I bought the Compendium Content for the Monster Manual for $19.99. It is not showing up as a choice in the D&D Beyond app for me to download to my device? Do I need to buy the full product for offline access. Because, if that's the case, I want a refund.
Currently the mobile app only allows you to download compendiums that you have fully purchased.
The app is still being developed through the beta testing stage and it is planned to add in the ability to download and read compendiums if you only have the "compendium only" content. I don't have a date on that, but I believe it will be fairly soon.
I bought the Compendium Content for the Monster Manual for $19.99. It is not showing up as a choice in the D&D Beyond app for me to download to my device? Do I need to buy the full product for offline access. Because, if that's the case, I want a refund.
Currently the mobile app only allows you to download compendiums that you have fully purchased.
The app is still being developed through the beta testing stage and it is planned to add in the ability to download and read compendiums if you only have the "compendium only" content. I don't have a date on that, but I believe it will be fairly soon.
You REALLY need to put that on the Compendium Content description before someone makes the same mistake I just made. Grrr....
I bought the Compendium Content for the Monster Manual for $19.99. It is not showing up as a choice in the D&D Beyond app for me to download to my device? Do I need to buy the full product for offline access. Because, if that's the case, I want a refund.
Currently the mobile app only allows you to download compendiums that you have fully purchased.
The app is still being developed through the beta testing stage and it is planned to add in the ability to download and read compendiums if you only have the "compendium only" content. I don't have a date on that, but I believe it will be fairly soon.
You REALLY need to put that on the Compendium Content description before someone makes the same mistake I just made. Grrr....
Do not forget you now have access for compendium on the site, including the mobile version of the site.
I bought the Compendium Content for the Monster Manual for $19.99. It is not showing up as a choice in the D&D Beyond app for me to download to my device? Do I need to buy the full product for offline access. Because, if that's the case, I want a refund.
Currently the mobile app only allows you to download compendiums that you have fully purchased.
The app is still being developed through the beta testing stage and it is planned to add in the ability to download and read compendiums if you only have the "compendium only" content. I don't have a date on that, but I believe it will be fairly soon.
You REALLY need to put that on the Compendium Content description before someone makes the same mistake I just made. Grrr....
Do not forget you now have access for compendium on the site, including the mobile version of the site.
That doesn't do me any good at the gaming table where there is no Internet access. The D&D Beyond app is also significantly faster than the website, because all the content is cached local.
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time."
While I agree that DDB is pretty affordable from the player side, I don't think the idea of a player-facing bundle is a bad idea. Maybe the discount wouldn't be as deep as the full legendary bundle? But I have to imagine there is a pretty big market of people who don't have any interest in the adventures.
I don't disagree, I'm just trying to throw out some immediate potential solutions.
Glad to see a couple of people can understand my concept. But you are completely right to reference others in regards to spending an amount each week/month on content with a look to owning it all. I am definitely going to do that, I didn't really think to do that.
Being "paid for your work" and paying 100% of the full purchase price twice are very different things.
I would have been extremely happy to pay a subscription fee (even a slightly larger one than the higher one they ask for) in order to access this sort of thing, but having to pay for content twice, in full, on top of a subscription fee (which is, de facto, required - the protestations that it isn't are pretty silly) is completely unreasonable.
What is particularly killer is that, as I understand it (from the FAQ), you don't even get an offline-readable copy of the books, particularly not a PDF. If you did, I could see this as a sort of genuine digital alternative to buying the real books. As it is, this seems more like a form of parasitism, because I couldn't even read the books on my commute to/from work (no signal in tunnels and some stations - this is true in many of the great cities of the world), or in the countryside (one of the best places to play D&D!), or really anywhere but at people's houses (given how unreliable and inconsistent coffee shops etc. are at offering wireless that works). The lack of any offline accessibility to the content means there's no way to justify paying the full RL purchase price and a subscription.
I also see absolutely no disability-friendly options on this site, where with a PDF, worst case, I can force disability-friendly stuff on it.
The current pricing scheme is flatly unreasonable.
We have a subscription, that, de facto, you, the DM, must pay (because otherwise all your players would have to purchase all the content separately), and on top of that, Amazon*/Curse wants full hardcopy price for each and every product you want to use, individually. And right now, you don't even really get an offline copy that is guaranteed to be available in, say, three years. Or any offline copy at all, right now, unless you buy 100% of each product.
