So thieves won't steal the code because they don't want to damage the book?
No, because they don't want to be caught defacing a book; this is more of a deterrent than palming off a loose slip of paper inside it.
These complicated schemes just keep getting more complicated. Who's going to pay for it? Hint: consumers.
Erm… obviously? They're consumers; paying for things is what they do. And it's a discount/unlock code so they're actually making a saving if they use it, I'm not sure how you imagine the customer is being inconvenienced by getting to save money when currently they don't?
Indeed. And, of course, the thieves don’t even need to damage the book beyond removing the first sticker, because they can just take a picture of the code and use it.
The point is that the sticker being removed is obvious, i.e- on the layer underneath it will say "if this code was revealed when you purchased this book, then it may have been tampered with", or something to that effect. You can then either try the code to see if it works, or return it to the store so that they can report it instead (and probably just get a new sticker sent out).
These are schemes that have been used for discount codes before, they're nothing new, except to Wizards of the Coast books (that I know of anyway).
You would be lucky if the store accepted the return and even if they did, they destroy and trash the books when content is stolen from them, then write off the loss as shrinkage. I used to work at Barnes & Noble in my youth. Check their trash once a week; you will find that they throw out books that have been compromised and at least at the one I worked at, they were thrown away into a locked dumpster to prevent people from raiding it.
The point is though, that it is generally store policy to not accept returns of items with redeemable content because there is no way to determine whether the person demanding a refund is not the thief. This is also why the staff ask you 'how you are doing' when you are looking at the books; it is specifically because the onus is on the store to protect the merchandise because they are the ones at risk. It does not stop determined thieves and each store assumes some percentage of shrinkage every year. They budget for it. That said, they will not be buying shrinkage off of some rube who bought a violated copy.
You call it "honor" as if they were supposed to and they didn't.
You are not entitled to anything because you bought a physical book.
What about all of us DDB users who bought stuff online? Where's my free hardbacks? Everyone always says "so we don't have to buy books twice". You don't HAVE to do anything. If I wanted hardbacks I would have to buy them. If you want digital stuff, you have to buy it. In my case I could head to the library, in your case you could head to the [REDACTED] or you could just add everything to your homebrew creations if we didn't want to pay.
Putting coupons/codes inside the book isn't a great solution due to the potential of theft.
And shrink rapping adds costs.
Rather, the technology exist to have a coupon print out at the register, or alternately have a code on the receipt that can be entered for a discount on a WoTC site.
Even if codes do start appearing in physical books, what about all the books people've bought before Wizards and DDB merged?
That will never happen.
Yeah, we're just F'ed. There wasn't (and as of now continues to not be) any way to prove we have a specific book in a unique way.
Bull 💩, I can prove I bought licenses for all the books in my DDB library. Where’s my tattooed treeflesh?
Lol, I was talking about the other way around.
As for digital to physical, I doubt the price reflected the cost of a bundled physical book. Especially when you consider how often DDB discounts them.
There is also the whole "that isn't what we were selling when you bought it" problem.
Even if codes do start appearing in physical books, what about all the books people've bought before Wizards and DDB merged?
That will never happen.
Yeah, we're just F'ed. There wasn't (and as of now continues to not be) any way to prove we have a specific book in a unique way.
Bull 💩, I can prove I bought licenses for all the books in my DDB library. Where’s my tattooed treeflesh?
Lol, I was talking about the other way around.
As for digital to physical, I doubt the price reflected the cost of a bundled physical book. Especially when you consider how often DDB discounts them.
There is also the whole "that isn't what we were selling when you bought it" problem.
*whining* I don’t care! I want free 💩!! Gimmegimmegimme!!! 😂😂
I could see future physical copies having something in there with a code to put in ddb so you can buy the non-compendium version of the book. Basically $10 to buy all the player options for that book. You have the physical copy to read and you now have access to all of those player options on your favorite digital toolset.
$10 is the difference between the compendium only version and the full version, so it makes sense to assume all the character options in the toolset are worth $10. That should not be considered part of the purchase of your physical copy, so you should be expected to pay that difference for the same thing online digital ddb purchasers have to pay.
