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)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

re: This change being made solely for software architecture reasons

As I have banged on about since January, they never sold Book of Many Things content a la carte, while it was still available through the old store. It was five months before the switchover came, and despite repeated requests and questions on the forum, they never made that option available, nor even meaningfully addressed it.

This was a strategic decision. Maybe it'll get them a bunch more money, maybe not. I'd bet not. But if all that was holding them back was having to build/adapt the feature to the new platform, that didn't stop them from offering the Book of Many Things content in the interim.

I was checking regularly, because I wanted to purchase the player-facing content for my players. so that's a few bucks they're out as a result.

 

[Azzy]

I might as well start buying things for Foundry instead of D&D Beyond once that option opens up.

 

[Clint_L]

I suspect the main issue is that the option wasn't used a whole lot and added complexity and operating expenses (same thing, really) that made it not worthwhile. If it was a big earner, they'd find a way to make it work.

Probably the consideration behind the decision was something like:

1. How much is it costing to maintain this?
2. How much revenue is it producing, both directly and indirectly (e.g. through people who eventually buy the entire book after making some a la carte purchases)?
3. How much revenue is it costing us (e.g. through people who might have bought the entire book but instead just bought a la carte)?
4. Will there be a PR hit from discontinuing it? What will that cost us?

I didn't make big use of the feature, and haven't used it at all in recent years, but I thought it was cool that it was available. However, I don't think the change is going to be that impactful. Probably the impact on sales one way or the other is pretty negligible, and maintaining it was a PITA.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why would you ask me about your preferences?

It was more a statement I should have made than a question. I apologize.

 

[cbwjm]

We sell a lot of dice to irregular walk-ins too

I feel like, at the very least, most casual players are buying their own set of dice. It was one of the first things everyone in my group, who hadn't played any RPG before, did after starting the game.

 

[Fandabidozi]

 

[Clint_L]

A la carte means that you can buy just the bits you want, not the whole thing. In this context, it refers to previously being able to just buy selected content from books on DDB, without having to buy the entire book.

 

[ECMO3]

I own most of the physical books (not quite all), but I own very few entire books on DNDBeyond.

Generally when I buy something A La Carte it is because I have the book but one of my players wants it on the character he is building on DNDBeyond and wants to use DNDB for the character sheet, so I will pay a couple bucks to purchase it there.

It really sucks that I will need to stop this and purchase an entire book I already own to get a race or feat.

 

[UVAtom]

I suspect the main issue is that the option wasn't used a whole lot and added complexity and operating expenses (same thing, really) that made it not worthwhile. If it was a big earner, they'd find a way to make it work.

I disagree with the assumption that it wasn’t being used a whole lot. Every forum and thread I’ve seen on this subject is full of people posting “this is how I made most of my purchases.”

 

[MoonSong]

Kinda.

As a "YouTuber" you can choose to monetize your videos and have YouTube play ads with your content. Or not. I mean, that's part of how these folks make money! They don't get to choose the specific ads YouTube shows, but they do get to opt-in or opt-out of the ads altogether.

Not anymore. Last year they started to place ads on all videos, not just the monetized ones.