This is an absolutely ridiculous move and I am strongly considering cancelling my subscription. I did it for the OGL and came back because they corrected but they seem determined to make DnD less accessible.
They didn’t do this on a whim; they did this because someone had numbers that piecemeal was a less effective revenue stream than only offering the books. They’re not going alter course at this point just because a couple dozen people sound off online, and this simply is not going to attract the interest to pull or sustain much more attention than what we’re seeing right now. Maybe if they start losing out on sales they’ll reconsider, but they clearly have some reason to believe they have at least better than even odds of things going the other way and nobody here is going to have enough info to gainsay that assessment by the numbers.
A D&D staff member literally asked us to share our feedback, friend. I believe that’s what we
It would be extremely silly to not voice our opinions on this. We are the customers and our feedback should matter to a company. Look at the OGL debacle and say we shouldn't have said anything.
Ridiculous to sit back and not say anything about a bad greedy practice. I don't care about their profit margins, this is a scummy tactic and I won't be quiet about it.
Before everyone gets all twisted up on this lets give them a better chance than a week to change things.
They may have bigger ideas for the customers and have just not rolled them out yet. Or if they see sales did not make predicted levels they might just bring back piecemeal purchases.
I personally do not like them because I always feel like I am missing something. But that is just me.
But I can see the individual prices going up a touch just to get you to buy the who book faster. Or even a limit on how much a la cart purchases you could make from each book, something like a quarter to a third of the book.
Using D&DBeyond is the big seller around here though. Not the books, people can buy those anyplace, people come here because of the character generation and the complete integration of the books into it. Trusting if not knowing that what they do through it is correct. Even the homebrew option should be able to be trusted as creating something by the rules when you use it. Now that mapping and such are being offered that should follow the same idea also. If you use the stuff here it should be close to tournament ready.
They didn’t do this on a whim; they did this because someone had numbers that piecemeal was a less effective revenue stream than only offering the books. They’re not going alter course at this point just because a couple dozen people sound off online, and this simply is not going to attract the interest to pull or sustain much more attention than what we’re seeing right now. Maybe if they start losing out on sales they’ll reconsider, but they clearly have some reason to believe they have at least better than even odds of things going the other way and nobody here is going to have enough info to gainsay that assessment by the numbers.
I suspect it's not even that they expect to make more money directly this way, as much as adding it into the probably off-the-shelf marketplace backend was going to take something like two months and $large, for a relatively trivial amount of money, plus increased ongoing support costs, and they decided it wasn't worth it. I don't have their numbers, of course, but a la carte buying is likely only used by a small percentage of the users -- most people don't know about it, and the vast majority of people just play with their GM's books. Yes, many of the people here do it, but there's no evidence they're typical.
Between that and credit-card fees eating a lot of the small purchases, I can easily see why they might decide to ditch it in favor of getting centralized purchasing of digital-physical bundles, which is going to net them more cash. (Why not update the existing code to sell the bundles? If it's anything like the character builder code appears to be, that's probably a technical nightmare.)
That said, they still botched the rollout something fierce. Just announcing it was going away in advance would give them a temporary bump in sales, and it's also badly integrated into the site.
They didn’t do this on a whim; they did this because someone had numbers that piecemeal was a less effective revenue stream than only offering the books. They’re not going alter course at this point just because a couple dozen people sound off online, and this simply is not going to attract the interest to pull or sustain much more attention than what we’re seeing right now. Maybe if they start losing out on sales they’ll reconsider, but they clearly have some reason to believe they have at least better than even odds of things going the other way and nobody here is going to have enough info to gainsay that assessment by the numbers.
I suspect it's not even that they expect to make more money directly this way, as much as adding it into the probably off-the-shelf marketplace backend was going to take something like two months and $large, for a relatively trivial amount of money, plus increased ongoing support costs, and they decided it wasn't worth it. I don't have their numbers, of course, but a la carte buying is likely only used by a small percentage of the users -- most people don't know about it, and the vast majority of people just play with their GM's books. Yes, many of the people here do it, but there's no evidence they're typical.
Between that and credit-card fees eating a lot of the small purchases, I can easily see why they might decide to ditch it in favor of getting centralized purchasing of digital-physical bundles, which is going to net them more cash. (Why not update the existing code to sell the bundles? If it's anything like the character builder code appears to be, that's probably a technical nightmare.)
