This is probably close to it. They have said something like 20% of the player base (DMs, usually) does the vast majority of the purchasing.
And many of those DMs are going to stop purchasing anything due to this insane change. You'd think it would be common sense that if you were going to pander to the playerbase that is doing the vast majority of the purchases then you shouldn't anger those players in the process. Honestly they need to just... stop. Seriously, they need to stop trying to pull these changes out of nowhere. They have utterly destroyed the trust of the fanbase. Players purchased things for DnD because they LOVED it and wanted to support it, not because they had to. I will likely continue to play DnD with my friends, but not a single one of us will ever spend a penny on it.
I am a software developer, and the bulk of the work I do is in websites these days (mostly back-end stuff in PHP, SQL-ish databases, and increasingly clients wanting to integrate ChatGPT into everything because it's the latest fad).
Ah, mind if I got a professional opinion from you then? I think what would DnDbeyond could have done to make more money is to set up essentially their own DnD-centered Etsy style marketplace. Sure a lot of art websites claim to make concept art for DnD characters, but then you ask them to make something like a simic hybrid and suddenly they have no idea what you're talking about. So, if DnDbeyond had it's own area for that, I would want to go there because it tells me the artists would KNOW DANG GOOD AND WELL what the style, theme, and topic was. Dice. Minis. Digital models. Character concept art. All things DnD. And just like the other sites, DnDbeyond would get a small cut.
Do you think that would have been possible? Or perhaps at least a better idea than the nonsense they're doing now?
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".
Ever heard of micro-transactions? Wanna guess how well those models actually work? Well, there's a reason Fortnite stays in 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.
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.
If it was about money they could have simply raised the price for piece meal purchases, this is about control not money.
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
Agree that this would have been a pretty good middle ground, if only they'd communicated and weighed up the options first.
This is likely why the change was done so quickly and without a word beforehand: They didn't want to negotiate, they don't actually care what we think.
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.
Wizards spend $143 million for D&D Beyond. They wouldn't have done that if it wasn't making at least multiple millions. However, I would not be surprised if D&D Beyond functions on a whales and minnows model and the people using the a la carte options are minnows.
Why are you assuming categories like that? This is not a CCG. It does not function on luck, lockboxes, or any of the things that usually fit with a whales and minnows model.
Now, if you are arguing that their marketing department is looking at it that way, that is just another way of saying that they are making blind assumptions.
It probably does work on something close to a power-law distribution. You have the long tail who buy little or nothing, the people who buy one book, the people who buy a couple of books and a master subscription, all the way up to the ones who buy everything. Piecemeal buying probably smoothed out the graph some, but the bulk of it is whole-book purchases.
While it doesn't have the unlimited spend possibility of the typical "free" game, it's not dissimilar. (Though I bet "three books and a master subscription" is a significant bump in the graph.)
This is probably close to it. They have said something like 20% of the player base (DMs, usually) does the vast majority of the purchasing.
But this would be by design, no? At a table, players and the DM, you cannot expect everyone to buy everything because that literally doesn't make sense? If this was the case, hosting a game for just six people would cost hundreds of dollars of investment. Which other game on earth costs hundreds of dollars to host six people?
I would note that another plausible cause for all of this is just staffing; the glacial pace of updates to the site strongly suggest that the development staff is quite small.
Now, it's important to note that they re-architected the store. That's not something you do to kill off an old product you don't like -- if you really object to a given product, you just stop selling it. It's also not something you do casually, because no matter how you do it, it's going to annoy your customers. Mostly, the reason you do something like that is because the old system needs some sort of update, and it's easier to write a new store than update the old one. Note that staffing comes into play here: if you've laid off the staff who understand how the old system worked, making those necessary updates on the old software may simply not be feasible. Another common trigger is that a key component is end-of-life and needs to be replaced.
Once you've decided that you're going to replace a component like that, you look at the features of the old store, prioritize them (based on how much you value them and how much work they are to implement), and implement as many of them as you can manage given your deadlines and available staff (if the deadline is sufficiently far in the future you may look at hiring new staff, that's generally not feasible in the near term). A la carte purchasing didn't make the cutoff. It's almost certainly not the only thing that didn't, it's just the one that the most people got upset about.
Now, does this mean that Wizards can be pressured into restoring the feature? In the short term, no: building and debugging a system like that takes time. On a longer time frame, maybe.
This is fine and would be legitimate if they simply explained it as such. In fact, it would be beneficial for WoTC to telegraph this via announcement. The lack of explanation reduces the likelihood of this scenario IMHO.