This amount is cheaper than the current prices for the different character bundles are currently offered in the marketplace, but this could be the "deal" people are looking for. This is still bending over backwards to be fair to those complaining about wanting stuff for free.
Speaking as a user, why would a company that could have already implemented such marketing bundles invest millions to buy another company only to give their product away? WOTC didn't need to buy D&D Beyond to include/give away product codes in their physical books - they could have already done that. The options being discussed are items that could have already been put into practice by the publisher. Purchasing the digital marketplace didn't enable any of this.
You call it "honor" as if they were supposed to and they didn't.
You are not entitled to anything because you bought a physical book.
What about all of us DDB users who bought stuff online? Where's my free hardbacks? Everyone always says "so we don't have to buy books twice". You don't HAVE to do anything. If I wanted hardbacks I would have to buy them. If you want digital stuff, you have to buy it. In my case I could head to the library, in your case you could head to the [REDACTED] or you could just add everything to your homebrew creations if we didn't want to pay.
I generally agree with this user. The terms of sale for each and every one of our purchases detailed exactly what was to be received in the transaction. Nowhere in these purchases were additional physical/digital copies promised or bargained for. To be entitled to such retroactively now that an acquisition has occurred is outside the scope of that sale.
Does this mean that future transactions will change though? Who knows? I suspect it will remain business as usual until/unless any communication is released otherwise, and nothing more should be expected.
Just to add to Sedge and Lycaon1765p. One thing I didn't care about the tone of "honor" being used to interrogate or leverage this acquisition for "free stuff" is the fact that WotC does seem to be in fact "honoring" those who could be called - after whatever WotC ultimately does to D&D Beyond - "legacy users." The announcement to D&D Beyond's community was that existing purchases are being maintained and honored by the new ownership. That didn't have to happen. They could easily have bought the company, pulled the plug on everything and used the code and data to create and market an in house system that would "blank slate" introduce digital tools for "the next evolution of D&D".
It just seems like there's a lot of wikipedia-derived "good business" platitudes being tossed around by folks wanting the paid content floodgates opened (like, could happen, but unlikely) who don't seem to have ever paid attention to a business acquiring another business before. As Sedge and Lycaon have said and I did too elsewhere, one does not pay $147 million for a company to give away that company's product for free. WotC bought D&D Beyond because D&D Beyond was another way to make money from D&D, and not just through subscriptions.
Y'all ever look at what happened to WotC when Hasbro acquired them?
There is another company that does web based sales for other games books that offers discounts on the digital version if the hard copy is purchased, I don't own any of the D&D books in hard copy, but if D&D beyond offered something like that, I'd probably start purchasing future material as both hard copy and digital through D&D beyond. I own the legendary bundle through D&D beyond, and while I'd be pretty happy about picking up hard copy books a discount for digital materials I've purchased here, it's not something I'd expect either.
Would it tempt me into buying hard copies of a specific content that I otherwise wouldn't consider? Yes, it would.
I'm sure other's have pointed this out, but there's not a lot of incentive for WotC to do this. They would not have spent a hundred million dollars plus the costs to keep the website running such as paying employees/staff, if they didn't intend to make profits out of selling online books. The other problem would be forcing the products to be sealed, which limits browsing.
I could potentially see a combo sorta deal, buy one get one half off, or something like that. But plain free digital copies is extremely unlikely.
Speaking as a user, why would a company that could have already implemented such marketing bundles invest millions to buy another company only to give their product away? WOTC didn't need to buy D&D Beyond to include/give away product codes in their physical books - they could have already done that. The options being discussed are items that could have already been put into practice by the publisher. Purchasing the digital marketplace didn't enable any of this.
I'm sure they didn't buy DDB only to put codes in their physical books.
If they wanted to before, there are a lot of reasons that could have been holding them back that no longer apply (besides the glaring issues currently discussed):
splitting profits. DDB expected to make some money off a digital sale. WotC would have had to cut their own profits and pay DDB for each code redeemed (usually it is the other way around).
Too many voices. When DDB was under other companies, there were 3-4 parties that had a say on collaborative efforts that slowed down and complicated the whole process and any 1 of those parties could just atop the whole idea.
