D&D Beyond admits that blocking Drops sharing "was not the right decision," will release yearly bundles of Drops content for sale for non-subscribers

D&D Beyond is addressing complaints about its new Drops programs. Today, D&D Beyond made a new post providing some updates about its D&D Beyond Drops program, which releases weekly content exclusive to subscribers. The updates were intended to address major complaints about the new program, namely that subscribers could not share the content with their campaigns and that non-subscribers had no way to purchase Drops content outside of a subscription. "It’s become clear from your feedback that there were two main things we got wrong with D&D Beyond Drops: content sharing and non-subscriber access," the post reads.

In the post, D&D Beyond admitted that not allowing Drops content to be shared via campaigns "was not the right decision." Although no immediate solution was announced, D&D Beyond stated that they expected to have more information about content sharing in the coming weeks. Additionally, D&D Beyond also announced that they would be releasing Drops content on their marketplace for sale via a yearly bundle, with the first bundle set to be released next May. This content will be available to all D&D Beyond users, regardless of their subscription status.

 

[Incenjucar]

I am glad that people spoke up and glad that WotC listened. If they listen well enough long enough I might even start buying from them again - but that's going to require a lot of people being negative until WotC is able to do positive things habitually. Gotta drill that good behavior in with vigilance until it becomes the default.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I am not sure that it is healthy for the world if everyone who cries loud enough always gets what they want (no matter how unhealthy) just because companies (or parents) can't deal with a vocal minority of their customers (or children) being unhappy... and complaining online...

 

[Sulicius]

So the change is that now you can actually buy the Drops content as well, which will make you "own" the content on DDB. That seems to be going against their (probable) intent of cutting people off of the Drops content when they end their subscription.

Interesting.

 

[Afroconan]

Right, absolutely no one said things like "Hate on dude, hate on" when people brought up WotC's pattern of bad behavior, or made comments such as "I think the odds of getting companies to change T&Cs is zero as an individual and only slightly higher if you could start a larger movement."

But I'm sure you'll say that those are completely different from what I was talking about.

Well, that's certainly a valid opinion to hold. Most companies do not listen to complainers if they think their bottom line won't be affected. I see many people complaining about Magic's universe beyond but WotC keeps reaping millions out of it, so that has a zero chance to change.

But since after the OGL crisis they seem to have realized that D&D and Magic are very different products with very different communities behind (even though there is considerable overlap), they've realized their bottom line is more sensible to community outrage.

And what some of us have told you (and others) is that we don't find your characterizations of what's "overly hyperbolic" and "toxic negativity" to be justified. Quite the opposite, we're the ones asking you to please stop acting as though you're entitled to not hear any opinions that you disagree with, and to stop trying to paint people who don't agree with you as "toxic" and "hyperbolic" in an effort to shut them up.

To this date, I haven't seen any unpopular decision WotC has made that hasn't been backtracked because of community push back. So in that sense you're right.

On the other hand, people keep complaining about WotC having a "pattern of bad behavior" even though they've backtracked on almost every issue.

The hyperbolic negativity comments comes from that last fact, that people only focus on the "pattern of bad behavior" and not the "pattern of reflection and backtracking". Specially all the doom and gloom every time Chris Cox mentions AI even tangentially ,or how people claim WotC wants to "squeeze" every dollar out of their community whenever they explore a new avenue for revenue.

WotC is a huge company, with many moving parts that not always are on the same page, pushback is good, even encouraged. But if no matter what they do to appease part of the community works, then next time they may as well cut their loses and trudge on.

It's no effort to shut up anyone, it's an effort to encourage nuance and fair discourse instead of screaming "the sky is falling!" every time.

Edit: Also on the point of "patterns of bad behavior", a big part of that are outright mischaracterizations, slippery slope fallacies and just outrage sellers jumping on hatewagons to profit, like claiming D&D Drops is a "battlepass" or that "D&D will turn into Fortnite".

 

[Afroconan]

So the change is that now you can actually buy the Drops content as well, which will make you "own" the content on DDB. That seems to be going against their (probable) intent of cutting people off of the Drops content when they end their subscription.

Interesting.

I've said before. I don't think the mechanical content from Drops will remain exclusive to Beyond (feats, species, spells, subclasses...)

WotC won't miss the opportunity to double dip on the people who only buy physical books (like me) or people who get both.

The Dhampir being a bonus DLC from the Forgotten Realms pre-order and then showing up in the Ravenloft book in print kinda solidifies that position for me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Let me amend what I said: some people always spin or find everything WotC does as a negative

That's definitely true, but in this specific case, I think it's totally fair to see this is as still a net negative. They're moving in the right direction, great, but they're still a long distance from shore.

In the post, D&D Beyond admitted that not allowing Drops content to be shared via campaigns "was not the right decision."

This, for example, was insane levels of outright stupidity and greed from WotC. Even beyond the basic questionable ethics of the whole thing, it's just impractical and makes the Drops more or less worthless because most people who use Beyond are groups with 1-2 people with full-on subscriptions buying most of the stuff for a group.

And it's not fixed! They're just saying they want to find a way to "do better", which is pretty meaningless until we know what that is. There's a trivially obvious and straightforward way to fix it - make it shareable like literally everything else you can get in D&D Beyond is. But they didn't commit to that.

And why not? They don't say. It's very odd and rather suspicious. Best case scenario is the screwed up royally in the tech behind how Drops determine who can access them, but that would be rather incredible.

Doing a yearly bundle of this content is also pretty negative. If you do want something, but aren't a subscriber, previously with Beyond, you got it at exactly the same time as subscribers, and paid about the same amount, you just couldn't share it. Now, even assuming get the "yearly bundle" out like day-and-date, you're looking at two big problems:

1) You can't pay for specific content. That might be arguably be okay with an actual book with a theme and so on, but in this case we're looking at wild spattering of completely unrelated and unthemed material. It's very unlikely anyone but collectors wants more than say, 30% of it.