This is fine and would be legitimate if they simply explained it as such. In fact, it would be beneficial for WoTC to telegraph this via announcement. The lack of explanation reduces the likelihood of this scenario IMHO.
You greatly overrate the competence of Wizards at communicating. Hanlon's Razor really does apply here. This is not to say that incompetence and stupidity shouldn't be criticized.
This is fine and would be legitimate if they simply explained it as such. In fact, it would be beneficial for WoTC to telegraph this via announcement. The lack of explanation reduces the likelihood of this scenario IMHO.
You greatly overrate the competence of Wizards at communicating. Hanlon's Razor really does apply here. This is not to say that incompetence and stupidity shouldn't be criticized.
They have so many simple avenues for communication at this point that incompetency on that level stretches disbelief a bit.
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.
Wizards spend $143 million for D&D Beyond. They wouldn't have done that if it wasn't making at least multiple millions. However, I would not be surprised if D&D Beyond functions on a whales and minnows model and the people using the a la carte options are minnows.
Why are you assuming categories like that? This is not a CCG. It does not function on luck, lockboxes, or any of the things that usually fit with a whales and minnows model.
Now, if you are arguing that their marketing department is looking at it that way, that is just another way of saying that they are making blind assumptions.
It probably does work on something close to a power-law distribution. You have the long tail who buy little or nothing, the people who buy one book, the people who buy a couple of books and a master subscription, all the way up to the ones who buy everything. Piecemeal buying probably smoothed out the graph some, but the bulk of it is whole-book purchases.
While it doesn't have the unlimited spend possibility of the typical "free" game, it's not dissimilar. (Though I bet "three books and a master subscription" is a significant bump in the graph.)
This is probably close to it. They have said something like 20% of the player base (DMs, usually) does the vast majority of the purchasing.
But this would be by design, no? At a table, players and the DM, you cannot expect everyone to buy everything because that literally doesn't make sense? If this was the case, hosting a game for just six people would cost hundreds of dollars of investment. Which other game on earth costs hundreds of dollars to host six people?
Yeah, it's by design. DDB is pretty clearly set up to replicate the usual table experience, where only one person has the core books, maybe with an extra copy of the PH running around. This is why piecemeal buying likely isn't that big a deal to WotC -- the game's culture doesn't encourage building characters with stuff only you own, so it mostly sells only to people who build characters outside of games, and groups that have the print books and don't want to buy them digitally as well. (And various other relatively small populations.)
You greedy bastards. lol. Do you think we're going to dish out for the full-price books now instead? Short-sightedness is your class speciality now isn't it WOTC? You just fail your customers again and again. Unbelievable.
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
Agree that this would have been a pretty good middle ground, if only they'd communicated and weighed up the options first.
The fact it’s been two weeks and the only person who has said anything is one community manager makes this whole situation a lot worse. The longer they wait the less likely we are to continue supporting them even if they make this right.
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
Agree that this would have been a pretty good middle ground, if only they'd communicated and weighed up the options first.
The fact it’s been two weeks and the only person who has said anything is one community manager makes this whole situation a lot worse. The longer they wait the less likely we are to continue supporting them even if they make this right.
The longer they take to say this wasn't motivated by greed, the more motivated by greed it looks.
Yeah, it's by design. DDB is pretty clearly set up to replicate the usual table experience, where only one person has the core books, maybe with an extra copy of the PH running around. This is why piecemeal buying likely isn't that big a deal to WotC -- the game's culture doesn't encourage building characters with stuff only you own, so it mostly sells only to people who build characters outside of games, and groups that have the print books and don't want to buy them digitally as well. (And various other relatively small populations.)
To me, that doesn't even seem like a good business model. It seems like they would want to find ways sell products to both DM's and players, espeically since, at least at indiviual tables, the players outnumber the DM.
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
Agree that this would have been a pretty good middle ground, if only they'd communicated and weighed up the options first.
The fact it’s been two weeks and the only person who has said anything is one community manager makes this whole situation a lot worse. The longer they wait the less likely we are to continue supporting them even if they make this right.
The longer they take to say this wasn't motivated by greed, the more motivated by greed it looks.
Ok, step back a moment. Perspective.
This is a for profit company. This is not a charity. D&D is a luxury product, not a necessity. They do not owe any of us anything, nor are any of us going to starve or go without water or shelter if their products are not available at the prices we prefer.
There is no moral high ground here on our parts.
The main risk at pricing too high or too inconveniently is theirs, not ours. It is their bottom line at risk, not ours. It is they who risk going without food or shelter if their products fail, not us. Note that does not make any of us charities, either! None of us have any obligation to purchase, either.