Infrastructure ownership. Codes need to be generated, printed, packaged, possibly shipped (if separate from books), and crosschecked when redeemed. Each of these requires some physical ownership and management of hardware/software. Who is responsible for what becomes another issue especially when one of those companies has fewer resources that could hold up the whole process.
Contrast with now, DDB staff hardly have to be involved in any of those points. WotC can just say "hey, we are doing this, we just need you to make sure permissions assign properly." No profit split, 1 voice, and 99% of the infrastructure is handled by/through WotC.
But that is only if WotC actually wanted to do it, had an idea to securely distribute codes, and still want to now that the acquisition is done (which again, I'm sure they did for bigger reasons than this).
Neither the physical book or the DDB toolset is "essential" to playing D&D. Upping the price of the book to include the DDB version, as mentioned in this and the many other threads, makes some presumption that DDB is "essential" to playing D&D, hence the integration in the market place. If you do some two tiered thing where someone can buy from a retailer either the book or the book with enhancements ... that's asking a lot from retail.
CBR or a similar outlet since the sale has been recycling its article discussing whether D&D Beyond is essential to playing D&D. It isn't. it is a great set of tools for folks who want to quickly do theorycraft experiments of the options supported in D&D ... and (and I'd say more importantly) it's awesome training wheels for new players so the DM doesn't have to focus too much on teaching character generation. But if you want to get Colville, or Mercer, or Kobold Press or any of the big third party inspired weird with the rules, you start hitting walls with DDB.
DDB is great supporting a certain "very by the book" way of playing D&D, but even WotC knows ... even puts it in regular manual font ... that it's not the only way to play D&D. At least for the remainder of 5e, to include WOTC PROJEKT D&D 2024 GOLD I just don't see WotC selling texts granting full access to DDB tools. I think that because of the prior sentence. Selling D&D Books with full DDB integration restricts play style to a DDB essential play form, whereas simply allowing DDB to be available to enhance play (for a premium, as is the case with most enhancements in all life's things) keeps the diversity of D&D playing we all know and love still in play. It's like imposing a VTT on D&D or mandating miniatures. These things are useful, and widely adopted, but not at all necessary. And I think the studio is more in line with this logic than thinking "now that we own it, let's make everyone expressly support it through all our product output from here on."
No, definitely not. Digital products =/= physical products. They require different staff, different resources, and different production stacks. They'd be taking a loss on every book if they also provided a digital code to get them on DDB for free.
Even if a company found that loss acceptable, that company would absolutely not be, in a million years, Hasbro or Wizards of the Coast. Look to the way they manage the digital and physical economies for Magic: The Gathering if you're in any doubt about that fact.
The only changes that you can expect to see in new physical product releases are advertisements for products on D&D Beyond (which you will absolutely be paying full price for).
Who started saying "giving the product away for free"?
The OP was suggesting a 50% discount. That's probably more than can be reasonably expected, but it is not the same as free.
Given that digital books have a much lower production cost**, and no inventory holding costs, a small discount is not unreasonable, and would have the potential of generating good will.
** Both physical and digital books require writers, editors, and artists, but with digital, after the first book is scanned, producing each incremental book costs pennies. (copying a .pdf is almost effortless)
You would be lucky if the store accepted the return and even if they did, they destroy and trash the books when content is stolen from them, then write off the loss as shrinkage. I used to work at Barnes & Noble in my youth. Check their trash once a week; you will find that they throw out books that have been compromised and at least at the one I worked at, they were thrown away into a locked dumpster to prevent people from raiding it.
The point is though, that it is generally store policy to not accept returns of items with redeemable content because there is no way to determine whether the person demanding a refund is not the thief. This is also why the staff ask you 'how you are doing' when you are looking at the books; it is specifically because the onus is on the store to protect the merchandise because they are the ones at risk. It does not stop determined thieves and each store assumes some percentage of shrinkage every year. They budget for it. That said, they will not be buying shrinkage off of some rube who bought a violated copy.
