They will not be able to do anything to DndBeyond, but they need to start becoming aware via complaints of this kind of practice.
Whether you liked this feature or not, this was part of what made DndBeyond dominate the VTT market.
Now they cut features to make more money. This type of scummy customer milking practice that adds NO value, ESPECIALLY after forcing other competitors OUT of the market and becoming the de-facto official option. This particular reply will probably be taken down, but if you're interested on adding noise to this issue please do.
I would never claim to be an expert in antitrust law - I studied it a bit back in law school, but it is such an absurdly complicated field of law that, unless one actually practices antitrust, expertise is nearly unreachable.
That said, I can say with an extremely high degree of confidence this is not an antitrust issue and is not something the FTC would care about. This is a change to a pricing model and not some kind of effort to promote unfair competition or which would otherwise implicate antitrust. In fact, if you read the thread, a whole lot of the posts boil down to “this will drive us into the hands of your competitors” - which, definitionally, is the opposite of an antitrust issue.
Feel free to make your opinions known here - staff is clearly monitoring this thread. And you can always take to social media if you want a different platform. But let us not waste the government’s time on something that does not fall within their purview.
I agree that this is 100% not antitrust, but the FTC do a lot of consumer-protection stuff beyond that.
That said, this is not something within the scope of their duties, and even if the mess of the discounts for a la carte purchases technically is, it's way too penny-ante for them to bother with. (Especially since they're making it possible to get them, it's just inconvenient. I'm pretty sure they just forgot them when scoping the marketplace rebuild.)
So, stepping outside the US, the dominance of D&D may be questionable, but if it is as dominant in Europe as it is in the US, then there are risks that could be applied there if a competent lawyer had some good arguments relating to the state of consumer interest laws and the internet there.
However, that could result in withdrawal from that market if pressed, harming the larger goals.
Would I like them to make the option available again? Yes.
But Hasbro only answers to me as a shareholder, and most players are not shareholders (most shareholders are large funds). I will make my tiny complaint, but I doubt it will sway much.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
This is kind of a peripheral question, but is there anything you can say about bundles? Are they gone, or coming back or any news or planned announcements on that front?
And thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this. It's really good to see someone from Wizards actively trying to help, or at least, listen.
It's literally no problem at all; if I could split myself to answer every question about this I would, but I also think I'd try to get more sleep about it.
As I understand it, bundles are gone gone. I don't have any insight if they're coming back or being replaced with something else.
I would simply like to know if other changes to the site, and functionality as is, will from now on be preceded by two week notice before change implementation?
or simply will you give us a heads up of changes before you make them in the future?
I am doing my best to make sure this will be the case.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her) You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On| CM Hat Off Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5]. Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
I think removing the piecemeal purchase options makes the experience of DDB's marketplace unsatisfactory. I don't think a company removing an a la carte menu constitutes extortion.
I also think belittling D&D/WotC staff's participation in this thread and claiming them complicit in the injury you're claiming is a bit much. It's unreasonable to expect a representative to do more than develop an understanding of your feelings and experience as a consumer, and report that back to the company. I'd say WotC/DDB staff is doing a better job at engaging in dialogue with the community than they have when they've made mistakes in the recent past, in that they're actually engaging as opposed to the silence the community received for months after the OGL fiasco (they're different scenarios, one WotC was caught via a leak and likely had gone into crisis mode, here a decision to change the marketplace has occurred and people attached to the old market are understandably upset). A community manager should be seen as someone there to listen to you, not your rhetorical punching bag.
i'm a little surprised i haven't seen a "let them eat cereal" reference in fourteen pages. some people are choosing not to spend money, but they're doing it without a clever hashtag. missed opportunity, really.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
NOW, however, they have become THE most popular and de-facto official D&D Digital platform
No, it isn't "de facto" anything. DDB was purchased by Hasbro so it is literally the official platform, but in addition, alternatives like Roll20 etc. still exist and are just as viable
Also, this
now after I spent all these years reliably using this service to hoard character options, now they scratch that and I have to buy the whole book.
makes no sense. You haven't lost your existing purchases. Your "hoard" remains completely intact. You just have fewer ways to add to it
As for this
And you employees who don't speak out about this and hide it in cutesy "haha the store options have changed!" messages are complicit.
