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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9896877" data-attributes="member: 18">In the very long term I do think releasing content exclusively on Beyond will probably bite WotC in the arse.The trouble is it's quite a complicated equation from a business perspective. Some exclusive content can drive people to your platform, but you also risk kind of creating a walled garden to the point where people outside that garden (even if they're members but not happening to log into it) aren't aware that you're adding things, so you can end up reaching fewer and fewer people with your "exclusive content", and instead of driving traffic to the platform, it can become an opportunity cost, where, if you'd released it more generally, it would benefit your product by bringing people to or back to the product, but by making it a walled garden exclusive, it only reaches a smaller number of people who are already engaging with your product and that gives you pretty limited value.Whether one regards it as enshittification or not is almost immaterial, because unless it's handled very well, it's not a good idea. Given that I'm a paid subscriber to Beyond (albeit I've set it to not renew) but wasn't even aware they were adding further exclusive content, I think we're probably well into the "adding stuff to the walled garden that only people already active there will even potentially notice" phase of things.Re: PDFs, I get what they're trying to do re: avoiding piracy, but I think they're stuck in the past in the way a handful of Japanese videogame developers are - that small number of companies (sadly including Vanillaware) won't develop for PC because they're utterly paranoid about piracy on PC. But the cold reality is, they'd sell insanely more copies on PC, to the point where piracy would be a total irrelevance.Likewise with PDFs. Would 5E be pirated more if PDFs existed? Sure. Would this decrease 5E's overall sales at all? I very much doubt it. In fact, I suggest there is a small but significant market of people who don't like to buy things on Beyond (esp. as Beyond has made no promises at all re: what will happen when it shuts down, as it inevitably will, probably surprisingly and at relatively short notice as the DDI did), but who would absolutely buy PDFs. There are also people who would simply buy all three formats, if WotC want to triple-dip! That's $$$ y'aaaaaall. Free money.I mean it's 2026. PDFs are not like, hot and cool. A lot of people genuinely would rather use an app, especially younger people (but not exclusively them). I don't think any significant or measurable number of people who would be willing to use Beyond, who currently use Beyond, would decide "Oh, I can get a pirated PDF (which being real, are out there anyway) so I won't use Beyond!" And of people who do use Beyond, I don't think you're suddenly going to see a bunch of users go "OMG I can buy PDFs now, I'm ending my subscription!!!!!" because like, you can access your Beyond books when your sub ends right now! So they'd already have ended it! And as noted, I think a small but significant number of people will buy the PDFs, making more money for WotC.Why are they stuck on no PDFs?Probably because someone high up in WotC corporate, above D&D entirely quite likely, or multiple someones (echo chamber, groupthink, etc.) is stuck on the idea/meme of PDFs causing piracy or hurting subscriptions or the like, even though that's irrational or unsupported by any kind of recent market survey, so it just isn't a "politically acceptable" idea to bring up. And one day, that personally will probably leave WotC, and unless it's groupthink, then bam, a month later WotC will suddenly be selling PDFs.(At the current rate I suspect 6E coming out and 5E getting PDFs because previous editions get PDFs is more likely though.)</blockquote>

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