D&D Beyond Cancellations Changed WotCs Plans

Gizmodo has revealed that the partial OGL v1.1 walkback yesterday was in response to the fan campaign to cancel D&D Beyond subscriptions, with "five digits" worth of cancellations. However, the site also reveals that management at the company believed that fans were overreating and that it would all be forgotten in a few months.

In order to delete a D&D Beyond account entirely, users are funneled into a support system that asks them to submit tickets to be handled by customer service: Sources from inside Wizards of the Coast confirm that earlier this week there were “five digits” worth of complaining tickets in the system. Both moderation and internal management of the issues have been “a mess,” they said, partially due to the fact that WotC has recently downsized the D&D Beyond support team.

Yesterday's walkback removed the royalties from the license, but still 'de-authorized' the OGL v1.0a, something which may or may not be legally possible, depending on who you ask.

Cancelled D&D Beyond Subscriptions Forced Hasbro's Hand

Swift consumer action prompted Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast to to scrap licensing updates. The players aren't done yet.

gizmodo.com

 

[Voadam]

Now, if Beyond ever deletes any of my books, or stops me accessing them, that'd be stealing my books. My expectation is, though, that WotC will probably just make all the books I own available as PDFs for download if/when they decide to shut down Beyond. And if they don't, well, I'll see them in small claims court, because either they'll turn up and it'll cost them more than I spent on all the books and then some just for the solicitor and barrister's time, even if I somehow lose, or much more likely I'll get nicer order for however much money those books cost, which I can then demand WotC pay lest I send the bailiffs round.

I haven't looked, does DDB have a terms of service addressing this kind of thing? Anything about if the service ends?

 

[mamba]

Well as far as I can tell Dndbeyond hasn't taken Volos or Mordenkainen books away from those that purchased them, even after they stopped printing them. They are just shown as legacy materials.

as far as I can tell DDB also has not shut down, which was the scenario here

 

[MockingBird]

as far as I can tell DDB also has not shut down, which was the scenario here

My post was referring to the comments up thread about Dndbeyond upgrading and changing your purchased books, not if Dndbeyond shuts down completely. If anything they have shown they will discontinue content but won't take it away if you purchased it previously.

 

[Voadam]

My post was referring to the comments up thread about Dndbeyond upgrading and changing your purchased books, not if Dndbeyond shuts down completely. If anything they have shown they will discontinue content but won't take it away if you purchased it previously.

In the past WotC has cut off access to downloading purchased prior edition D&D stuff. In the 4e era they did this for every PDF of OD&D to 3.5/D20 Modern/and even the 4e PDFs they had sold on DriveThru and Paizo. This was with I think two days notice for people to purchase or download stuff before the cut off. Maybe it was one day. I was quite bitter about it. RPGNow had originally said we could always re-download stuff we had bought, but that was before they got absorbed into DriveThru.

Years later they changed course and allowed access to purchased stuff and started putting up old edition PDFs for sale again. But not for anything that had been sold at Paizo. All the WotC PDFs sold there are still inaccessible so if your copy of the PDFs you bought get corrupted or lost you are out of luck.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They could just have created a new GSL and associated a badge with it. Markeded that heavily as the only real oneD&D compliant material as to pared to legacy compatible, and the huge causal marked would likely have followed. Creators would have gone where the consumers were.

At the 4ed time they didn't have the large causal following, and the transition cost they asked from fans was too steep compared to the benefit gained. I see absolutely no reason it should be essential for wizard's gameplay to get rid of 1.0a. Had they managed to do so quietly, they would have gotten a quite nice benefit, yes. But now I really can't see how that benefit can possibly outweight the cost of driving away absolutely all their quality creators, and a significant portion of their promoters.

They don't care about gameplay though. They care about control, and the money they think full control of D&D would bring them. The game itself is an increasingly less important means to an end.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To me, anything were even some of the people come back, even if it takes a while, isn't a TPK, y'know?

????

Have you not used Beyond? You're describing an impossible situation, essentially. If you're using Beyond, the only person who "needs" the new PHB is the DM, because you share it with the players, and the DM will probably have bought a number of books on Beyond. It's literally like you own the book on Beyond, if it's shared with you - it's actually genuinely hard to work out what's shared and what you actually own, at times lol.

It's real-world players who might actually need to buy another book themselves.

That literally doesn't make any sense. I can only assume you don't use Beyond, or your DM is really weird has intentionally turned off content sharing.

Content sharing, if it even exists moving forward, is definitely going to go up in price though. Can't monetize all those freeloading players if they don't have to buy their own stuff.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Well as far as I can tell Dndbeyond hasn't taken Volos or Mordenkainen books away from those that purchased them, even after they stopped printing them. They are just shown as legacy materials.

and what happens when they take the servers off line someday?

 

[Micah Sweet]

????

That's an interesting story and I liked it lol but doesn't show WotC stealing any books.

I was like Linda myself. I barely had any 4E books once the DDI got going. I had like, the core, PHB2 & 3, DMG2, and the Essentials books, and I think that's it.

But I was well aware during that time, that, if/when the DDI went down, I wouldn't have any books lol. I didn't mind because it was a subscription service and I was making a choice. Whereas with Beyond, the books are each a specific purchase. You don't need the subscription to access them, it just enables you to share them with others. The only thing I was mad about when it finally got turned off was that I wasn't able to get back in to retrieve our characters (despite the free grace period allowed, I couldn't get my PW to reset). Luckily I found we'd PDF'd them all years ago and I'd just forgotten, they were sitting on my Google drive.