Yikes, my dude. Just yikes. Especially considering the responses the one employee who is in these threads has been giving you
Maybe step away for a minute and take a breath rather than continuing to double/triple down and fall further down this rabbit hole you've found yourself in
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I think removing the piecemeal purchase options makes the experience of DDB's marketplace unsatisfactory. I don't think a company removing an a la carte menu constitutes extortion.
I also think belittling D&D/WotC staff's participation in this thread and claiming them complicit in the injury you're claiming is a bit much. It's unreasonable to expect a representative to do more than develop an understanding of your feelings and experience as a consumer, and report that back to the company. I'd say WotC/DDB staff is doing a better job at engaging in dialogue with the community than they have when they've made mistakes in the recent past, in that they're actually engaging as opposed to the silence the community received for months after the OGL fiasco (they're different scenarios, one WotC was caught via a leak and likely had gone into crisis mode, here a decision to change the marketplace has occurred and people attached to the old market are understandably upset). A community manager should be seen as someone there to listen to you, not your rhetorical punching bag.
[REDACTED]
This product is worse now.
How should I move my business elsewhere? How do I take my purchases under the previous model and move to a different company's model that I prefer?
If I bought books at one store I can buy books at the next store and use them with my previous books.
This isn't the case for digital products and consumers have no protections.
I'm expected to start buying complete books, instead of the single options that lured me in the first place, if I want to use the product I already purchased to be compatible with future expansions of the same game.
This is a recurring theme of modern digital products and unless we start complaining to politicians there will be no legislation to curtail this behavior.
This whole thing is just so anti-consumer. How is removing ways for people to spend money on specific items they are willing to spend money on supposed to encourage us to spend any more money when we can't buy what we want anymore?
I was so happy to spend money on the product I wanted but now I can't so I just don't want to spend money on your product anymore, it's so insane.
I was happy of just purchasing individual items such as subclasses and race options. But now I have to buy the whole book just to even gain access to it. Sometimes we don't want to get the whole product and made it easier for new players to get into the game such as myself at the time.
Due to spending small amounts and enjoy the content that I purchase, gave me enough courage to purchase whole books and even bundles. This will not be health in the short or long term. This might kill the platform in the foreseeable future. I do hope that the people who made the changes realise how bad it is as they don't seem to care about a long term health business. Just money quickly.
Knowing what's good for businesses, this isn't the way.
What makes this the worst for me is the absolute non-response that was offered.
"It's no longer possible". Explain why.
If it has to do with the new marketplace being programmed differently, I don't believe for one second you couldn't hire someone to program ala carte functionality into the new system.
If it has to do with wanting people to just buy the whole books that's shortsighted and selfish. Taking away my options doesn't make me more likely to buy the bigger alternatives, it makes me less likely to purchase from you at all.
I was wondering why I couldn't buy individual items anymore. I am saddened by this change. I have bought a few books on this website but I also have spent substantially more on individual subclass purchases for one shots and other fun ideas I wanted to mess with. I even ended up buying books after the fact after I bought a few subclasses/spells.
No heads up is a scummy move.
I will not be buying whole books for just a few things.
But seriously, noticed the cart at the bottom of order page in the account details tab where you can view what you had bought on site and expected it might apply a-la-carte PHB class bundle towards a digital only book and nothing.
At least figure out how to backend this to at least allow a better way to apply some form of a discount to the account user.
if you want to pick & mix rules n’shit from 2014 to 2024 (or the reverse) and you want those things to work on this site then you have to purchase the whole of each publication you want for 2024.
after which point 2014 becomes obsolete because a new punter is unlikely to purchase a whole out of date publication for an older class/spell/rule.
if you want to pick & mix rules n’shit from 2014 to 2024 (or the reverse) and you want those things to work on this site then you have to purchase the whole of each publication you want for 2024.
after which point 2014 becomes obsolete because a new punter is unlikely to purchase a whole out of date publication for an older class/spell/rule.