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Even if codes do start appearing in physical books, what about all the books people've bought before
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Yeah, we're just F'ed. There wasn't (and as of now continues to not be) any way to prove we have a specific book in a unique way.
Bull 💩, I can prove I bought licenses for all the books in my DDB library. Where’s my tattooed treeflesh?
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You call it "honor" as if they were supposed to and they didn't.
You are not entitled to anything because you bought a physical book.
What about all of us DDB users who bought stuff online? Where's my free hardbacks? Everyone always says "so we don't have to buy books twice". You don't HAVE to do anything. If I wanted hardbacks I would have to buy them. If you want digital stuff, you have to buy it. In my case I could head to the library, in your case you could head to the [REDACTED] or you could just add everything to your homebrew creations if we didn't want to pay.
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Putting coupons/codes inside the book isn't a great solution due to the potential of theft.
And shrink rapping adds costs.
Rather, the technology exist to have a coupon print out at the register, or alternately have a code on the receipt that can be entered for a discount on a WoTC site.
Lol, I was talking about the other way around.
As for digital to physical, I doubt the price reflected the cost of a bundled physical book. Especially when you consider how often DDB discounts them.
There is also the whole "that isn't what we were selling when you bought it" problem.
*whining* I don’t care! I want free 💩!! Gimmegimmegimme!!! 😂😂
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I could see future physical copies having something in there with a code to put in ddb so you can buy the non-compendium version of the book. Basically $10 to buy all the player options for that book. You have the physical copy to read and you now have access to all of those player options on your favorite digital toolset.
$10 is the difference between the compendium only version and the full version, so it makes sense to assume all the character options in the toolset are worth $10. That should not be considered part of the purchase of your physical copy, so you should be expected to pay that difference for the same thing online digital ddb purchasers have to pay.
This amount is cheaper than the current prices for the different character bundles are currently offered in the marketplace, but this could be the "deal" people are looking for. This is still bending over backwards to be fair to those complaining about wanting stuff for free.
How to: Replace DEX in AC | Jump & Suffocation stats | Spell & class effect buff system | Wild Shape effect system | Tool Proficiencies as Custom Skills | Spells at higher levels explained | Superior Fighting/Martial Adept Fix | Snippet Codes Explored - Subclasses | Snippet Math Theory | Homebrew Weapons Explained
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Speaking as a user, why would a company that could have already implemented such marketing bundles invest millions to buy another company only to give their product away? WOTC didn't need to buy D&D Beyond to include/give away product codes in their physical books - they could have already done that. The options being discussed are items that could have already been put into practice by the publisher. Purchasing the digital marketplace didn't enable any of this.
I generally agree with this user. The terms of sale for each and every one of our purchases detailed exactly what was to be received in the transaction. Nowhere in these purchases were additional physical/digital copies promised or bargained for. To be entitled to such retroactively now that an acquisition has occurred is outside the scope of that sale.
Does this mean that future transactions will change though? Who knows? I suspect it will remain business as usual until/unless any communication is released otherwise, and nothing more should be expected.
Just to add to Sedge and Lycaon1765p. One thing I didn't care about the tone of "honor" being used to interrogate or leverage this acquisition for "free stuff" is the fact that WotC does seem to be in fact "honoring" those who could be called - after whatever WotC ultimately does to D&D Beyond - "legacy users." The announcement to D&D Beyond's community was that existing purchases are being maintained and honored by the new ownership. That didn't have to happen. They could easily have bought the company, pulled the plug on everything and used the code and data to create and market an in house system that would "blank slate" introduce digital tools for "the next evolution of D&D".
It just seems like there's a lot of wikipedia-derived "good business" platitudes being tossed around by folks wanting the paid content floodgates opened (like, could happen, but unlikely) who don't seem to have ever paid attention to a business acquiring another business before. As Sedge and Lycaon have said and I did too elsewhere, one does not pay $147 million for a company to give away that company's product for free. WotC bought D&D Beyond because D&D Beyond was another way to make money from D&D, and not just through subscriptions.