That said, they still botched the rollout something fierce. Just announcing it was going away in advance would give them a temporary bump in sales, and it's also badly integrated into the site.
What if this is the start of the legacy transition? Still what gets me is that in the physical and digital bundle, they price the digital at 10$. Now, rather than continuing to push digital at 30$ and removing a-la-carte, they might start selling digital full content at 14.99$?
What if this is the start of the legacy transition?
It's something they want online for the rollout for the new books, so they can push selling the bundles.
No idea what you mean by "the legacy transition".
Still what gets me is that in the physical and digital bundle, they price the digital at 10$. Now, rather than continuing to push digital at 30$ and removing a-la-carte, they might start selling digital full content at 14.99$?
Is that not reasonable?
Seems very unlikely.
The reason they can sell the digital at only $10 above the physical without really hurting their margins is because the margins for a physical book directly from them are much higher, because there's no intermediaries taking a cut. When you buy it from the game store, there's both a distributor and the store who need to make money on the deal. (Amazon and big chain stores are probably getting it straight from Hasbro.)
As a now forever DM who learned 5e via DDB I can't help but feel this will encourage players to rely on a DM to have not only content, but also a master subscription enabling them to share content. Few casual players will want to buy PHB, DMG (might want to go oathbreaker), and loads of other digital books based on their PC, plus a new book every time their DM gives them a new item. Playing Curse of Strahd? Either the DM has that master subscription or anyone who wants to play a lineage or take a background needs to buy the book individually.
As a player I was willing, happy even, to drop $1.99 every time my DM handed out a treasure out of the newest book. Dreaming up a new character? I'll drop two bucks on autognome on a whim. But a casual player will likely balk at dropping $60 because their DM gave them an item out of the new Vecna adventure.
So that leaves it to the DM. Player wants to play a goblin? They can no longer pick that out of Mordenkainen. Prepare for a lot of "Hey DM can you buy...?"
I like DnDBeyond. I (currently) have a master subscription. I think DDB can be a useful tool for new and experienced players. But this will likely scare both players and DMs alike away from committing to the platform.
What if this is the start of the legacy transition?
It's something they want online for the rollout for the new books, so they can push selling the bundles.
No idea what you mean by "the legacy transition".
Still what gets me is that in the physical and digital bundle, they price the digital at 10$. Now, rather than continuing to push digital at 30$ and removing a-la-carte, they might start selling digital full content at 14.99$?
Is that not reasonable?
Seems very unlikely.
The reason they can sell the digital at only $10 above the physical without really hurting their margins is because the margins for a physical book directly from them are much higher, because there's no intermediaries taking a cut. When you buy it from the game store, there's both a distributor and the store who need to make money on the deal. (Amazon and big chain stores are probably getting it straight from Hasbro.)
Don’t care about the physical, digital could use a price reduction to at least lessen the sting of the lost of the a-la-catre.
As for Legacy Transition, the coin is the fact that this is the start of DDB beginning to convert the 2014 CORE Three ( PHB, DMG,& MM), plus various other content that is rules antithetical to newly released content and rules. Read how they classified the reason for the transition of previous content into legacy and not wonder if this is how the process starts?
New player here, my first campaign and I have two characters, until now I was delighted with the dyd beyond app and the option to buy a la carte. Today I was very disappointed, and I'm about to go back to pencil and paper and simply ask my master to borrow his books. Which means zero expenses for me.
As a now forever DM who learned 5e via DDB I can't help but feel this will encourage players to rely on a DM to have not only content, but also a master subscription enabling them to share content. Few casual players will want to buy PHB, DMG (might want to go oathbreaker), and loads of other digital books based on their PC, plus a new book every time their DM gives them a new item. Playing Curse of Strahd? Either the DM has that master subscription or anyone who wants to play a lineage or take a background needs to buy the book individually.
As a player I was willing, happy even, to drop $1.99 every time my DM handed out a treasure out of the newest book. Dreaming up a new character? I'll drop two bucks on autognome on a whim. But a casual player will likely balk at dropping $60 because their DM gave them an item out of the new Vecna adventure.