Now, if Beyond ever deletes any of my books, or stops me accessing them, that'd be stealing my books. My expectation is, though, that WotC will probably just make all the books I own available as PDFs for download if/when they decide to shut down Beyond. And if they don't, well, I'll see them in small claims court, because either they'll turn up and it'll cost them more than I spent on all the books and then some just for the solicitor and barrister's time, even if I somehow lose, or much more likely I'll get nicer order for however much money those books cost, which I can then demand WotC pay lest I send the bailiffs round.

You're expecting WotC to go back to pdfs, in any capacity?

 

[ART!]

Content sharing, if it even exists moving forward, is definitely going to go up in price though. Can't monetize all those freeloading players if they don't have to buy their own stuff.

Oh, yeah - it's not hard to imagine a price for purchasing, and then a slightly higher price to purchase and share. If they make that extra cost just enough that most people will just cough up the extra bucks - and if you make it more expensive to add sharing after you purchase people will be even more likely to pay for the sharing option up front.

 

[MarkB]

I think the reason that angle hasn't come up much in discussion here is because controlling prospective 3pp or homebrew content on the VTT doesn't require trying to de-authorise the OGL, it just requires that users and 3pps accept a different licence - not unlike the terms for posting content on DMs Guild.

Yeah, but that would mean that their VTT was much more limited in content than everyone else's. By imposing these rules independently of the VTT contracts, they force them upon the other VTT providers as well.

 

[Haplo781]

They need to bite the bullet and just make 6e different enough to wall off.

4e:

 

[Haplo781]

D&D is absolutley a brand - it had brand recognition, the most important aspect of it.

A friend of mine used to work for GE Capital back in the 90s or early 200os. There was a poll about which brands you trusted for gas stoves, and GE did fairly well. The interesting point - they didn't make gas stoves. But the brand was so strong for kitchen that they scored well regardless of literally having nothing.

D&D has brand out the wazoo. Perhaps more than anything else - if any of the D&D rulesets under WotC had come out as a different RPG, it would likely have done well as a solid ruleset, but wouldn't be the undisputed market leader that most of the editions have been.

Is it a brand or is it a community?

During the 4e years "D&D" was Pathfinder for a lot of people.

 

[Maxperson]

They should rename this thread "what does 5 digits mean".

Isn't it how many fingers you have on one hand?

 

[Maxperson]

No, it’s the only reasonable one, a casual player is one who plays casually, isn’t too invested, could just stop participating in the hobby whenever. Someone getting a bunch of third party stuff is almost certainly beyond that point. Whether it’s third party stuff you would like or think is serious is kind of irrelevant. They’re invested in the game.

I’m sure there’s exceptions of a casual player just getting a book but still not being that invested, and there’s definitely serious players who buy little. But in general, this is what the suits are talking about when they say D&D is under-monetized. Bunch of people playing but not paying.

I'm with @Ruin Explorer on this one. Your definition of casual is too narrow. A casual player who buys Tasha's and/or Xanathar's, or even a few 3PP products to get some more PC options is not suddenly a hardcore player.

As an example, I was a casual bowlers, but I thought the personal bowling balls looked a lot neater than the ones at the lanes, so I bought one and had it sized for me. I still didn't bowl more than once every two or three months, but when I did I took my bowling ball to the lane and used it. I was still a casual bowler, despite having my own bowling ball.

 

[raniE]

I'm with @Ruin Explorer on this one. Your definition of casual is too narrow. A casual player who buys Tasha's and/or Xanathar's, or even a few 3PP products to get some more PC options is not suddenly a hardcore player.

As an example, I was a casual bowlers, but I thought the personal bowling balls looked a lot neater than the ones at the lanes, so I bought one and had it sized for me. I still didn't bowl more than once every two or three months, but when I did I took my bowling ball to the lane and used it. I was still a casual bowler, despite having my own bowling ball.

Buying your own bowling ball seems more equivalent to buying a PHB to me.

 

[Maxperson]

Buying your own bowling ball seems more equivalent to buying a PHB to me.

You should go bowling sometime and see how many people(casual bowlers) own a bowling ball. You'll be lucky if you can find a single one. The vast majority of casual people, myself included having lost the ball years ago, use balls off the shelf that the bowling alley provides. It's the serious bowlers who buy them.

 

[MockingBird]

and what happens when they take the servers off line someday?

Isn't that the risk with any digital content? I rarely buy digital, I buy physical things (games, books etc)mostly when I can cause I like to collect.

 

[raniE]

Isn't that the risk with any digital content? I rarely buy digital, I buy physical things (games, books etc)mostly when I can cause I like to collect.

Not really. Anything digital you can store locally is more secure than a physical book. I have my game PDFs on my hard drive and backed up to dropbox and many of them sitting on my drivethru account. Ok, drivethru closes. Doesn't matter, I still have the files on dropbox and stored locally. Dropbox suffers a huge catastrophic failure, that's ok, I still have the files locally and on Drivethru. My computer crashes and everything is wiped. Doesn't matter, I still have the files on Drivethru and Dropbox. So three things have to go down at the same time for me to lose my digital files (otherwise I can just re-back them up). On the other hand, if I spill a glass of water on a book it's ruined, and if my apartment burns down that's all my physical books gone.

 

[Imaro]

and what happens when they take the servers off line someday?

I think the plan is for this to be an evergreen edition, thus the servers wouldn't go down someday. How long has WoW been up and running, I think about 20 years... the question is what level of monetization does it take to sustain D&D to the point where it (and its tools) can become truly evergreen...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Isn't that the risk with any digital content? I rarely buy digital, I buy physical things (games, books etc)mostly when I can cause I like to collect.

Yeah, it is the risk with anything digital.