PSA: The marketplace got rid of individual purchases! (Contact support to get discount on prior individual purchases.)

The reality of a la carte purchasing is that a $1.99 purchase is not a big deal; Wizards probably looked at the amount of money they were getting off of a la carte purchase and the price to implement them in their new store and went "nah".

Quote from Athamantis_Vesta >>

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

  - the OGL issue really came down to Wizards saying "Hey, we would like to change our license so people will not use it for racism"... hardly the worst thing in the world for them to have done, especially after they just had a very real-world example of someone trying to use their game to spread hate.   This is not some sympathetic harm that seems major, but in reality is really only going to hurt players who want to buy racist products--this is something that directly effects many people on this forum by eliminating of their purchase options. 

Thanks for the breakdown of the piecemeal system; people seem not to get how it worked.

As far as the OGL, there's Wizards' excuse and there's reality. Had they updated the OGL to bar the use of their license for racism, etc then sure. But you don't need to take a massive chunk of every developer's pocketbook to do that. So... the goal was money, the excuse was community protection. Which honestly, I found gross.

"25 percent royalty on revenue from any OGL creator earning above $750,000 per year in sales; the right for WotC to use any content created under the license for any purpose; an apparent ban on the virtual tabletop simulators that helped kindle a tabletop gaming boom during pandemic lockdowns; and the de-authorization of anything made according to the previous OGL."

That wasn't racism driven, that was greed driven.

 Seems just as easy to argue that the 3pp’s were the ones being greedy. They get to profit off work derived from someone else and piggyback on 50 years of brand recognition without paying for the privilege. WotC deciding they shouldn’t get a free ride seems, well, not greedy, but asking them to pay their way seems fair.

And it wasn’t every 3pp. There’s only a handful who hit that 750k cut off.

With the ogl and this, everyone keeps calling it greed, but seriously, they aren’t running a charity here. It’s a for-profit, publicly traded business. They have a legal obligation to produce value for their shareholders, and what’s more, they have bills and salaries to pay. And those expenses keep going up. Why are people shocked that they want, actually no, they need, to make money? I don’t like losing piecemeal options, but it’s not greedy; it’s just running a business. 

You say this as if whatever it would cost to implement it wouldn't pay for itself almost immediately. Clearly there's a market for this, look at the level of outcry when they took it away.

Quote from Xalthu >>

Quote from Athamantis_Vesta >>

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

  - the OGL issue really came down to Wizards saying "Hey, we would like to change our license so people will not use it for racism"... hardly the worst thing in the world for them to have done, especially after they just had a very real-world example of someone trying to use their game to spread hate.   This is not some sympathetic harm that seems major, but in reality is really only going to hurt players who want to buy racist products--this is something that directly effects many people on this forum by eliminating of their purchase options. 

Thanks for the breakdown of the piecemeal system; people seem not to get how it worked.

As far as the OGL, there's Wizards' excuse and there's reality. Had they updated the OGL to bar the use of their license for racism, etc then sure. But you don't need to take a massive chunk of every developer's pocketbook to do that. So... the goal was money, the excuse was community protection. Which honestly, I found gross.

"25 percent royalty on revenue from any OGL creator earning above $750,000 per year in sales; the right for WotC to use any content created under the license for any purpose; an apparent ban on the virtual tabletop simulators that helped kindle a tabletop gaming boom during pandemic lockdowns; and the de-authorization of anything made according to the previous OGL."

That wasn't racism driven, that was greed driven.

 Seems just as easy to argue that the 3pp’s were the ones being greedy. They get to profit off work derived from someone else and piggyback on 50 years of brand recognition without paying for the privilege. WotC deciding they shouldn’t get a free ride seems, well, not greedy, but asking them to pay their way seems fair.

And it wasn’t every 3pp. There’s only a handful who hit that 750k cut off.

With the ogl and this, everyone keeps calling it greed, but seriously, they aren’t running a charity here. It’s a for-profit, publicly traded business. They have a legal obligation to produce value for their shareholders, and what’s more, they have bills and salaries to pay. And those expenses keep going up. Why are people shocked that they want, actually no, they need, to make money? I don’t like losing piecemeal options, but it’s not greedy; it’s just running a business. 

 A business that wants to keep making money for it's shareholders needs to continue to be the best option for what they're providing. If you eat too much of your own tail in the process of trying to make the number go up you can end up losing more money than the stunt gains.

The fact of the matter is that a book-driven system is one of the easiest things in the world to pirate. Not only that, this is a game you can play entirely agnostic of any kind of system if you really wanted to. This is a property that needs more than ever to be the most attractive and flexible version of what it's trying to do.

