D&D (2024) Early access to 2024 books in DnDBeyond is tied to subscription tier.

[mamba]

I can now do a digital-only preorder, get them early, and support my game store, and share with my players.

the ‘share with my players’ is the subscription, that is not new. So the digital only also gives you early access? At least that part is then a positive change…

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Thanks to @MerricB in discord in the Mastering Dungeons channel.

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I'll just start the free Master Trial right before the 3rd of September.

 

[dave2008]

requiring a subscription for it, in the past preordering it was all it took

Again, why is that crappy? I may not like it on a personal level (I don't have a paid subscription), but simply waiting 2 weeks doesn't seem like a big deal to me. It seems really normal to give perks, like early access, for a paid subscription.

 

[dave2008]

You don't need to get one of those to get early access. Those are for other stuff.

I was talking about the digital dragon art book. It appears to only be available if you get the physical / digital bundle.

 

[dave2008]

It's hard to tell if the digital perks are included with the digital only bundle. I suspect they are, because the Product Details section for the digital only bundle looks like this, with all those digital perks listed as "New Features":

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OK, I preordered each digitally individually. So maybe I need to cancel those and get them as a digital bundle? I'll give it a try I guess.

Thank you!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Again, why is that crappy? I may not like it on a personal level (I don't have a paid subscription), but simply waiting 2 weeks doesn't seem like a big deal to me. It seems really normal to give perks, like early access, for a paid subscription.

It's pretty rude and crappy because they'll be getting access before other people who paid for the same content are getting it, which is a bad double-standard. That's crappy whoever does it, in whatever context. It's just a little bit of greed on the behalf of Beyond. I did predict them doing this well over a year ago, note, so I can't say I'm surprised. Even you seem to agree that it's crappy but for some reason you seem to think it being "normal" means it's not crappy? That's a little confusing.

That is a pretty standard part of the tier strategy, and is a typical hook. You see plenty of the same with streaming and video games. Eventually you realize that it's not that you're getting Early Access, everyone else is just getting Delayed Access.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not here to yuck your yum, but it's a reasonable concern for folks, especially anyone on a limited or fixed income.

Yeah the entire idea with these modern subscription services is that they start out extremely good value, and give you more and more stuff, and then once their customer base is large enough, and ideally they've eliminated or conquered any competition (see how Xbox Game Pass effectively conquered and annexed EA's game pass and possibly other ones as well), then they will start doing three things:

1) Increasing prices significantly on the previously good-value tiers.

2) Offering a cheaper tier, but that has significantly degraded quality, and probably has significant advertising.

3) Hard-enforcing soft restrictions that that they previously turned a blind eye to, or adding new restrictions and barriers to usage in an attempt to force more people to subscribe.

Sometimes this works out for them, sometimes it doesn't. I ditched Amazon Prime because they decided to add adverts and try and charge not to have them. I haven't missed it. I'll probably re-sub for a month once The Boys is all out, but the main thing Amazon have proven to me is that I don't actually need Prime for anything, and that the slightly faster deliveries on some stuff weren't really that helpful, and that I wasn't getting any value from the subsidiary services like Prime Music.

 

[mamba]

Again, why is that crappy?

because it is a new restriction they did not have in the past. I am no fan of new hurdles, that is all

 

[TiQuinn]

The tiers. People pay more for earlier access. That’s crappy.

How is that any different from any company or designer with a Patreon who gives early access as a benefit to supporters?

 

[wedgeski]

No sign of the bundle on the UK Wizards store. I presume you're expected to add each physical+digital pair individually.

 

[DarkCrisis]

They keep pushing DDB more and more and people will keep making excuses for them.