So that leaves it to the DM. Player wants to play a goblin? They can no longer pick that out of Mordenkainen. Prepare for a lot of "Hey DM can you buy...?"
I like DnDBeyond. I (currently) have a master subscription. I think DDB can be a useful tool for new and experienced players. But this will likely scare both players and DMs alike away from committing to the platform.
couldnt a DM and players simply during session 0 have a little discussion with eachother as to what books they own and take that into consideration when giving out items or what not??
honestly think that if a player is hell bent on playing a specific species or class without considering what they have available (purchased for themselves) or what the DM has already purchased and able to share, then the cost should be the players - since its them thats unwilling to compromise or at the very least play within their means and invest in a game they wish to play (hopefully on more then one occasion) now there may be some generous people out there but they should not be expected to be generous - a DM sharing content is one thing, a DM buying content for others is a separate beast and possibly dependant on who actually whats that specific content in the campaign.
as a side note piece-meal purchases were nice but was mainly a financial convenience that i personally never used without the intention of purchasing the full book, and can see the possibility that using piece-meal to avoid buying a book in full could potentially cost dndbeyond money - hypothetically say it costs dndbeyond $20 to be able to sell a single copy of a book, they in return sell it to the customer for $40 (a potential $20 profit), now if the customer only spends say $6 to cherry pick out what they want creates a potential lose of $14 per book
Buying things Individually was LITERALLY THE ONLY Reason to use DNDBeyond over any of the 3rd party sites. Like Roll20 or Foundry. Going entirely back to 3rd party Sites now, have fun eating your profit loss over this WotC <3
Out of curiosity for the people who only bought piecemeal, how often were you buying things here? Once a month, twice a month, every two months? And how much did you typically spend at a time?
At least once a month and the cost of a beer off the shelf.
It is the only way I have been purchasing the whole books
I look at the price and for a hobby of mine I cannot justify the price of the whole book. I have a lot of other competing priorities in life that take precedence over an online copy of a D&D book.
But I can justify the cost of a beer to treat myself some down time. For me the a la carte purchases fell into this level of expenditure. Can I skip a beer and buy part of the book to use now? I can justify that to myself (granted I’ll have the beer anyway - it’s downtime), but I can’t justify the full purchase right at that moment.
These piecemeal purchases overtime then brought down the price for the remainder to the point where I could justify buying the final part.
I will not be buying the content again as part of a whole book (I don’t buy it a second time on the VTT I use either) and I will not jump through hoops to contact customer service to get them to deduct my existing purchases off the ticketed price of the remainder.
I simply will not purchase the full books.
Exactly the same with me, I was dropping a fairly reliable $10 or so a month on random piecemeal stuff based on if I was suddenly in the mood to use different monsters or give a different magic item. When I’d chipped away at enough of the book price that that price was sub $20 I’d then grab the rest. Built up a pretty respectable library like that. Now I need to justify the full price of a book which is much harder to do when times are tough enough anyway
What if this is the start of the legacy transition?
It's something they want online for the rollout for the new books, so they can push selling the bundles.
No idea what you mean by "the legacy transition".
Still what gets me is that in the physical and digital bundle, they price the digital at 10$. Now, rather than continuing to push digital at 30$ and removing a-la-carte, they might start selling digital full content at 14.99$?
Is that not reasonable?
Seems very unlikely.
The reason they can sell the digital at only $10 above the physical without really hurting their margins is because the margins for a physical book directly from them are much higher, because there's no intermediaries taking a cut. When you buy it from the game store, there's both a distributor and the store who need to make money on the deal. (Amazon and big chain stores are probably getting it straight from Hasbro.)
While their margin on phisical books is higher for direct sales they are not higher than digital content, which is why a reduction in price for digital is an not unrealistic wish. That being said, the stupidly high price of the digital books is unlikely to change because...why would it?
The funny thing is, this move may backfire becasue they are trying to sell bundles, but if you don't need the digital content you can still buy the paper book on Amazon for a fraction of the price. This is exactly my plan for Vecna: Eve of Ruin. I want that book, but don't need the digital content becasue I am never going to run it. Still, I was considering pre-ordering the bundle just so I can support DND Beyond, as I have with a few others since bundles have come into being. Now I am just going to buy the physical book on Amazon and save myself ~$30.