Personally, I think this is a horrid business decision on their part, but 'greed' is not a term that applies to such situations in any conventional sense.
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
Agree that this would have been a pretty good middle ground, if only they'd communicated and weighed up the options first.
The fact it’s been two weeks and the only person who has said anything is one community manager makes this whole situation a lot worse. The longer they wait the less likely we are to continue supporting them even if they make this right.
The longer they take to say this wasn't motivated by greed, the more motivated by greed it looks.
Ok, step back a moment. Perspective.
This is a for profit company. This is not a charity. D&D is a luxury product, not a necessity. They do not owe any of us anything, nor are any of us going to starve or go without water or shelter if their products are not available at the prices we prefer.
There is no moral high ground here on our parts.
The main risk at pricing too high or too inconveniently is theirs, not ours. It is their bottom line at risk, not ours. It is they who risk going without food or shelter if their products fail, not us. Note that does not make any of us charities, either! None of us have any obligation to purchase, either.
Personally, I think this is a horrid business decision on their part, but 'greed' is not a term that applies to such situations in any conventional sense.
"They do not owe us anything" is such a sign of complacency in lieu of blatant anti-consumer tactics. Even if they are doing financially well the greed of upper management and shareholder's short term profit will be first in consideration of the worker bee in the company. We're seeing it happen all over, companies with record high profits laying of people in large swaths to 'restructure'. Yes, the do owe us because without us they don't get to keep operating. Piss off your entire fanbase and watch as the revenue dwindle.
You say there's no moral high ground but parade with it in your first sentence.
This is a change that NEEDS to be reverted. It is absolutely ridiculous that after WOTC bought them things got to this level. I am considering switching to and entire platform altogether. There are so many great platforms that provide the same service. The only reason I was using DDB is because I was supporting the game through it but if they treat their customers like this (considering all the issues they had the past 2 years) I don't think they are worth the consideration I am giving them. Both me and my players used the individual purchases whenever we needed something new just for the convenience and for providing support back to the creators but everyone in my group just about had it with this last straw. I an genuinely considering making my own private character sheet and automation app just out of spite at this point.
The website is harder to navigate, there are so many ribbon bars that cover the screen. I did some math and 23% of the page is covered in the 4 ribbons that are on the marketplace page. Everything got cluttered. Functionality got removed from multiple places in the website. Features that were promised a while ago were never implemented. Things have gotten more expensive. The books provide less useful materials than they used to. What's even the point in providing support anymore? Actually now that I think about it after writing all this I realize that I should not even care about it anymore I think I'm done.
To me, that doesn't even seem like a good business model. It seems like they would want to find ways sell products to both DM's and players, espeically since, at least at indiviual tables, the players outnumber the DM.
Thing is though, that's essentially what a la carte purchasing was; even if your DM owns a lot of the books, and you have access via content sharing in a campaign, you only have access via content sharing in that campaign.
If you want to privately create some characters as possible back-ups, or for future use, or just try out builds etc. then you need to unlock any content you require for yourself, which a la carte purchasing made significantly more accessible. This is also true for any players who just prefer to use a digital tool for their character sheet, rather than doing it with pen and paper; there will be plenty of groups where DMs are not really interested in double dipping for digital content, but players might still prefer to use the digital tools.
Another common case mentioned is what if you'd like to use a race or sub-class from an adventure or campaign book that your group doesn't need, because you've no plans to run Spelljammer for example? A la carte made it easy to just pick up the one or two you needed, or buy all the races just so you have access should you ever need it.
Put it's not as if that method of purchasing costs anything significant; once a digital book is made it's pretty much 100% profit aside from hosting fees and support staff costs, but divided amongst millions of sales those are negligible, meanwhile a la carte is enabling players who wouldn't otherwise purchase anything to spend a few dollars here and there, and doing that adds up when you have millions of users playing campaigns lasting months or years. If a la carte was actually some kind of loss, D&D Beyond can feel free to publish some evidence backing that up, until then we have no reason to assume otherwise considering that's the model the site has used pretty much from its creation (certainly for years before Wizards of the Coast bought it for a substantial sum of money).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
"They do not owe us anything" is such a sign of complacency in lieu of blatant anti-consumer tactics. Even if they are doing financially well the greed of upper management and shareholder's short term profit will be first in consideration of the worker bee in the company. We're seeing it happen all over, companies with record high profits laying of people in large swaths to 'restructure'. Yes, the do owe us because without us they don't get to keep operating. Piss off your entire fanbase and watch as the revenue dwindle.
You say there's no moral high ground but parade with it in your first sentence.
There is no moral high ground on their part, either.
