OneBookShelf (drivethruRPG, dmsguild, et cetera...) Enshittified.

[aramis erak]

OneBookShelf recently changed their website, ending batch downloads - unless you use their app. I am sick of my devices getting cluttered by scores of proprietary apps trying lock customers into corporate walled gardens. So i am not going to use it. Which means that purchases with lots of files takes a long time to download. I think the Owen's Cancer Charity Bundle took over an hour to manually download each file. Leaving aside if you loose your own library it would take forever to re-download everything.

So is there an alternative to drivethruRPG, or has one company gobbled up every RPG market? Like a mini Amazon, Google, or Sauron?

They bought out RPGNow over a decade ago, and consolodated the two several years later.
Wargames Vault, Drive Thru Comics, Drive Thru Cards, and the D&D DM's Guild store are all run via DTRPG. Mongoose's TAS program, C7's fan written content, and Free League's assorted fan content programs are also run through DTRPG.

Hyperbooks Online went the way of the dodo. I can't redownload several older PDFs that were bought from there, but some of them showed up in DTRPG - transferred by the publishers, I assume.
TravellerRPG.com shut down it's ebook store in 2007, we turned off redownloads last year.

Still Operating...

• Indie Press Revolution is still around, but has low uptake.
• Paizo has a decent webstore... but it's not as broad as one would hope.
• SJGames has Warehouse 23, which is both dead tree and ebooks. Not just SJG, either. ADB, and several GURPS and TFT licensees, as well on there.
• PIGames.net has a number of OSR games and a number of storygames publishers... but the most notable games are Earth AD, Lords of Olympus, Rune Stryders, Man, Myth and Magic, and Genre Diversion i. I do like Shatterzone, but I never had a group which liked it, and few seem to have heard of it. It's available there, too.
• Lulu has a lot of ebooks, but primarily is pushing PoD.
• Mongoose has only their own stuff.
• Modiphius.net (Mōdiphïus' webstore) has a bunch of Free League's titles.
• Free League has several "produced by others, printed by us" titles, some of which are big names right now, most notably Mörk Borg. They also sell those in their webstore.

(Shatterzone is Masterbook 0.9; Torg 1e is Masterbook 0.5, in much the same way Original Ghostbusters is D6 0.1, GBI is d6 0.5, and Star Wars is D6 v1.)

I'll note that I've always gotten faster downloads by downloading 1 file at a time from DTRPG than batch downloads. And one of my devices, the only way it successfully downloads is via the app. But that's an android based eInk notetaking tablet/ebook reader.

 

[aramis erak]

There's a small number of files in my library (something like 13% or so) that won't download when I use the app's "download all" function. It keeps returning an error in the process no matter what I try.

Publishers can and have removed redownload access. I've a few like that. D&D Cyclopedia used to be one of them. But when WotC put it back available, my >10 years prior purchases became reavailable.

And I got a nifty in my DTRPG messages - Alien: Building Better Worlds PDF ...

 

[John Dallman]

It seems like every company in the world picked 2023 to totally destroy their platforms because of "undermonetization" and "engagement."

Higher interest rates mean they've become "underperforming investments."

 

[Divine2021]

I have never had a problem downloading anything from DTRPG. Last night I bought two Planescape books, I didn’t have a problem at all like you describe. Reading them on my iPad books app like I always do.

 

[Voadam]

itch.io is another RPG PDF store (and computer games and some other stuff). It is mostly for fairly indie type things, Evil Hat is probably the most mainstream RPG company I saw on there. They have done a bunch of massive charity bundles.

I have not found their download options that great though.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I have been using the new format for weeks, without the app. Works fine.

 

[jdrakeh]

itch.io is another RPG PDF store (and computer games and some other stuff). It is mostly for fairly indie type things, Evil Hat is probably the most mainstream RPG company I saw on there. They have done a bunch of massive charity bundles.

I have not found their download options that great though.

As a consumer, I'm not a huge fan of how Itch handles downloads or download key distribution (download keys must be generated manually), BUT as a publisher I've sold more games through Itch than I ever did through DriveThruRPG. Like magnitudes more. Even taking PWYW into consideration.

 

[giant.robot]

I have been avoiding the new site. Seeing this thread I decided to log into DTRPG and it gave me the new interface. I have a ridiculous number of items in my library as I've bought a ridiculous amount of crap on there over the years, basically digitizing my paper collection so I could feel better about paring down the amount of paper on my shelves. Only a fraction of my library shows up no matter how I set the filters. Neat.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I have been avoiding the new site. Seeing this thread I decided to log into DTRPG and it gave me the new interface. I have a ridiculous number of items in my library as I've bought a ridiculous amount of crap on there over the years, basically digitizing my paper collection so I could feel better about paring down the amount of paper on my shelves. Only a fraction of my library shows up no matter how I set the filters. Neat.

All 972 titles show up in mine.

 

[delericho]

I got the new version this morning.

It looks like if you go to "My Library", and then "Account", it takes you to the old version of the site. From there you can go back to "My Library" and download in batches of 10, as before.