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

[Parmandur]

Yeah whatever. It's always the people who cling desperately to the illusion that they hold mature and reasonable views who are the most deluded.

Mmmm, sweet, delicious irony.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Relevant:

 

[Parmandur]

Relevant:
View attachment 121847View attachment 121848

That's a non sequiter to the main point, whether it is cool for WotC and D&D Beyond to sell two seperate products: that's still cool.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

For reference, looking through the ICv2 Charts, the top games reported over the last couple years are:

D&D: No PDFs. Digital copies sold on an app/website for $20, or $30 for compendium and a character builder
Pathfinder: $15 PDFs sold separately on their proprietary website (unless you're a subscriber prior to shipping; aka pre-order)
Shadowrun: $20 PDFs sold separately on DriveThru
Star Wars RPG: No digital products.
Starfinder: $10 PDFs sold separately on their proprietary website (unless you're a subscriber prior to shipping; aka pre-order
Vampire: PDF included free if you purchase from their webstore or a $25 PDFs sold separately on DriveThru.
Alien RPG: $13* PDF sold separately on DriveThru (formerly free with preorder) *currently discounted from $25, not sure if a sale or not.
Legend of the Five Rings : $25 PDFs sold separately on DriveThru.
Genesys: $20 PDFs sold separately on DriveThru.

Of that list, only ONLY Vampire the Masquerade has free PDFs with purchase. And that requires you to buy the book from Modiphius.

Why don't you consider the "Free with preorder" entries to be giving away a free PDF with purchase. I bet everyone on this thread arguing for not paying twice would be happy to consider preordering all the books they were interested in if a PDF were thrown in the deal. Doubly so if the PDF was sent when available and the physical book came later.

 

[Jester David]

Why don't you consider the "Free with preorder" entries to be giving away a free PDF with purchase. I bet everyone on this thread arguing for not paying twice would be happy to consider preordering all the books they were interested in if a PDF were thrown in the deal. Doubly so if the PDF was sent when available and the physical book came later.

Because time machines don’t exist, so none of them have free PDFs anymore.

You might be able to get free PDFs of upcoming accessories and expansions, but not existing books.

 

[Bohandas]

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 say to send them the black spot mateys

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Because time machines don’t exist, so none of them have free PDFs anymore.

You might be able to get free PDFs of upcoming accessories and expansions, but not existing books.

Perhaps people would like a PDF with their future purchases even though it wasn't available for their past ones? Why does it have to be all or nothing?

 

[CleverNickName]

It must be frustrating to want people to be outraged about something, when they just aren't.

 

[Nikosandros]

For reference, looking through the ICv2 Charts, the top games reported over the last couple years are:

D&D: No PDFs. Digital copies sold on an app/website for $20, or $30 for compendium and a character builder
Pathfinder: $15 PDFs sold separately on their proprietary website (unless you're a subscriber prior to shipping; aka pre-order)
Shadowrun: $20 PDFs sold separately on DriveThru
Star Wars RPG: No digital products.
Starfinder: $10 PDFs sold separately on their proprietary website (unless you're a subscriber prior to shipping; aka pre-order
Vampire: PDF included free if you purchase from their webstore or a $25 PDFs sold separately on DriveThru.
Alien RPG: $13* PDF sold separately on DriveThru (formerly free with preorder) *currently discounted from $25, not sure if a sale or not.
Legend of the Five Rings : $25 PDFs sold separately on DriveThru.
Genesys: $20 PDFs sold separately on DriveThru.

Of that list, only ONLY Vampire the Masquerade has free PDFs with purchase. And that requires you to buy the book from Modiphius.

Not that it undermines your main point, but Alien also has a free PDF if you buy from Fria Ligan.

 

[MerricB]

Because time machines don’t exist, so none of them have free PDFs anymore.

You might be able to get free PDFs of upcoming accessories and expansions, but not existing books.

The other aspect of this is that Paizo DON'T give those PDFs to people buying from their FLGS.

Paizo's Vic Wertz wrote about some of the issues with it here: paizo.com - Forums / Paizo: General Discussion: Torn Between Subscriptions and Supporting my FLGS

Cheers!