I find the subscription completely understandable and fair. They have costs, fairly steady costs, and if the subscription gave full access to either all content, or a certain amount of content, that would absolutely make sense. You could have a player-relevant content sub, a DM and player-relevant content sub (but no adventures), perhaps with a small extra for sharing with player accounts, and a full content sub. I could also understand making adventures/APs (specifically), a separate add-on purchase. However, a character builder that doesn't let you use the options you actually have access to via physical books is literally worse than useless. I really mean literally, not metaphorically. In that situation you are literally better off not using Beyond at all, and instead relying solely on physical books. I would be happy to pay, say £7.99/month (pounds, not dollars), maybe more, for access to all non-adventure/AP-related content, and the ability for players to create and update characters on the system. Judging by what I did with 4E, I'd probably pay that for several years.
So I think a content sub would be a very good idea. I'd probably even pay more, so long as the content was available promptly, and with a sub I wouldn't even mind if offline availability was somewhat limited (i.e. if I had to print stuff - primarily characters, monsters, spells, etc. - I wanted to use to PDF before going offline).
However, that is not currently on offer.
Instead we have the worst of both worlds. Paying full price for digital products which I'm not sure are even available offline (it seems like they kinda sorta are in this beta mobile app being mentioned), and if they are, it seems like they're available in a revoke-able format (i.e. Amazon/Curse, could say, just instruct a future "update" to the app to delete the local content because they were shutting the service down, or lock it or just even accidentally update it and break it and never fix it - the latter has happened with products before), and on top of that you have to pay for a sub so your players can actually use the content to create and update their characters.
As a bonus, the "Legendary" bundle includes a ton of stuff useless to any DM who writes their own adventures. I don't want other people's APs and adventures, thanks. And there's no discount for people like me (15% not being a particularly wonderful or exciting discount anyway, and it's been executed in the least generous way physically possible).
So I'm disrecommending Beyond to all the 5E players I know (which is pretty easy because most of them have never even heard of it except from me!) for the moment. Amazon/Curse really need to shape up on this one and offer better options. As they've started out with a fairly unreasonable pricing structure, it's going to be difficult for them to back off from that, though (it's much easier to start reasonable, then make costs higher for later people joining).
* = Let's be clear. Curse are not an independent company. They are not struggling to get buy. They do not lack leverage with Hasbro/WotC. They are a wholly-owned part of Amazon. Amazon being the wealthiest company in human history, who have absolutely massive leverage. So suggestions that they're "at the mercy" of Hasbro/WotC are laughable. Any decisions on pricing they've made, are one hundred percent their own.
The same thing is $29.99 here. So yeah, I admit, it's actually over 100% of the real-world purchase price (not the fictional RRP, which not even physical stores typically charge).
I notice you additionally fail to address any of my other points.
We have a subscription, that, de facto, you, the DM, must pay (because otherwise all your players would have to purchase all the content separately)
That's not quite getting the facts right. Any one person in your group can pay the subscription, doesn't have to be the one whose account the books were bought on, and when sharing is enabled for a campaign the purchased content of any/all participants in the campaign is shared with all the others.
...Curse wants full hardcopy price...
That's not getting the facts right either. Curse asks $29.99 for their version of Wizards of the Coast hardcopies that are priced at $49.95.
...copy that is guaranteed to be available in, say, three years.
No such thing exists, digitally or physically. The things which can cause you to lose your copy differ depending on whether it is physical or digital, but neither is without ability to lose the copy in some way.
So suggestions that they're "at the mercy" of Hasbro/WotC are laughable. Any decisions on pricing they've made, are one hundred percent their own.
That's a significant misunderstanding of how licensing works. It's not WotC saying "a license will cost you X" and then Curse doing whatever they want after they have paid X. It's a lot more like WotC sets a price and a list of requirements, and Curse either A) does and pays what WotC decided they have to, or B) they don't get a license.
No matter how much money is involved, the company with the ability to say "no, you don't get a license" is absolutely the one holding all the (figurative, but also happily appropriate considering context) cards.
That's easy. I explain it the same way that Amazon and Curse would explain it; Amazon sells physical copies of books at a discounted price (click your link, and look at the price on the right, and just below it you will see "list price: $49.95", and below that the expression "Save: $19.98 (40%)" which clearly labels the price as being not the normal price), and Curse sells digital versions of those books with the material integrated into their tools at a discounted price (one that happens to be different than the physical book discount).
...not even physical stores typically charge
Sellers electing to offer discounts doesn't change what the non-discounted (read: 100%) price is.
