D&D General Hey, are we all cool with having to buy the same book twice, or what?

[MostlyHarmless42]

Wait since when can we get PDFs, at all, at any price?

Methinks he either is misusing the term "pdf" to describe it being in any sort of digital format at all. Either that or he meant cutting up his books himself and scanning the pages to make a digital copy, or finding a version of that was done for him already by some ne'er-do-well on the internet. But that of course would be crazy, I mean after all, we all know that such things clearly are easily found with a quick web search do not exist.

 

[MarkB]

I have the Beyond App on the phone and on the iPad and I don't like it all. As a matter of fact, I almost never use it. By comparison, I use Beyond on my PC on a daily basis. I read PDFs on my PC and on my iPad also on a daily basis. It's not like I need to make any further tests.

You might all find it hard to believe, but I would prefer to have PDFs in addition (non in place of) D&D Beyond.

I'm not keen on the D&D Beyond app either - but I regularly use D&D Beyond on both my tablet and phone via Google Chrome. Their browser interface does a really good job of scaling to work with various devices.

 

[Lanefan]

It's not 2000 anymore; we've mostly moved past reflexive cynicism and disdain for corporate practices.

If we have it's so we can get straight to outright loathing of them.

Considering the median age of forum posters here is over 40, I'm sure that more than a few of us are employed by soulless corporate entities.

One can work for a corporation or business while still despising their practices (and perhaps doing what little one can from within to change said practices).

But as far as egregious corporate decisions go, this doesn't even register as any kind of moral affront.

Yeah, I think we've all seen far worse than this.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Wait since when can we get PDFs, at all, at any price?

Huh? What? Where?

Well, as I said... I HAD physical copies, but NOW I only have pdfs...

 

[Mistwell]

It's been three years since D&D Beyond launched and I see many people, here and elsewhere, gladly pay for the physical copy of a release and then again for the virtual copy.

There are companies 1/100th the size of WotC that will gladly provide a virtual copy of the physical book you bought for free, and have been doing it for years (Not to mention they're generally normal PDFs that aren't tied to a service).

My question is this: is the consensus that this is fine and normal and the other publishers are wrong or should we be banging a drum about how this is a anti-consumer practice?

I am fine with it because it's not a "virtual copy" it's a complete system for using that data in a variety of ways completely different and better than the basic utility of a PDF.

Also, it's not WOTC.

 

[Mistwell]

And THIS is the essence of my problem with their service, and what I have always said is the issue. I'm fine buying the books in both a physical and digital format. I'm even fine paying a subscription fee to use the D&D Beyond service. But NOT both. Their pricing model is frankly absurd, especially if you do any sort of homebrewing or houseruling of classes/spells/rules, which all requires a subscription in order to do. I'll sooner spend hours tracking down ever changing less than legal websites that post the information online anyway or find copies of the pdfs that "certainly do not exist" than use their service if I have to basically spend both a subscription service fee AND a one time cost damn near the full price of the physical books.

That's fine, so don't buy it. DnDBeyond is doing very healthy business with those who do like it though.

And frankly? I trust the security of the "shady" websites more than the legit ones given WoTC's track record on digital services. The less people I have to let track my data and have my credit card info the better.

It's not WOTC.

It's not WOTC.

It's not WOTC.

Hello, is this thing on? DnDBeyond is not run by WOTC. It's run by Curse LLC, which is a subsidiary of Fandom, Inc. , and it used to be a subsidiary of Twitch. It's not a WOTC company. It's not a Hasbro company. Different company entirely.

 

[the Jester]

In fact, I just bought a second set of hardcovers a couple of hours ago. Now I have one for my house and one for my girlfriend's house, so I don't have to lug them back and forth.

 

[ccs]

Wait since when can we get PDFs, at all, at any price?

About a month before the book hits the shelf if you know what corner of the internet to dig around in.
Probably sooner than that, but I don't know that corner.

 

[darjr]

There are products on DnDBeyond that are available as PDF from DMsGuild, for a price, not free.

I personally would like a PDF of the core books but they don’t want to sell me one. Which is fine.

That isn’t the same argument about buying the books “twice” which is starting to aggravate.

DnDBeyond is amazing and worth it, to a great many. And they ARE adding functionality and looking at ways to be better priced.

 

[Parmandur]

There are products on DnDBeyond that are available as PDF from DMsGuild, for a price, not free.

I personally would like a PDF of the core books but they don’t want to sell me one. Which is fine.

That isn’t the same argument about buying the books “twice” which is starting to aggravate.

DnDBeyond is amazing and worth it, to a great many. And they ARE adding functionality and looking at ways to be better priced.

I mean, if they sold PDFs, too, it wouldn't make sense to complain about having to buy the book three times, either.