D&D 5E D&D Beyond: No More À La Carte Purchases But US Customers Can Buy Physical Books

WotC has announced some changes to D&D Beyond's marketplace. These include physical products (for US customers), the removal of à la carte purchases, and various navigational changes.

You can no longer buy individual feats, subclasses, etc. -- you'll need to buy the whole book. The full list of changes includes:

• US shoppers can now buy physical books
• More info on product listings, including previews
• UI improvements to makee finding your purchased content and redeeming keys easier
• No more à la carte purchases (though your previous ones still count)

 

[Reynard]

and because others don’t that somehow makes this move less consumer unfriendly?

If other marketplaces do no offer it, then other publishers basically have their hands tied, not everyone has their own marketplace

Any publisher who uses DTRPG could sell their books by the chapter or even individual entry. I don't see why WotC is the villain in this particular case.

 

[mamba]

Any publisher who uses DTRPG could sell their books by the chapter or even individual entry. I don't see why WotC is the villain in this particular case.

they could I assume, not sure what the terms are. If you are selling 500 books total there is a lot less incentive / demand however.

I did not call WotC a villain, I said the move is consumer unfriendly, I don’t see how you could claim that it isn’t.

 

[Mistwell]

I do not need reasons for why it would have them to tell you that the whole microtransaction talk is about the VTT


not to me, nor do I expect the topic to now disappear


huh? where is that from? Ultimately irrelevant however


because that is what they would showcase…


as I said, I need no evidence, this is about what fuels the microtransaction discussion, not the VTT itself. As to the 95%, I expect the mt discussion to basically not be affected by this and continue as is, hence the 5% impact of this on it

You ARE the fuel to the microtransaction discussion. This is circular logic. You're saying as long as you say the microtransaction discussion is about the VTT, it is, because someone said it repeatedly (you). There's nothing objective to point to about this topic.

 

[mamba]

You ARE the fuel to the microtransaction discussion. This is circular logic. You're saying as long as you say the microtransaction discussion is about the VTT, it is, because someone said it repeatedly (you). There's nothing objective to point to about this topic.

I am saying the discussion about mt won’t stop because of this move, I am not fueling this discussion, I said nothing about the VTT one way or the other (apart from it being the reason for why this discussion exists). Nothing circular about it, it’s not even self-fulfilling

 

[Mistwell]

I'll be extremely surprised if the VTT doesn't have microtransactions, anything else would be leaving money on the table, and Hasbro hates that.

The D&D microtransactions were probably removed because they were competing with macrotransactions, and that's not good business.

They literally just left money on the table by cancelling the microtransactions in DNDBeyond, which has some fair popularity and were priced to make them money from people who didn't want to buy entire books. It seems they did this to quiet accusations of microtransactions...though it's only strangely fueled them because apparently it's opposite day.

There is no evidence it was competing with macrotransactions - and if there were, that would be further evidence they're less likely to create systems that involved microstransactions and just learned a lesson about them detracting from a primary product.

I mean this whole topic was intermingled with the "and they want to get rid of print books" while this announcement also increased the accessibility of print books.

I really think we've reached the "Any WOTC news will be spun as negative WOTC news and twisted to further whatever anti-WOTC spin we're trying to put on things" stage of these discussions. If WOTC were rescuing babies I suspect people would claim they were doing it just to distract from some other bad thing.

 

[Azzy]

They literally just left money on the table by cancelling the microtransactions in DNDBeyond, which has some fair popularity and were priced to make them money from people who didn't want to buy entire books. It seems they did this to quiet accusations of microtransactions...though it's only strangely fueled them because apparently it's opposite day.

I see no evidence that this is actually so.

 

[Stormonu]

I'm not one to defend WotC generally, but this seems like a strange criticism. I can't think of any other companies that sell their RPG content a la carte.

When a company removes functionality, that's on the company.

I have a suspicion the micropurchases are being removed related to the new books coming later this year - the old books will be moving to legacy content and tracking individual "retired" vs active line items will likely be a pain.

 

[mamba]

I have a suspicion the micropurchases are being removed related to the new books coming later this year - the old books will be moving to legacy content and tracking individual "retired" vs active line items will likely be a pain.

they retroactively removed the option from all books

 

[Clint_L]

They literally just left money on the table by cancelling the microtransactions in DNDBeyond, which has some fair popularity and were priced to make them money from people who didn't want to buy entire books. It seems they did this to quiet accusations of microtransactions...though it's only strangely fueled them because apparently it's opposite day.

Did I miss something? Was there an interview or an announcement where WotC specified their motive for making the change?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not one to defend WotC generally, but this seems like a strange criticism. I can't think of any other companies that sell their RPG content a la carte.

So they remove functionality, and the response is that they shouldn't have had that functionality in the first place? Seems like a strange defense of corporate action to me.