I notice you additionally fail to address any of my other points.
Check my other post in the now merged thread. If I haven't addressed your other points there, it is because I'm not trying to tell you what opinion or feelings you should have about or because of the facts - I'm just pointing out what the facts are so that whatever opinion or feelings you settle upon can be based on the facts.
Edit to add: I actually forgot to address one of the other facts here. The comparison between physical book and digital book + tool integration isn't actually even the most accurate possible comparison. Curse sells an option that is just the digital version of the book (same text and art, but no special features) for $19.99 for books that the list price is $49.95.
"That's not quite getting the facts right. Any one person in your group can pay the subscription, doesn't have to be the one whose account the books were bought on, and when sharing is enabled for a campaign the purchased content of any/all participants in the campaign is shared with all the others."
That seems to have been a later update and not reflected in the FAQ or pricing information I could find - I did see in a comment from a non-dev later. It's a minor improvement, but the total cost remains the same.
"That's not getting the facts right either. Curse asks $29.99 for their version of Wizards of the Coast hardcopies that are priced at $49.95."
That's complete nonsense. Apparently you haven't looked at the links I provided above. Amazon owns Curse, and Amazon charges $29.97 for the PHB. Curse, who are owned by Amazon (just trying to make this very clear) charge $29.99 for the virtual PHB. $49.95 is the RRP, which is a completely different figure. I used the term "purchase price" not RRP intentionally, not by accident.
"No such thing exists, digitally or physically. The things which can cause you to lose your copy differ depending on whether it is physical or digital, but neither is without ability to lose the copy in some way."
I know I'm tempting fate here, but in thirty years of gaming, I have never lost or destroyed, or even severely damaged a physical gaming book. Why? Because they're under my control, and I don't let things happen to them.
With a PDF, I absolutely can guarantee I will have access to it in three years (indeed I still have game-related PDFs from over twenty years ago!), contrary to your assertion, too. I simply back it up in enough places, and short of the world ending, in which case obviously no-one cares, I will be access it either from Drive, or my back portable HDD, or just from my PC or phone or tablet. Again, this is on me. Even if I did lose a PDF or physical gaming book, that would be MY FAULT, and I, as a responsible adult, would accept that, and be willing to repurchase it or the like.
That's not the case here, is it?
Instead we can virtually purchase virtual copies of books, for the same price it would cost to buy the real book (let's phrase it like that, because that's the reality - PHB is around $30 wherever I get it from), and I don't get a PDF even. I get to download a beta version of an app which gives me access to the data, in a proprietory format (possibly even encrypted, I have no idea), and the app could be either updated to remove my access, or simply removed from the store so when phone breaks, I can't re-download it, or it could be updated in a way that broke it (entirely accidentally and non-maliciously), and never updated again. All these things have happened with apps in real life. They are not fictional or theoretical events. They're real things that happen, and they're data stored solely in proprietory formats is always much, much, much more risky than physical or PDF.
So it's not remotely the same level of risk. It's a vastly higher risk, and the same price as physical.
"That's a significant misunderstanding of how licensing works. It's not WotC saying "a license will cost you X" and then Curse doing whatever they want after they have paid X. It's a lot more like WotC sets a price and a list of requirements, and Curse either A) does and pays what WotC decided they have to, or B) they don't get a license.
No matter how much money is involved, the company with the ability to say "no, you don't get a license" is absolutely the one holding all the (figurative, but also happily appropriate considering context) cards."
No, I understand licensing and I've actually been involved in making decisions about licensing products, on both sides (ahhhh things you couldn't have said when you were twenty! Sometimes being old has its upsides!). So don't talk nonsense. It's a negotiation between the companies, especially in a scenario like this, where the license and product are unique (but even in generic situations, with business-to-business licensing for anything worth more than a few hundred dollars, which isn't a discrete one-off product, it's almost always a negotiation).
WotC did not "lay down the law" to Amazon/Curse on this. They negotiated. Now whether they got a good deal, we have no idea. But claims that they have to sell it for X amount because WotC are making them do not ring true, and indeed I see no evidence, whatsoever, that the developers have said WotC was involved in price-setting. I mean, can you find that? All I can see is "We can't give you free digital books, because we're not WotC". That's a reasonable position, but it is no way the same thing as or even similar to claiming WotC is setting the prices. I think it would be smart for the developers of this product to look at getting cosy-er with their bosses at Amazon, maybe make some deals so that you can buy a digital copy HERE, and Amazon will massively discount a physical copy of the same, or vice-versa, but I see no sign that's happening either (even though it absolutely could, given Curse is wholly-owned by Amazon).
