fan of the channel, especially when you discuss non-WOTC content. I do want to share that the sound bites during your talking are more distracting than helpful.
Thanks! Yeah I usually end up feeling like my little sound effects are too quiet, so I left them a little louder here. I appreciate the reality check!
@@BobWorldBuilder It's worth it to me to repeat how much I enjoy your channel! Thank you!
How was I not subscribed to you already!??!?! Thanks for the video, and so looking forward to Delve!
There are still two parts of MegaLag’s original exposé which haven’t been released yet, but I suspect since those won’t be the consumer and UA-cam influencer side of things, they won’t get the same massive reaction from the UA-camr community.
Surprised to see this on your channel, but good coverage. I always love your calm and thought out takes =) thank you Bob!
The issue with sponsorships is that youtube is a community with much closer ties to its audience than some other media so a bad sponsorship does more damage to the creator than say a celebrity doing a tv endorsement. BetterHelp is another one with a shady history that suckers in alot of youtubers.
You didn't dodge nothing. It replaced your affiliate links too even if you never took their money.
Where were we? Oh yes! I was clicking "Like" because I love the video and the channel. Thank you Bob. I love you like a brother, but will never call you "honey".
General rule of thumb: if a product has been out for a long time and still has to rely on sponsorship and ads it's probably not a good product
It's crazy how this honey story has reached so many areas of youtube.
Hey Bob! I've only been following the niche for a couple years now and I want to tell you that in that time I've seen you really mature and come into your own. Stay creative my friend!
Did someone say honey?!?
This video dovetails with Professor DM's video about making a go of it in the D&D UA-cam space.
Yeah that was unintentional haha, two (unfortunately negative) UA-cam stories this week
@@BobWorldBuilder This video, Professor DM's video, and Esper's video while negative may result in positive outcomes for D&D UA-camrs and the watchers of these channels. Channels have to adapt to stay alive.
Drew Gooden is straight fire though.
I'm not even a real creator and this is the second major scam I identified.
The other was that one that got smosh and game theory
Watching and commenting in 1 hour, because Professor DM said we have to 😊
Always keepin' it real, Bob. Appreciate you.
what i don't understand is, how has almost no one of these big youtubers questioned their business model what did they think where the money comes from?
That the TTRPG community supports its members is a good thing.
I mean I remember things like Beanz and other web token currencies that promised discounts and affiliate specials from the 90's, all failed. Though I am waiting for the Nord:Shadowlegends crossover because someone has to!
Your point about how we have to remember that while we are a large niche, we are still a niche reminds me of conversations I've had with others in the video gaming community. Some people have acted outright SHOCKED to find someon that doesn't know who The Kratos or Mister Chef is, and what I have to tell them is "your favorite video game is niche, outside of the gaming community". You know which characters the average joe who spends their time actually out and about in the real world knows about? Mario. Sonic. Donkey Kong. Pac-Man. Football Man. Call of Shooty man. That's it. If they aren't a preexisting sports star or one of the foundational elementals of gaming itself, no one outside that community knows the character exists! Normal people have no CLUE what a Cloud or a Sebembermoth is, I don't care how many millions of copies the FF7 remake sold for! Heck, most people still call him "King Koopa" and now "Bowser". (That may change now that the new Mario movie has been such a success.) Frankly, if it didn't end up becoming a cultural zeitgeist that covered store shelves in merchandise culminating in a major movie, no one knows it exists.
So please, gamers of both table top and video game varieties, stop acting shocked that someone doesn't know who the Drizzle Elf or the spikey haired giant sword guy is. Heck my sister, who only just plays SLIGHTLY more games than the average person, just renamed Cloud and every other character to "Bort" when she played that game ages ago. That's what she knows them as, and that's the most POPULAR Final Fantasy game of all time! There is no chance in hell that anyone outside our niche community knows who or what an ExDeath is, or what gate Baldur owns, or why they would name a town in the negative like "Neverwinter" instead of "Everspring". (Okay, SOME of that is our fault. No one names a place for what it isn't, that's not how people work!)
Hate how this is even a thing. Thanks for the update.
I like what you do, Bob. Thanks for the awesome videos with your smiling face and positive attitude. You help make TTRPG's fun
I feel lucky to have avoided Honey. I saw it a couple times and thought it might be useful, but never spent the time to see what was up with it.
I mean it's not like they we're going to do anything harmful to you specifically. They don't even take customer data. It only affects people who make money through affiliate links because It replaces their affiliate link with Honey's
Loved the scoop, never heard of Honey... Loved the Law & Order humor. Cheers!
Nice PSA! I avoid most browser add-ons anyway, but especially ones related to shopping. I don't need "help" to shop. I don't "shop". I I want/need something, I'll look up prices on my own.
Informative and fun. Good job, Bob. Have some engagement.
Great explanation! Keep the videos coming!
I still don't quite get how established titles was seen as a scam. I thought it was almost perfectly clear that what they were selling was novelty certificates, gag gifts, stuff like that. There weren't people who bought into it thinking they were becoming actual lords and ladies, were there?
Amazon and other retailers might have logs of when affiliate cookies were set, which could be used to track who Honey style from. Honey might have their own logs too, if they're incompetent.