I cannot afford to buy whole books. I really dislike this idea of getting rid of a la carte purchases. It will see less money from me.

It would be a compromise I think if they charged for specific elements according to demand. For example, Eberron is $30, but it's the artificer class that is arguably the most popular thing, but the class itself was super cheap. They could easily charge $20 just for the class itself, which in turn would incentivize people to justify "oh well it's just $10 more for all this other stuff, I think I'll buy the whole book".

But getting rid of a la carte purchases forces people to buy whole books, which I often cannot afford. Incentivizing people to buy the book/bundle is so much better than forcing people to buy it.

Quote from Karmattack >>

You say this as if whatever it would cost to implement it wouldn't pay for itself almost immediately. Clearly there's a market for this, look at the level of outcry when they took it away.

It takes a lot of small purchases to be significant, and it's not actually a small cost. Let's say that 95% of the people currently paying $1.99 for a single item instead buy nothing, and 5% will pay $29.99. That's a net loss of $0.50 per. Now, assume it takes $5,000 in developer time to add the feature. They need 10,000 sales to break even.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from Karmattack >>

You say this as if whatever it would cost to implement it wouldn't pay for itself almost immediately. Clearly there's a market for this, look at the level of outcry when they took it away.

It takes a lot of small purchases to be significant, and it's not actually a small cost. Let's say that 95% of the people currently paying $1.99 for a single item instead buy nothing, and 5% will pay $29.99. That's a net loss of $0.50 per. Now, assume it takes $5,000 in developer time to add the feature. They need 10,000 sales to break even.

Their problem is that they need to publish books that have higher useful to vaguely interesting ratios. 

10,000 sales would be over all a la carte purchases, too, not just any given one of them since it should not need to be separately programmed for each individual item. That is not a big number at all. If they only make 10,000 sales of any given full book worldwide, it would likely be considered a major failure even if they made a profit on such low sales. 

Quote from kayakingpoodle >>

 If it was about money they could have simply raised the price for piece meal purchases, this is about control not money.

 It is most certainly about money. Hasbro is a publicly traded corporation, everything they do is about money. The only question is what their theory of value was, and there's really only two likely possibilities

1. The product was unprofitable or marginal in its own right.
2. Removing the product might cause people to shift to a more expensive product.

When a company kills a product some people love, internet conspiracy theories focus on #2, but in reality it's almost always #1.

Why are you assuming a la carte purchases are all single items?  A lot are, sure, but I expect many will be multiple items to build a new character.  Looking back most of my purchases were $6-12, a couple were even $30+ as I bought race\class\spell bundles from multiple books, and I can't be the only one to have done this.

Quote from DCTrekkie >>

Why are you assuming a la carte purchases are all single items?  A lot are, sure, but I expect many will be multiple items to build a new character.  Looking back most of my purchases were $6-12, a couple were even $30+ as I bought race\class\spell bundles from multiple books, and I can't be the only one to have done this.

 Rest assured, you're not.

Why did I buy content here? Because I liked being able to buy exactly what I did or did not want for my characters. When books went on sale, I was able to buy the rest of it if I chose to.

I have access to ALL 5e content, the same way anyone with the internet does, for free. I still chose to come here recently (last month) and purchase the monsters from Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage for $6. I will never, ever run a 'megadungeon' game, but I wanted the monsters so I bought them. Again, this is despite having access to the content for free elsewhere. Had the only option been to purchase the entire book, DDB would have received $0 instead of $6.

Now DDB has strongly suggested to me that I can keep my money. Doesn't take much twisting of my arm to direct me towards not spending money I don't have to. If my players manage to level up in Foundry without needing DDB to do it, I'll be canceling my subscription and ignoring this site entirely. I don't have much money, and DDB just raised the price of being a DM to include full books only.

Message received, DDB. Message received.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from kayakingpoodle >>

 If it was about money they could have simply raised the price for piece meal purchases, this is about control not money.

 It is most certainly about money. Hasbro is a publicly traded corporation, everything they do is about money. The only question is what their theory of value was, and there's really only two likely possibilities

1. The product was unprofitable or marginal in its own right.
2. Removing the product might cause people to shift to a more expensive product.

When a company kills a product some people love, internet conspiracy theories focus on #2, but in reality it's almost always #1.

The problem with (2) is that it is just as likely to be an exec either having heard the cost of adding a la carte to the new sales interface and not looking at or even considering the lost sales, simply assuming them immaterial or having dollar signs in their eyes blindly assuming that without a la carte there will be a massive increase in sales of complete books, someone with an ideological bent, incensed that people are even able to by a la carte when complete books are not being purchased or any combination of the above. 

