No, I mean what I actually said, not the abbreviated chunk that you have assumed. Every editions change they buried it all. Sure that included forums like Gleemax and the 4e ones. They discontinued the working 4e subscriptions for books and character builders when they could have just left it up and gathered the income stream. Picture being mid-campaign and suddenly all of your digital support goes away.
It wasn't at all as abrupt as you describe it here, and that was for a relatively tiny and undeveloped service in comparison to DDB. Apples and oranges.
Heck, when 2024 came out they even started putting 5.5e info on 2014 character sheets until there was a public outcry, and IIRC they still are showing 2024 for tooltips on 2014 material so you need to doublecheck everything.
Yeah, there were a few hiccups with roll-out of the the updated materials, some folks got very upset the way they do on the Internet, and within weeks WotC adjusted (erroneously, IMO). At no point was this anything more than a minor inconvenience, despite the a few folks getting hyperbolic. At no point was DDB not working, with new books and old. We're talking tooltips.
Every single edition change under WotC they have fully removed all support for the immediately proceeding edition. Probably to encourage people to move to their new edition, but while we can only guess at their reasoning, historically they have a 100% track record so it's not reasonable to expect anything else when eventually they switch.
Again, you're really comparing apples and oranges. Never before has digital been the cornerstone of their business the way DDB is, both in fact and in all their planning; past attempts were experiments and side hustles, at best. They also no longer use the editions paradigm, despite players desperately clinging to it, to the extent they hd to begrudgingly call the 2024 update "5.5e" even while reiterating that they no longer think in terms of discrete editions.
It's pretty clear you're uncomfortable with subscription models, but trust me that the millions of folks using DDB are fully aware of the pros and cons, and are spending our money accordingly. Every investment is a cost/benefit analysis, and for me this one isn't even close. Sure, something catastrophic could happen and I could have made a mistake (though the value I have
already got out of DDB has more than paid for itself, IMO, even if it magically went away tomorrow). But this is the same as with any other investment. I mean, banks could fail again, but that doesn't mean I am stuffing all my money into my mattress.
I pay 6 bucks a month and get all my materials at a massive discount. In return, I get to share all of my stuff with all of my players, I get integrated character sheets, virtual tabletop, dice, encounter builder, character builder, homebrew creation and storage...the list goes on. I can access it all anytime, anywhere. I don't need shelves of physical books taking up all my space while mostly just sitting there. There is reduced environmental impact. For me, the value is obvious, but that's just for me. You obviously have a different perspective. That's fine.