And no "you don't get a license" isn't "holding all the cards", because WotC profits from there being a digital offering, so they realistically have to offer it to someone, or they will be fighting an endless, losing war against fan-created digital products, and every single time they C&D one, it's bad PR for them, really bad. Plus they want to make money off the offering - I mean I have no doubt they get some percentage of the digital one-off sales, and probably either a percentage of the sub fees, and/or an on-going licensing fee (maybe all three - certainly two of those).
Just breaking out a comment from the above as a clear suggestion people may be interested in:
Curse, and D&D Beyond, are wholly-owned by Amazon.
That's not a criticism, it's just a fact.
Amazon is the major place most people get their physical books from.
Beyond has a PR problem in that people who buy the physical books don't get to use them digitally, and vice-versa.
This problem could largely be solved by getting their bosses at Amazon to make some sort of link with Beyond. Either have it so buying a book here entitles you to a discount at Amazon (again, the same company as this, essentially), or buying it at Amazon entitles you to a discount here, or even both ways, then, suddenly, you might have something quite attractive, and you'd have pushed a huge amount of purchasing traffic currently going to FLGSes and the like to Amazon (which Amazon would surely approve of).
That seems to have been a later update and not reflected in the FAQ or pricing information I could find - I did see in a comment from a non-dev later. It's a minor improvement, but the total cost remains the same.
Thank you for the feedback - I have updated the FAQ to make this clear. I'm going to do another pass through all of the FAQ questions & answers today, to make certain they are all up-to-date.
On the negotiations for licensing, it's interesting to note that the standard price for the virtual offering of the PHB/DMG etc was significantly higher on other sites, prior to Curse negotiating with WotC to reduce this.
I will note also that, if you're ignoring the D&D Beyond tools and just looking to compare prices of the book to compendium content, you can purchase Compendium Only content of the core books for $19.99 each which is a fairer comparison.
Curse, and D&D Beyond, are wholly-owned by Amazon.
That's not a criticism, it's just a fact.
Close, but incorrect.
D&D Beyond is created and maintained by Curse.
Curse is owned by Twitch.
Twitch is owned by Amazon.
It may seem like a small difference, but in reality it means that there is a fair bit of distance between Amazon and Curse, in terms of corporate control. As I understand it, from talking to staff, Amazon pretty much allow them to carry on working the way they were, other than ensuring a higher level of security, HR etc.
"Edit to add: I actually forgot to address one of the other facts here. The comparison between physical book and digital book + tool integration isn't actually even the most accurate possible comparison. Curse sells an option that is just the digital version of the book (same text and art, but no special features) for $19.99 for books that the list price is $49.95."
I'm a bit unclear on this, what are "special features" in this context? Integration into Beyond you mean? So you're describing essentially a digital copy in a proprietory format? This is the one that doesn't even work in the mobile app, right? So it's online-only, effectively.
I mean that wouldn't be an unreasonable price for a PDF or similar format. For a proprietory digital format which I can't use disability tools on (unlike PDF), which requires me to use a specific app to access, an app I can't customize the look of, and which could be removed from the store at a later date, or modified so it was basically (or literally) unusuable (again, these things have happened, IRL, not theoretically)? I don't think that's a very reasonable price.
Not without real guarantees from Curse. I mean, they could give guarantees, reasonably.
For example, they could give access to older versions of the app, going forwards, and they could make the app accessible outside of normal "walled garden" store channels. That wouldn't help iOS users, but those chose a walled garden in a way Android and PC users didn't. They could also make the app open-source. And perhaps they could talk to people with disabilities about app design, instead of designing an app for whoever they regard as an average user.
Or they could just sell a PDF... (I suspect they actually can't because of their licensing agreement with WotC, but that's on them to deal with, not us.)
That's complete nonsense. Apparently you haven't looked at the links I provided above.
I'm going to assume that you haven't read the other post I've already made, and not respond to this particular point again - which I am only saying here in hopes of reducing further missing of previous posts from happening.
I know I'm tempting fate here, but in thirty years of gaming, I have never lost or destroyed, or even severely damaged a physical gaming book. Why? Because they're under my control, and I don't let things happen to them.
No spills? No drops? No accidental ripping a page here or there while trying to quickly look something up? No chance at all that your house experience natural disaster or other massive accidents like flood or fire?