Hasbro has its share of failures along with successes and as TSR proved, this is a tough industry to maintain. 

In other words, (2) does not equate to the assumptions they are basing the decision on are correct ones.

When I first got started in D&D, I chose Beyond at the time because it was tailored towards in-person play, and the character creation tool was pretty easy and intuitive. I checked out Roll20 a little bit too, but I did not need the VTT and it was a bit of a hassle to set things up, so I stuck with Beyond.

While à la carte purchases is not the main selling point for me personally, it is still a selling point that gave Beyond a more user friendly and welcoming atmosphere. It gave a sense that anyone can play D&D. You are a broke ass college student eating ramen? No worries! A character option literally costs about the same as a cup of noodles or a box of mac & cheese.

Every day it seems I recognize this website and its server less and less. No individual purchases sucks and dropping it unannounced sucks even more. These decisions are making me genuinely question why I even use my account here over other providers at this point.

I’m really unhappy about the a la carte option being removed. DnD historically has been a cheap game to play - just paper, pen, and a set of dice. DnDBeyond has so much potential to keep that “accessible to all” feel, but so much of what WOTC is doing just feels like they’re not only more interested in money than the community of people who play, but that they’re actively trying to undermine the community. 

Quote from NuxMuscatis >>

I’m really unhappy about the a la carte option being removed. DnD historically has been a cheap game to play - just paper, pen, and a set of dice. DnDBeyond has so much potential to keep that “accessible to all” feel, but so much of what WOTC is doing just feels like they’re not only more interested in money than the community of people who play, but that they’re actively trying to undermine the community. 

That isn't actually true. The 1e books were quite pricy. And a la carte was never an option before now because the tech wasn't there. That does not mean this is a good business decision on their part, but is nevertheless the history.

Loosing single purchases is really stupid, was gonna buy the death cleric but its gone and im not spending money on 30$ for it. Oh well friend has the dms guide irl will just do it the old fashion way.

Quote from LaTiaJacquise >>

Hey folks! I am going to make a wider post about this, but as the most active thread on the forums about the marketplace changes, it seemed prudent to start here.

Regarding partial purchases: if you want to buy a book that you made a la carte/individual purchases from, you must contact customer service to receive your discount. The marketplace article has been updated to reflect this.

I have a feeling they aren't going to back this up soon, especially since it has been radio silence from someone other than you in this forum. We know they will only consider changing it back once it hits their bottom line.

At the time I write this there are 24 pages on just this discussion alone, and the same conversation is happening on other parts of the forum as well as other online circles. It is near fully unanimous in the negative view of WotC and DDB for this change. Yet they've said nothing in the past 2 weeks, not even acknowledge they've heard us.

If WoTC / Hasbro refuse to back pedal on the marketplace change, then what they should certainly do is make sure all future purchases of physical books, whether that be at a FLGS, Amazon, or other third party, they include a redemption code for the digital content bundle. I only buy alt covers, which can only be done at a FLGS. I am not given the liberty of the option to tack on the digital content for $10 more and that certainly does not encourage me to buy a bundle direct from DDB. Have us provide a proof of purchase for redemption code for those who've bought books after the change. And all future books be shipped in some wrapping so that a single use coupon code can be included inside to get the digital content. College textbooks do that as an option, and honestly I'd be fine with that. What I'm not okay with is dropping $60 on a physical book and then another $30-40 to use just one subclass or magic item.

But until there is some sort of change, instead of getting periodic $5-$10 purchases from the vast majority of us, they'll get none. Thousands of people spending $5 adds to more than a few hundred spending $30. Add in the loss of subscriptions and they'll be in the red fast. We aren't suggesting changes, we're promising boycott.

I tried to look up the numbers but it looks like they sell about a million books at the big box stores alone a year.

If they only make 10 bucks a book thats about 10 million a year in book sales.

How much do you think they make in piecemeal purchases at DDB? I personally do not think they make a million a year in sales here. Maybe half as much in total counting memberships and sales.

They know the numbers though and have a plan to make more money.

Quote from AuroraMoon >>

 
take monsters of the multiverse:
it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).

That's not how the piecemeal worked. You'd only pay up to the total cost of the book. When you bought enough of the individual species that section became fully paid for and the rest was included. If you bought enough to hit the $29 (or however much the full digital source cost) that was it and you got the rest. If the book ever went on sale, it would be the discounted price minus what you already spent. It never went above the original cost.