Why are you assuming there will be even short term profit from this for them?
That they need sales to stay in business does not mean they owe us. It means they need to offer product we are willing to buy at the price they ask or else we will simply not purchase it. That is not the same as 'owing us.' Someone else's property remains theirs until it is sold and they are not normally obligated to set any given price nor to sell it at all. They can actually simply choose to stop selling the product at all. Personally, I think that would be even more foolish than this decision to drop a la carte, but they can. We are not owed the existence of this game, at all, let alone at any pricing we think should be.
When they set the price higher than people are willing to pay for the product, people will stop buying the product. This is one of the most basic principles of economics. It is very likely they are doing that here.
But just as I am saying to you, they do not owe us, I am also saying to them, we do not owe them, either. They decide the price at which they are willing to sell, we decide the price at which we are willing to purchase, and where and when and if our limits overlap enough for there to be agreement, there will be sales. No owing involved on either side.
And if a seller, any seller, is setting their price higher than a buyer is willing to pay, that is simply the limits of each. The seller is no more being greedy wanting to receive more in return for their product than the buyer is wanting to pay less for what they purchase. At least, where luxuries are concerned.
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And many of those DMs are going to stop purchasing anything due to this insane change. You'd think it would be common sense that if you were going to pander to the playerbase that is doing the vast majority of the purchases then you shouldn't anger those players in the process.
Honestly they need to just... stop. Seriously, they need to stop trying to pull these changes out of nowhere. They have utterly destroyed the trust of the fanbase. Players purchased things for DnD because they LOVED it and wanted to support it, not because they had to. I will likely continue to play DnD with my friends, but not a single one of us will ever spend a penny on it.
I absolutely do not understand the people playing Devil's Advocate in favor of having less features.
Even if you personally didn't use the feature, you gain nothing by smugly talking down to the people who miss it.
A lot of the points being made by these people aren't even right, as customers for a product they absolutely do owe us an explanation.
Ah, mind if I got a professional opinion from you then? I think what would DnDbeyond could have done to make more money is to set up essentially their own DnD-centered Etsy style marketplace. Sure a lot of art websites claim to make concept art for DnD characters, but then you ask them to make something like a simic hybrid and suddenly they have no idea what you're talking about. So, if DnDbeyond had it's own area for that, I would want to go there because it tells me the artists would KNOW DANG GOOD AND WELL what the style, theme, and topic was.
Dice. Minis. Digital models. Character concept art. All things DnD. And just like the other sites, DnDbeyond would get a small cut.
Do you think that would have been possible? Or perhaps at least a better idea than the nonsense they're doing now?
Ever heard of micro-transactions? Wanna guess how well those models actually work? Well, there's a reason Fortnite stays in business.
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
This is likely why the change was done so quickly and without a word beforehand: They didn't want to negotiate, they don't actually care what we think.
But this would be by design, no? At a table, players and the DM, you cannot expect everyone to buy everything because that literally doesn't make sense? If this was the case, hosting a game for just six people would cost hundreds of dollars of investment. Which other game on earth costs hundreds of dollars to host six people?
This is fine and would be legitimate if they simply explained it as such. In fact, it would be beneficial for WoTC to telegraph this via announcement. The lack of explanation reduces the likelihood of this scenario IMHO.
You greatly overrate the competence of Wizards at communicating. Hanlon's Razor really does apply here. This is not to say that incompetence and stupidity shouldn't be criticized.
They have so many simple avenues for communication at this point that incompetency on that level stretches disbelief a bit.
Yeah, it's by design. DDB is pretty clearly set up to replicate the usual table experience, where only one person has the core books, maybe with an extra copy of the PH running around. This is why piecemeal buying likely isn't that big a deal to WotC -- the game's culture doesn't encourage building characters with stuff only you own, so it mostly sells only to people who build characters outside of games, and groups that have the print books and don't want to buy them digitally as well. (And various other relatively small populations.)
You greedy bastards. lol. Do you think we're going to dish out for the full-price books now instead? Short-sightedness is your class speciality now isn't it WOTC? You just fail your customers again and again. Unbelievable.
Be welcome, but be wary.
The fact it’s been two weeks and the only person who has said anything is one community manager makes this whole situation a lot worse. The longer they wait the less likely we are to continue supporting them even if they make this right.
The longer they take to say this wasn't motivated by greed, the more motivated by greed it looks.
To me, that doesn't even seem like a good business model. It seems like they would want to find ways sell products to both DM's and players, espeically since, at least at indiviual tables, the players outnumber the DM.
Ok, step back a moment. Perspective.
