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D&D Beyond Confirms Monsters of the Multiverse's May Standalone Release
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8517652" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>The only "evidence" we have here is that the WotC devs allegedly said the SRD would not be updated with the new monster changes.</p><p></p><p>If so, that would support the "alternate versions" interpretation. Which would be more in-line with charging full-price for the product and so on. That'll be messy and annoying, but I think it's ultimately the approach least likely to feel like a rip-off, and most likely to please the largest percentage of customers.</p><p></p><p>Re: Beyond's actions.</p><p></p><p>I maintain that it's dishonest to pre-sell a product to customers <em>on a non-refundable basis</em> if you are unwilling or unable to admit what that product contains/how it operates. I think the main difference here is US vs. European/British attitudes - US customers are infinitely more willing to defend and tolerate terrible business practices (though most still oppose them - but where 19 out of 20 European/UK customers might say bad practices are wrong, with the US it's more like 4 out of 5 with a lot of people invoking Caveat Emptor and so on). Non-refundable pre-orders are basically illegal here - the non-refundable being the issue (Kickstarter etc. isn't a pre-order so sidesteps this, but I think even that might have got in trouble if most KS people weren't quite refund-friendly). Whilst small deposits can be taken and retained (but aren't, generally), if you haven't delivered something digital, it needs to be possible to cancel it, as Nintendo found out to their chagrin (even delivering an encrypted prepack isn't good enough). As for "It's just the contract", IANAL but I was a legal researcher, work at a big law firm, and deal with contracts in my job a lot, some with requirements like this (and actually work with products not fundamentally dissimilar to Beyond, but that's a whole other story), and I'm sorry but I don't buy that excuse. That's unlikely to a hard requirement, and companies politely push back on such requirements, even clear contractual ones, all the time.</p><p></p><p>If they did push back, and WotC responded saying "Losers, you need to put it up for pre-sale even though we're not letting you tell your customers what is in it!", well, that's a pretty big black mark for WotC rather than Beyond, but I'm skeptical that that happened. It seems a lot more likely that they just didn't. Mild support for my belief comes from the language the Beyond staff have used to defend this, which has been essentially libertarian in tone - i.e. "customers can make their own decisions about their own money", and that whilst they've now repeatedly suggested they're prevented from revealing their approach (indeed suggested they didn't know what approach they'd be taking because of this), they've not suggested they were forced to put it up for pre-order, despite that being the main bone of contention.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8517652, member: 18"] The only "evidence" we have here is that the WotC devs allegedly said the SRD would not be updated with the new monster changes. If so, that would support the "alternate versions" interpretation. Which would be more in-line with charging full-price for the product and so on. That'll be messy and annoying, but I think it's ultimately the approach least likely to feel like a rip-off, and most likely to please the largest percentage of customers. Re: Beyond's actions. I maintain that it's dishonest to pre-sell a product to customers [I]on a non-refundable basis[/I] if you are unwilling or unable to admit what that product contains/how it operates. I think the main difference here is US vs. European/British attitudes - US customers are infinitely more willing to defend and tolerate terrible business practices (though most still oppose them - but where 19 out of 20 European/UK customers might say bad practices are wrong, with the US it's more like 4 out of 5 with a lot of people invoking Caveat Emptor and so on). Non-refundable pre-orders are basically illegal here - the non-refundable being the issue (Kickstarter etc. isn't a pre-order so sidesteps this, but I think even that might have got in trouble if most KS people weren't quite refund-friendly). Whilst small deposits can be taken and retained (but aren't, generally), if you haven't delivered something digital, it needs to be possible to cancel it, as Nintendo found out to their chagrin (even delivering an encrypted prepack isn't good enough). As for "It's just the contract", IANAL but I was a legal researcher, work at a big law firm, and deal with contracts in my job a lot, some with requirements like this (and actually work with products not fundamentally dissimilar to Beyond, but that's a whole other story), and I'm sorry but I don't buy that excuse. That's unlikely to a hard requirement, and companies politely push back on such requirements, even clear contractual ones, all the time. If they did push back, and WotC responded saying "Losers, you need to put it up for pre-sale even though we're not letting you tell your customers what is in it!", well, that's a pretty big black mark for WotC rather than Beyond, but I'm skeptical that that happened. It seems a lot more likely that they just didn't. Mild support for my belief comes from the language the Beyond staff have used to defend this, which has been essentially libertarian in tone - i.e. "customers can make their own decisions about their own money", and that whilst they've now repeatedly suggested they're prevented from revealing their approach (indeed suggested they didn't know what approach they'd be taking because of this), they've not suggested they were forced to put it up for pre-order, despite that being the main bone of contention. [/QUOTE]
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D&D Beyond Confirms Monsters of the Multiverse's May Standalone Release
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