Legacy addresses this just fine, full disclosure I am not a fan of the legacy program, but it is/was(?) a fair and effective way to stop further purchases while not force you to eliminate owned content.
I do agree this seems to be just another brick in the walled garden.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I would like a-carte purchases returned. I already own the books but used the character creator to create my characters because it was more convenient that way both for me and the DM's I ran with. So I purchased what I needed at that time,bits here and there. But now what I love has been taken away from me due to this chance. Please revert it. Also some kind soul in the official discord in the feedback section is deleting comments about this and warning the people that post them. That needs to be stopped as well.
no one buys the whole books because they arent worth the money at all but hey guess it stopped being about the consumer awhile ago so im not to surprised
no one buys the whole books because they arent worth the money at all but hey guess it stopped being about the consumer awhile ago so im not to surprised
At least some of them are. And this is a for profit company offering a luxury product, not some charity or producer/distributer of necessities.
It is always about the consumer. And when they price badly, they are misreading the market at their own peril.
As this is one of the primary threads for marketplace-related discussion, I'll drop this here as well: there's an issue with PayPal not letting folks use it to pay for things right now. The devs are aware and investigating, and I'll provide an update when I know more.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her) You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On| CM Hat Off Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5]. Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
I agree that this is 100% not antitrust, but the FTC do a lot of consumer-protection stuff beyond that.
That said, this is not something within the scope of their duties, and even if the mess of the discounts for a la carte purchases technically is, it's way too penny-ante for them to bother with. (Especially since they're making it possible to get them, it's just inconvenient. I'm pretty sure they just forgot them when scoping the marketplace rebuild.)
So, stepping outside the US, the dominance of D&D may be questionable, but if it is as dominant in Europe as it is in the US, then there are risks that could be applied there if a competent lawyer had some good arguments relating to the state of consumer interest laws and the internet there.
However, that could result in withdrawal from that market if pressed, harming the larger goals.
Would I like them to make the option available again? Yes.
But Hasbro only answers to me as a shareholder, and most players are not shareholders (most shareholders are large funds). I will make my tiny complaint, but I doubt it will sway much.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
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D&D StaffI am doing my best to make sure this will be the case.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her)
You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On | CM Hat Off
Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5].
Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
Useful Links: Site Rules & Guidelines | D&D Educator Resources | Change Your Nickname | Submit a Support Ticket
I think removing the piecemeal purchase options makes the experience of DDB's marketplace unsatisfactory. I don't think a company removing an a la carte menu constitutes extortion.
I also think belittling D&D/WotC staff's participation in this thread and claiming them complicit in the injury you're claiming is a bit much. It's unreasonable to expect a representative to do more than develop an understanding of your feelings and experience as a consumer, and report that back to the company. I'd say WotC/DDB staff is doing a better job at engaging in dialogue with the community than they have when they've made mistakes in the recent past, in that they're actually engaging as opposed to the silence the community received for months after the OGL fiasco (they're different scenarios, one WotC was caught via a leak and likely had gone into crisis mode, here a decision to change the marketplace has occurred and people attached to the old market are understandably upset). A community manager should be seen as someone there to listen to you, not your rhetorical punching bag.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
i'm a little surprised i haven't seen a "let them eat cereal" reference in fourteen pages. some people are choosing not to spend money, but they're doing it without a clever hashtag. missed opportunity, really.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
No, it isn't "de facto" anything. DDB was purchased by Hasbro so it is literally the official platform, but in addition, alternatives like Roll20 etc. still exist and are just as viable
Also, this
makes no sense. You haven't lost your existing purchases. Your "hoard" remains completely intact. You just have fewer ways to add to it
As for this
Yikes, my dude. Just yikes. Especially considering the responses the one employee who is in these threads has been giving you
Maybe step away for a minute and take a breath rather than continuing to double/triple down and fall further down this rabbit hole you've found yourself in
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
[REDACTED]
This product is worse now.
How should I move my business elsewhere? How do I take my purchases under the previous model and move to a different company's model that I prefer?
If I bought books at one store I can buy books at the next store and use them with my previous books.
This isn't the case for digital products and consumers have no protections.
