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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 7710428" data-attributes="member: 6704184">I doubt I could prove it, because the old wotc forums are gone, but there was a feature of DDI that let you see, indirectly but very accurately, how many subs there were. This was a topic of much debate at one point, but we all agreed that the number of subs was correct. we simply disagreed on what it meant, and how it compared to phb sales, and if it was enough to make up for lower phb sales, and whether high subs contributed to loss of print book sales, etc. but the sub numbers were rarely disputed. I was able to find a post with no source link claiming that the verified minimum number of subs was about 66k, in 2012, but I very clearly remember 80k being the agreed upon number by the time the playtest was happening. And both figures are minimums, because it only includes DDI subscribers with active subscriptions AND forum accounts, which not all DDI subs had. But even if we assume that 66k is the right number, and ignore the possibility of significantly more subs who didn't make forum accounts, that is, bare minimum, which means assuming every single sub was a yearly sub at an effective rate of 70$/year, 4.6 million a year. Sadly we will never know what percentage paid yearly, every three months, or monthly, and how common it was to sub for a few months, lapse, sub again a few months later, etc. And again, that 66 was in 2012, not when 4e was at it's height, and 5e seems to be much, much more popular. If they include support for older editions in the Beyond tools, I think we can easily expect a million subs or more. But even if we only get, say, twice what we know to be a minimum for 4e, ie 132k, and assume that you can do a year at the same price as before, ie 70$/yr, that is a yearly income of 9.2 million per year. If they also put out a new printing of the core books, either in paperback like the 4e essentials books, or just a glossy reprint with errata and a better index, and keep putting out books that are worth buying for the fluff, like Volo's, and successful adventure modules, and spell cards, and minis, and those things remain close to as popular as they are, they'll be in better shape than they've been since the TTRPG golden days. If they aren't already.</blockquote>

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