This is incorrect. Major announcements about general site practices or D&D/Wizards wide policy updates or changes never allow commenting. This includes both announcements players want and ones they might be less thrilled about - the lack of comments on this article is a content-neutral neutral policy, not part of some conspiracy.
What if this is the start of the legacy transition?
It's something they want online for the rollout for the new books, so they can push selling the bundles.
No idea what you mean by "the legacy transition".
As for Legacy Transition, the coin is the fact that this is the start of DDB beginning to convert the 2014 CORE Three ( PHB, DMG,& MM), plus various other content that is rules antithetical to newly released content and rules. Read how they classified the reason for the transition of previous content into legacy and not wonder if this is how the process starts?
Replacing the marketplace is only connected to discontinuing sales of the old core books and putting the new, extremely mechanically similar, ones on sale in that they want it to happen in time for the rollout of the new ones, because it's a big marketing event, and they want it up and running, and all the bugs shaken out, before everyone comes clamoring for their new books.
Since the previous books have been rolled over to legacy just by "Book X is on sale, Book Y is now legacy", I'm not sure why you think this is a Portentous Event for the inevitable transition. (The core rules update is going to be a bigger deal than that, since they need to roll out character builder updates to make it work, but the marketplace is largely orthogonal to that transition.)
An absolutely bone-headed move by WotC Management. As so many have commented, this was a massive selling point of D&D Beyond. You would think that having recovered from the OGL debacle (depending on your point of view), you would think WotC would avoid any further damage to the trust of their consumers. Someone is now holding their beer...
The ONLY way I would've considered this appropriate action is when the 2024 books would be released. They could've ended piecemeal for 5th Edition BUT introduced it for One D&D - with the new edition incoming and those interested in purchasing 5th Edition content potentially waning, I think this would have been an acceptable compromise for most users - people inevitably move onto the next big thing. However, this SHOULD have been done with a prior announcement, not sprung on the loyal customers that have been using and supporting this website and the team since it's inception and through the Natural One that was the OGL saga.
As someone who is hyped to see the next edition and try out the VTT when it releases, this is a really despicable and dishounorable move
(* Insert Adam Bradford saying "look how they massacred my boy" picture here *)
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
I've spent hundreds of dollars purchasing things ala carte on DDB. I'm sorry, but I will notpurchase a $50 book when I'm only interested in a single section of it. Even if I could afford to buy every whole book as it comes out, I would not. Instead of earning $2-15 from me every time I want something, you'll now be earning $0.
I may purchase physical copies of the 5.5 core books from my local game store. But only after they've been vetted by reliable third party sources. I will not purchase anything else through DDB until they bring back ala carte purchasing. & honestly, I kinda miss the pen & paper. So while I'll still use what I've previously purchased as a resource, I'll probably stop actively using DDB for games as well.
hypothetically say it costs dndbeyond $20 to be able to sell a single copy of a book, they in return sell it to the customer for $40 (a potential $20 profit), now if the customer only spends say $6 to cherry pick out what they want creates a potential lose of $14 per book
you know what's worse than a $14 loss? a 100% loss from people not buying the book at all
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
This is an absolutely ridiculous move and I am strongly considering cancelling my subscription. I did it for the OGL and came back because they corrected but they seem determined to make DnD less accessible.
It would be extremely silly to not voice our opinions on this. We are the customers and our feedback should matter to a company. Look at the OGL debacle and say we shouldn't have said anything.
Ridiculous to sit back and not say anything about a bad greedy practice. I don't care about their profit margins, this is a scummy tactic and I won't be quiet about it.
Before everyone gets all twisted up on this lets give them a better chance than a week to change things.
They may have bigger ideas for the customers and have just not rolled them out yet. Or if they see sales did not make predicted levels they might just bring back piecemeal purchases.
I personally do not like them because I always feel like I am missing something. But that is just me.
But I can see the individual prices going up a touch just to get you to buy the who book faster. Or even a limit on how much a la cart purchases you could make from each book, something like a quarter to a third of the book.
Using D&DBeyond is the big seller around here though. Not the books, people can buy those anyplace, people come here because of the character generation and the complete integration of the books into it. Trusting if not knowing that what they do through it is correct.
Even the homebrew option should be able to be trusted as creating something by the rules when you use it.