Y'all ever look at what happened to WotC when Hasbro acquired them?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
There is another company that does web based sales for other games books that offers discounts on the digital version if the hard copy is purchased, I don't own any of the D&D books in hard copy, but if D&D beyond offered something like that, I'd probably start purchasing future material as both hard copy and digital through D&D beyond. I own the legendary bundle through D&D beyond, and while I'd be pretty happy about picking up hard copy books a discount for digital materials I've purchased here, it's not something I'd expect either.
Would it tempt me into buying hard copies of a specific content that I otherwise wouldn't consider? Yes, it would.
I'm sure other's have pointed this out, but there's not a lot of incentive for WotC to do this. They would not have spent a hundred million dollars plus the costs to keep the website running such as paying employees/staff, if they didn't intend to make profits out of selling online books. The other problem would be forcing the products to be sealed, which limits browsing.
I could potentially see a combo sorta deal, buy one get one half off, or something like that. But plain free digital copies is extremely unlikely.
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I'm sure they didn't buy DDB only to put codes in their physical books.
If they wanted to before, there are a lot of reasons that could have been holding them back that no longer apply (besides the glaring issues currently discussed):
Contrast with now, DDB staff hardly have to be involved in any of those points. WotC can just say "hey, we are doing this, we just need you to make sure permissions assign properly." No profit split, 1 voice, and 99% of the infrastructure is handled by/through WotC.
But that is only if WotC actually wanted to do it, had an idea to securely distribute codes, and still want to now that the acquisition is done (which again, I'm sure they did for bigger reasons than this).
Neither the physical book or the DDB toolset is "essential" to playing D&D. Upping the price of the book to include the DDB version, as mentioned in this and the many other threads, makes some presumption that DDB is "essential" to playing D&D, hence the integration in the market place. If you do some two tiered thing where someone can buy from a retailer either the book or the book with enhancements ... that's asking a lot from retail.
CBR or a similar outlet since the sale has been recycling its article discussing whether D&D Beyond is essential to playing D&D. It isn't. it is a great set of tools for folks who want to quickly do theorycraft experiments of the options supported in D&D ... and (and I'd say more importantly) it's awesome training wheels for new players so the DM doesn't have to focus too much on teaching character generation. But if you want to get Colville, or Mercer, or Kobold Press or any of the big third party inspired weird with the rules, you start hitting walls with DDB.
DDB is great supporting a certain "very by the book" way of playing D&D, but even WotC knows ... even puts it in regular manual font ... that it's not the only way to play D&D. At least for the remainder of 5e, to include WOTC PROJEKT D&D 2024 GOLD I just don't see WotC selling texts granting full access to DDB tools. I think that because of the prior sentence. Selling D&D Books with full DDB integration restricts play style to a DDB essential play form, whereas simply allowing DDB to be available to enhance play (for a premium, as is the case with most enhancements in all life's things) keeps the diversity of D&D playing we all know and love still in play. It's like imposing a VTT on D&D or mandating miniatures. These things are useful, and widely adopted, but not at all necessary. And I think the studio is more in line with this logic than thinking "now that we own it, let's make everyone expressly support it through all our product output from here on."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
No, definitely not. Digital products =/= physical products. They require different staff, different resources, and different production stacks. They'd be taking a loss on every book if they also provided a digital code to get them on DDB for free.
Even if a company found that loss acceptable, that company would absolutely not be, in a million years, Hasbro or Wizards of the Coast. Look to the way they manage the digital and physical economies for Magic: The Gathering if you're in any doubt about that fact.
The only changes that you can expect to see in new physical product releases are advertisements for products on D&D Beyond (which you will absolutely be paying full price for).
Who started saying "giving the product away for free"?
The OP was suggesting a 50% discount. That's probably more than can be reasonably expected, but it is not the same as free.
Given that digital books have a much lower production cost**, and no inventory holding costs, a small discount is not unreasonable, and would have the potential of generating good will.
** Both physical and digital books require writers, editors, and artists, but with digital, after the first book is scanned, producing each incremental book costs pennies. (copying a .pdf is almost effortless)
Except the digital book is not a .pdf, it’s a web file.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I'm pretty sure copying a web file doesn't take much effort or cost either. Come to think of it, the whole process is likely automated.