D&D General D&D Beyond's Users Online Over Last Year

[Morrus]

The graph below was sent to me by Alexander Fredstie who has been logging D&D Beyond's online user count over the last year.

The graph shows the average number of registered users online in any given 15 minutes each week (not total users per week) out of DDB's total 20,604,564 users at the time of writing. There's a period between Nov 17th and Mar 7th he didn't log (represented by the missing part of the graph).

The big spikes correspond to the release of the D&D 2024 core rulebooks (Player's Handbook on September 17th 2024 and the Dungeon Master's Guide on November 12th 2024; the Monster Manual on February 18th 2025 was in the 'gap' period, so if there was a spike then it didn't get logged).

 

[Burnside]

Kinda supports the general vibe I'm getting that the new era isn't doing all that well. However, the story will be much clearer if we get a full two years of data.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Kinda supports the general vibe I'm getting that the new era isn't doing all that well. However, the story will be much clearer if we get a full two years of data.

More data is always nice but we cannot make any claims about the new core books out of this since we do not have similar data from before. It would be very interesting though to see the annual profile, particularly if it repeats on an annual basis.

 

[mamba]

we cannot make any claims about the new core books out of this since we do not have similar data from before

we have about April 2024 up to the release of the new PHB, and it had higher user numbers than we have now…

A falling trendline is never good, regardless of how much or how little data you have before that section. Will be interesting to see where the line goes from here, I doubt this year’s release schedule is doing them any favors when it comes to this graph, maybe the starter set will help

 

[Scribe]

Yeah, that matches expectation.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

we have about April 2024 up to the release of the new PHB, and it had higher user numbers than we have now…

A falling trendline is never good, regardless of how much or how little data you have before that section. Will be interesting to see where the line goes from here

But is that a long-term trend or a summer trend? How high was that peak that might have been present at the Zero date. It is interesting data, but I am not at all sure what it is telling us.
I presume that this includes users reading the forums, reading articles, using tools and the like.
It is interesting that the user count at the end of the first dataset is very similar to the start point of the next data set. Whatever was going on in between?

 

[J-H]

July to July, it looks like they went from 2500 users down to about 1900. A 20%+ drop is not healthy.
I think it has to do with 5.24 and the botched (forced) rollout. I suppose they have more internal data.

 

[Sulicius]

A few questions!

1. How is this data tracked?
2. Can we see similar trends on other online platforms used for D&D?
3. Do we have numbers from before the release of the revision?

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

What does that big lead-up between July 2024 and October 2024 correspond to? Where the users jumped from the low 2000s to the high 3000s.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

When were the new classes from the Players Handbook released onto D&D Beyond?