This is a for profit company. This is not a charity. D&D is a luxury product, not a necessity. They do not owe any of us anything, nor are any of us going to starve or go without water or shelter if their products are not available at the prices we prefer.
There is no moral high ground here on our parts.
The main risk at pricing too high or too inconveniently is theirs, not ours. It is their bottom line at risk, not ours. It is they who risk going without food or shelter if their products fail, not us. Note that does not make any of us charities, either! None of us have any obligation to purchase, either.
Personally, I think this is a horrid business decision on their part, but 'greed' is not a term that applies to such situations in any conventional sense.
"They do not owe us anything" is such a sign of complacency in lieu of blatant anti-consumer tactics. Even if they are doing financially well the greed of upper management and shareholder's short term profit will be first in consideration of the worker bee in the company. We're seeing it happen all over, companies with record high profits laying of people in large swaths to 'restructure'. Yes, the do owe us because without us they don't get to keep operating. Piss off your entire fanbase and watch as the revenue dwindle.
You say there's no moral high ground but parade with it in your first sentence.
This is a change that NEEDS to be reverted. It is absolutely ridiculous that after WOTC bought them things got to this level. I am considering switching to and entire platform altogether. There are so many great platforms that provide the same service. The only reason I was using DDB is because I was supporting the game through it but if they treat their customers like this (considering all the issues they had the past 2 years) I don't think they are worth the consideration I am giving them. Both me and my players used the individual purchases whenever we needed something new just for the convenience and for providing support back to the creators but everyone in my group just about had it with this last straw. I an genuinely considering making my own private character sheet and automation app just out of spite at this point.
The website is harder to navigate, there are so many ribbon bars that cover the screen. I did some math and 23% of the page is covered in the 4 ribbons that are on the marketplace page. Everything got cluttered. Functionality got removed from multiple places in the website. Features that were promised a while ago were never implemented. Things have gotten more expensive. The books provide less useful materials than they used to. What's even the point in providing support anymore? Actually now that I think about it after writing all this I realize that I should not even care about it anymore I think I'm done.
Thing is though, that's essentially what a la carte purchasing was; even if your DM owns a lot of the books, and you have access via content sharing in a campaign, you only have access via content sharing in that campaign.
If you want to privately create some characters as possible back-ups, or for future use, or just try out builds etc. then you need to unlock any content you require for yourself, which a la carte purchasing made significantly more accessible. This is also true for any players who just prefer to use a digital tool for their character sheet, rather than doing it with pen and paper; there will be plenty of groups where DMs are not really interested in double dipping for digital content, but players might still prefer to use the digital tools.
Another common case mentioned is what if you'd like to use a race or sub-class from an adventure or campaign book that your group doesn't need, because you've no plans to run Spelljammer for example? A la carte made it easy to just pick up the one or two you needed, or buy all the races just so you have access should you ever need it.
Put it's not as if that method of purchasing costs anything significant; once a digital book is made it's pretty much 100% profit aside from hosting fees and support staff costs, but divided amongst millions of sales those are negligible, meanwhile a la carte is enabling players who wouldn't otherwise purchase anything to spend a few dollars here and there, and doing that adds up when you have millions of users playing campaigns lasting months or years. If a la carte was actually some kind of loss, D&D Beyond can feel free to publish some evidence backing that up, until then we have no reason to assume otherwise considering that's the model the site has used pretty much from its creation (certainly for years before Wizards of the Coast bought it for a substantial sum of money).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
There is no moral high ground on their part, either.
Why are you assuming there will be even short term profit from this for them?
That they need sales to stay in business does not mean they owe us. It means they need to offer product we are willing to buy at the price they ask or else we will simply not purchase it. That is not the same as 'owing us.' Someone else's property remains theirs until it is sold and they are not normally obligated to set any given price nor to sell it at all. They can actually simply choose to stop selling the product at all. Personally, I think that would be even more foolish than this decision to drop a la carte, but they can. We are not owed the existence of this game, at all, let alone at any pricing we think should be.
When they set the price higher than people are willing to pay for the product, people will stop buying the product. This is one of the most basic principles of economics. It is very likely they are doing that here.
But just as I am saying to you, they do not owe us, I am also saying to them, we do not owe them, either. They decide the price at which they are willing to sell, we decide the price at which we are willing to purchase, and where and when and if our limits overlap enough for there to be agreement, there will be sales. No owing involved on either side.
And if a seller, any seller, is setting their price higher than a buyer is willing to pay, that is simply the limits of each. The seller is no more being greedy wanting to receive more in return for their product than the buyer is wanting to pay less for what they purchase. At least, where luxuries are concerned.