I'm expected to start buying complete books, instead of the single options that lured me in the first place, if I want to use the product I already purchased to be compatible with future expansions of the same game.
This is a recurring theme of modern digital products and unless we start complaining to politicians there will be no legislation to curtail this behavior.
This whole thing is just so anti-consumer. How is removing ways for people to spend money on specific items they are willing to spend money on supposed to encourage us to spend any more money when we can't buy what we want anymore?
I was so happy to spend money on the product I wanted but now I can't so I just don't want to spend money on your product anymore, it's so insane.
(apologies for last blank post)
I was happy of just purchasing individual items such as subclasses and race options. But now I have to buy the whole book just to even gain access to it. Sometimes we don't want to get the whole product and made it easier for new players to get into the game such as myself at the time.
Due to spending small amounts and enjoy the content that I purchase, gave me enough courage to purchase whole books and even bundles. This will not be health in the short or long term. This might kill the platform in the foreseeable future. I do hope that the people who made the changes realise how bad it is as they don't seem to care about a long term health business. Just money quickly.
Knowing what's good for businesses, this isn't the way.
G Slayer105
What makes this the worst for me is the absolute non-response that was offered.
"It's no longer possible". Explain why.
If it has to do with the new marketplace being programmed differently, I don't believe for one second you couldn't hire someone to program ala carte functionality into the new system.
If it has to do with wanting people to just buy the whole books that's shortsighted and selfish. Taking away my options doesn't make me more likely to buy the bigger alternatives, it makes me less likely to purchase from you at all.
I was wondering why I couldn't buy individual items anymore. I am saddened by this change. I have bought a few books on this website but I also have spent substantially more on individual subclass purchases for one shots and other fun ideas I wanted to mess with. I even ended up buying books after the fact after I bought a few subclasses/spells.
No heads up is a scummy move.
I will not be buying whole books for just a few things.
Just figured it out, fastest way to kill a wizard is to take their toys away.
I do not write this to inflame but to mearly comment on the irony.
But seriously, noticed the cart at the bottom of order page in the account details tab where you can view what you had bought on site and expected it might apply a-la-carte PHB class bundle towards a digital only book and nothing.
At least figure out how to backend this to at least allow a better way to apply some form of a discount to the account user.
It’s engineered obsolescence for 2014
blah blah blah backwards compatible blah blah blah
if you want to pick & mix rules n’shit from 2014 to 2024 (or the reverse) and you want those things to work on this site then you have to purchase the whole of each publication you want for 2024.
after which point 2014 becomes obsolete because a new punter is unlikely to purchase a whole out of date publication for an older class/spell/rule.
Legacy addresses this just fine, full disclosure I am not a fan of the legacy program, but it is/was(?) a fair and effective way to stop further purchases while not force you to eliminate owned content.
I do agree this seems to be just another brick in the walled garden.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
It feels a bit preemptive to be phasing out older content for OneDnD when it feels like people are barely even considering it so far.
I've seen some mild interest and looking over of the playtests but little to no people excited to fully adopt it.
As far as I'm aware it's not even done testing.
I would like a-carte purchases returned. I already own the books but used the character creator to create my characters because it was more convenient that way both for me and the DM's I ran with. So I purchased what I needed at that time,bits here and there. But now what I love has been taken away from me due to this chance. Please revert it. Also some kind soul in the official discord in the feedback section is deleting comments about this and warning the people that post them. That needs to be stopped as well.
no one buys the whole books because they arent worth the money at all but hey guess it stopped being about the consumer awhile ago so im not to surprised
At least some of them are. And this is a for profit company offering a luxury product, not some charity or producer/distributer of necessities.
It is always about the consumer. And when they price badly, they are misreading the market at their own peril.
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D&D StaffAs this is one of the primary threads for marketplace-related discussion, I'll drop this here as well: there's an issue with PayPal not letting folks use it to pay for things right now. The devs are aware and investigating, and I'll provide an update when I know more.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her)
You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On | CM Hat Off
Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5].
Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
Useful Links: Site Rules & Guidelines | D&D Educator Resources | Change Your Nickname | Submit a Support Ticket