2) You're forced to wait essentially d12 months (again, assuming they're getting the bundles out absolutely on time, which they might not) for any given piece of content to be available, which is just not how this platform has worked, isn't the "content ecosystem" people bought into.

Credit where it's due, good on WotC for listening.

I think we save the credit for when the issues are both resolved, no?

The "can't share" issue isn't resolved at all, not even slightly. They've not committed to anything, and they're ignoring the obvious fix that their entire platform uses for some reason. This is like your friend drunkenly parking his F150 in your front garden, destroying a bunch of your plants, and instead of committing to move it and pay for the damage, he's just saying "I can see this was not the correct thing to do", like no duh, Sherlock. Now fix it.

The "can't access" issue is still intentionally broken for non-subscribers in a way that is the rest of the platform isn't, and is still potentially going to involve paying for a huge amount of content you don't want to get at a small amount of content you do. This is all fun and games whilst it's just unimportant stuff in drops, but sooner or later, subclasses, races, spells, monsters and maybe even entire classes that a lot of people see as important parts of D&D are going to end up there.

So we can say, they have at least openly recognised that these elements are a problem, and committed to an (unideal and incomplete) solution to one of them. Movement in the right direction, but pressure should still be kept on them, especially as they are avoiding the obvious solution re: sharing (again, this might be technical, but if so, why not say it?).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To this date, I haven't seen any unpopular decision WotC has made that hasn't been backtracked because of community push back. So in that sense you're right.

On the other hand, people keep complaining about WotC having a "pattern of bad behavior" even though they've backtracked on almost every issue.

That... is literally a pattern of bad behaviour.

It's not an uncommon pattern in real life, either. A lot of us have a friend who habitually behaves badly, makes poor decisions, regrets them because people are mad with them, and apologises but often doesn't actually quite fix the decisions or make recompense for them.

That's WotC here. They keep making unforced bad decisions, some extremely obviously bad (all the ones which attracted major controversy), and yeah, they go back on them, but often not entirely (only OGL 2.0 did they entirely fix the problem 5E, and that was because they reached the "normal people know about this scandal" levels of hyperawareness, which is very bad for a brand, long-term).

Edit: Also on the point of "patterns of bad behavior", a big part of that are outright mischaracterizations, slippery slope fallacies and just outrage sellers jumping on hatewagons to profit, like claiming D&D Drops is a "battlepass" or that "D&D will turn into Fortnite".

I mean, comparing Drops to a battlepasses is actually pretty accurate. It functions almost identically to a battlepass, no? Remembering that different games have different battlepasses. Except with a lot of battlepasses (depending on the game) you can actually buy the things piecemeal later (the ones you can't, the battlepass will be entirely cosmetic, rather than functional in any way), rather than having to buy some potentially very expensive lump-sum deal later. And no major videogame would have been as dumb as WotC on the "can't share" point, when being able to share content was a key part of the design of the entire platform.

You seem to be slightly guilty of what you're talking about re: hyperbole here. Like, I agree saying "This turns D&D into Fortnite!!!" is hyperbole and a bit weird, but comparing it to a battlepass? I'm pretty sure in meetings internally, WotC themselves will have discussed it as such, especially whatever exec originated the concept. It's not an outright mischaracterization, not a slippery slop fallacy, and it doesn't take an "outrage seller" to make that very obvious connection a world where so many games do have battlepasses. So it's hyperbolic to place both that obvious comparison (which again, I am very confident is a comparison WotC has made internally in meetings, having been in corporate meetings about this general kind of project) and the weird-and-unhelpful "turns D&D into Fortnite" in the same category.

EDIT: I do agree @Afroconan that I think now they've committed to bundles, it's unlikely the content will remain Beyond-only forever. However, like you seem to be saying, I don't think they'll put out physical versions of the bundles, I think they'll just put some of the material in some physical products at a later date. So any given single content element might remain Beyond-only indefinitely.

 

[aco175]

We all may be happy with Wizards for backtracking or doing the right thing, but Hasbro has not come along to foul it up yet.

 

[Sulicius]

I've said before. I don't think the mechanical content from Drops will remain exclusive to Beyond (feats, species, spells, subclasses...)

WotC won't miss the opportunity to double dip on the people who only buy physical books (like me) or people who get both.

The Dhampir being a bonus DLC from the Forgotten Realms pre-order and then showing up in the Ravenloft book in print kinda solidifies that position for me.

Could be, they have been pretty clear that there was no plan to release the options in other books later. They've already gone back on that to some degree. We'll see how things turn out.

But as someone who only uses physical and Roll20 (WotC is already double dipping with me), I am annoyed that I am excluded from these options. It's just the way I feel about it.

Thankfully, when I talked to my players about this, they shrugged and said they didn't care they wouldn't have access to everything WotC makes for 5e. That made me feel better.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We all may be happy with Wizards for backtracking or doing the right thing, but Hasbro has not come along to foul it up yet.

I mean, they did this because of Hasbro, I think we can be fairly sure. It's a pretty naked attempt to put the rough equivalent of a battlepass (I'm sorry, that is absolutely not a mischaracterization, I think anyone saying that is unfamiliar with the wild world of battlepasses and their equivalents) on top of a subscription, which is something a few games have managed to pull off, but not many! It can be very profitable if you can get away with it, but in this case they broke fundamental principles of their platform offering to users, and as such got massive pushback (even a utility app for businesses would have got massive pushback on this kind of fundamental principle change).

So I don't Hasbro are going to step in and make it worse. Hasbro may be why they've only committed to an even partial solution for one of the problems though.