Now that mapping and such are being offered that should follow the same idea also.
If you use the stuff here it should be close to tournament ready.
I suspect it's not even that they expect to make more money directly this way, as much as adding it into the probably off-the-shelf marketplace backend was going to take something like two months and $large, for a relatively trivial amount of money, plus increased ongoing support costs, and they decided it wasn't worth it. I don't have their numbers, of course, but a la carte buying is likely only used by a small percentage of the users -- most people don't know about it, and the vast majority of people just play with their GM's books. Yes, many of the people here do it, but there's no evidence they're typical.
Between that and credit-card fees eating a lot of the small purchases, I can easily see why they might decide to ditch it in favor of getting centralized purchasing of digital-physical bundles, which is going to net them more cash. (Why not update the existing code to sell the bundles? If it's anything like the character builder code appears to be, that's probably a technical nightmare.)
That said, they still botched the rollout something fierce. Just announcing it was going away in advance would give them a temporary bump in sales, and it's also badly integrated into the site.
What if this is the start of the legacy transition? Still what gets me is that in the physical and digital bundle, they price the digital at 10$. Now, rather than continuing to push digital at 30$ and removing a-la-carte, they might start selling digital full content at 14.99$?
Is that not reasonable?
It's something they want online for the rollout for the new books, so they can push selling the bundles.
No idea what you mean by "the legacy transition".
Seems very unlikely.
The reason they can sell the digital at only $10 above the physical without really hurting their margins is because the margins for a physical book directly from them are much higher, because there's no intermediaries taking a cut. When you buy it from the game store, there's both a distributor and the store who need to make money on the deal. (Amazon and big chain stores are probably getting it straight from Hasbro.)
As a now forever DM who learned 5e via DDB I can't help but feel this will encourage players to rely on a DM to have not only content, but also a master subscription enabling them to share content. Few casual players will want to buy PHB, DMG (might want to go oathbreaker), and loads of other digital books based on their PC, plus a new book every time their DM gives them a new item. Playing Curse of Strahd? Either the DM has that master subscription or anyone who wants to play a lineage or take a background needs to buy the book individually.
As a player I was willing, happy even, to drop $1.99 every time my DM handed out a treasure out of the newest book. Dreaming up a new character? I'll drop two bucks on autognome on a whim. But a casual player will likely balk at dropping $60 because their DM gave them an item out of the new Vecna adventure.
So that leaves it to the DM. Player wants to play a goblin? They can no longer pick that out of Mordenkainen. Prepare for a lot of "Hey DM can you buy...?"
I like DnDBeyond. I (currently) have a master subscription. I think DDB can be a useful tool for new and experienced players. But this will likely scare both players and DMs alike away from committing to the platform.
Don’t care about the physical, digital could use a price reduction to at least lessen the sting of the lost of the a-la-catre.
As for Legacy Transition, the coin is the fact that this is the start of DDB beginning to convert the 2014 CORE Three ( PHB, DMG,& MM), plus various other content that is rules antithetical to newly released content and rules.
Read how they classified the reason for the transition of previous content into legacy and not wonder if this is how the process starts?
New player here, my first campaign and I have two characters, until now I was delighted with the dyd beyond app and the option to buy a la carte. Today I was very disappointed, and I'm about to go back to pencil and paper and simply ask my master to borrow his books. Which means zero expenses for me.
couldnt a DM and players simply during session 0 have a little discussion with eachother as to what books they own and take that into consideration when giving out items or what not??
honestly think that if a player is hell bent on playing a specific species or class without considering what they have available (purchased for themselves) or what the DM has already purchased and able to share, then the cost should be the players - since its them thats unwilling to compromise or at the very least play within their means and invest in a game they wish to play (hopefully on more then one occasion)
now there may be some generous people out there but they should not be expected to be generous - a DM sharing content is one thing, a DM buying content for others is a separate beast and possibly dependant on who actually whats that specific content in the campaign.
as a side note
piece-meal purchases were nice but was mainly a financial convenience that i personally never used without the intention of purchasing the full book, and can see the possibility that using piece-meal to avoid buying a book in full could potentially cost dndbeyond money - hypothetically say it costs dndbeyond $20 to be able to sell a single copy of a book, they in return sell it to the customer for $40 (a potential $20 profit), now if the customer only spends say $6 to cherry pick out what they want creates a potential lose of $14 per book
[REDACTED]
Buying things Individually was LITERALLY THE ONLY Reason to use DNDBeyond over any of the 3rd party sites. Like Roll20 or Foundry. Going entirely back to 3rd party Sites now, have fun eating your profit loss over this WotC <3
Also anyone else notice that https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1709-d-d-beyond-marketplace-redesign-see-whats-new-here is the 1st and only "News Post" they have released that doesn't allow commenting! I wonder why....
"Not getting cut into bloody littles slices, That's the key to a sound plan."
So we will just migrate to Foundry or Roll20...
That would just kill the use of the website completely. Its one of the main features of the hobby, sharing your books.
That is just too stupid to actually happen, its already locked behind a subscription
Exactly the same with me, I was dropping a fairly reliable $10 or so a month on random piecemeal stuff based on if I was suddenly in the mood to use different monsters or give a different magic item. When I’d chipped away at enough of the book price that that price was sub $20 I’d then grab the rest. Built up a pretty respectable library like that. Now I need to justify the full price of a book which is much harder to do when times are tough enough anyway
While their margin on phisical books is higher for direct sales they are not higher than digital content, which is why a reduction in price for digital is an not unrealistic wish. That being said, the stupidly high price of the digital books is unlikely to change because...why would it?
The funny thing is, this move may backfire becasue they are trying to sell bundles, but if you don't need the digital content you can still buy the paper book on Amazon for a fraction of the price. This is exactly my plan for Vecna: Eve of Ruin. I want that book, but don't need the digital content becasue I am never going to run it. Still, I was considering pre-ordering the bundle just so I can support DND Beyond, as I have with a few others since bundles have come into being. Now I am just going to buy the physical book on Amazon and save myself ~$30.
This is incorrect. Major announcements about general site practices or D&D/Wizards wide policy updates or changes never allow commenting. This includes both announcements players want and ones they might be less thrilled about - the lack of comments on this article is a content-neutral neutral policy, not part of some conspiracy.
Replacing the marketplace is only connected to discontinuing sales of the old core books and putting the new, extremely mechanically similar, ones on sale in that they want it to happen in time for the rollout of the new ones, because it's a big marketing event, and they want it up and running, and all the bugs shaken out, before everyone comes clamoring for their new books.
Since the previous books have been rolled over to legacy just by "Book X is on sale, Book Y is now legacy", I'm not sure why you think this is a Portentous Event for the inevitable transition. (The core rules update is going to be a bigger deal than that, since they need to roll out character builder updates to make it work, but the marketplace is largely orthogonal to that transition.)
An absolutely bone-headed move by WotC Management. As so many have commented, this was a massive selling point of D&D Beyond. You would think that having recovered from the OGL debacle (depending on your point of view), you would think WotC would avoid any further damage to the trust of their consumers. Someone is now holding their beer...
The ONLY way I would've considered this appropriate action is when the 2024 books would be released. They could've ended piecemeal for 5th Edition BUT introduced it for One D&D - with the new edition incoming and those interested in purchasing 5th Edition content potentially waning, I think this would have been an acceptable compromise for most users - people inevitably move onto the next big thing. However, this SHOULD have been done with a prior announcement, not sprung on the loyal customers that have been using and supporting this website and the team since it's inception and through the Natural One that was the OGL saga.
As someone who is hyped to see the next edition and try out the VTT when it releases, this is a really despicable and dishounorable move
(* Insert Adam Bradford saying "look how they massacred my boy" picture here *)
#Open D&D
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
I've spent hundreds of dollars purchasing things ala carte on DDB. I'm sorry, but I will not purchase a $50 book when I'm only interested in a single section of it. Even if I could afford to buy every whole book as it comes out, I would not. Instead of earning $2-15 from me every time I want something, you'll now be earning $0.
I may purchase physical copies of the 5.5 core books from my local game store. But only after they've been vetted by reliable third party sources. I will not purchase anything else through DDB until they bring back ala carte purchasing. & honestly, I kinda miss the pen & paper. So while I'll still use what I've previously purchased as a resource, I'll probably stop actively using DDB for games as well.
you know what's worse than a $14 loss? a 100% loss from people not buying the book at all