To phrase those rhetorical questions differently; Having never actually lost or severely damaged any of your books is luck, not lack of risk. I took exquisite care of my gaming collection (and still take exquisite care of my much smaller replacement collection), but a hurricane named Katrina didn't give me long enough advance notice to take everything I'd collected from the early '90s up through 2005 out of my home at the time (Slidell, Louisiana) before she pushed an entire lake into town and left my neighborhood in the state of just tree tops and roofs poking up from the surface of the water.
No, I understand licensing and I've actually been involved in making decisions about licensing products, on both sides. So don't talk nonsense.
Well, that's entirely unfair - you over-simplify and it's fine, but I over-simplify and I get "don't talk nonsense."
Yes, it's a negotiation - but in that negotation WotC has the power to establish dealbreakers - by which I mean they get certain say-so about details of how their property is licensed - and Curse either has to agree to those demands or they aren't the one that gets the license, someone else willing to meet the conditions WotC has set does. So if WotC were to have said as part of the negotiation something specific about what pricing can or can't be, Curse has to follow that or not get to use the license, which would absolutely not be Curse having 100% control over their pricing decisions like you claimed that they have (which maybe they do, I don't know - but neither do you, unless one of the licensing decisions you were involved in was this exact licensing negotiation... but if that were the case, it'd be pretty weird for you to take the "trust me, I know what I'm talking about because I've done this sort of thing before" approach rather than "I know, I was there" approach).
...every single time they C&D one, it's bad PR for them, really bad.
Yeah, but in that particular bad relation, it's not WotC making it bad, it's the public - by acting like WotC has done something out of line by not just sitting back and taking it with a smile.
That seems to have been a later update and not reflected in the FAQ or pricing information I could find - I did see in a comment from a non-dev later. It's a minor improvement, but the total cost remains the same.
Thank you for the feedback - I have updated the FAQ to make this clear. I'm going to do another pass through all of the FAQ questions & answers today, to make certain they are all up-to-date.
On the negotiations for licensing, it's interesting to note that the standard price for the virtual offering of the PHB/DMG etc was significantly higher on other sites, prior to Curse negotiating with WotC to reduce this.
I will note also that, if you're ignoring the D&D Beyond tools and just looking to compare prices of the book to compendium content, you can purchase Compendium Only content of the core books for $19.99 each which is a fairer comparison.
Thank you for the response. I know it's not always fun to hear people criticise your product, but hopefully it's useful in the long-term, for both sides.
Re: "virtual offering" of the PHB, uh wait are you saying I can get a legal PDF copy of the 5E PHB somewhere? Because I'm only seeing pirated material if I search for that (and I'd rather avoid that). It looks like the only people with virtual offerings are you guys and Fantasy Grounds, and it kinda looks like neither of you will sell me a disability-friendly (which PDF is, even image-heavy PDF) fully offline-readable copy of a 5E book. I mean I am glad to see competition in the marketplace lowering prices, that's good, for sure. I notice FG has the same issue of only offering a bundle that includes AP and adventure books (which many DMs will neither want nor need), but they offer a 25% "bulk" discount and seem to take off the price of purchased books in a more logical way (though I may be confused and it's obviously not up to you, the competition, to correct that!).
Re: Compendium content, that's a proprietory format that doesn't currently work offline, correct? I think I read that Curse was looking to make it work via the app but again, with no disability-friendly-ness options (I mean, I'm assuming, I don't have the app - but PDFs have effectively a multitude of options here, which it is unlikely any app can match), and no guarantee the app doesn't later get pulled from the store or revised in some way that makes it useless (which again, has happened IRL with various apps and bits of software), that's not great.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
D&D Beyond FoundersPun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
And I cast Heroism on the community.
I'm a bit confused by the question. And did my comment deleted? (It probably deserved to be - should have self edited a bit more carefully.)
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time."
John Lydgate
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Being "paid for your work" and paying 100% of the full purchase price twice are very different things.
I would have been extremely happy to pay a subscription fee (even a slightly larger one than the higher one they ask for) in order to access this sort of thing, but having to pay for content twice, in full, on top of a subscription fee (which is, de facto, required - the protestations that it isn't are pretty silly) is completely unreasonable.
What is particularly killer is that, as I understand it (from the FAQ), you don't even get an offline-readable copy of the books, particularly not a PDF. If you did, I could see this as a sort of genuine digital alternative to buying the real books. As it is, this seems more like a form of parasitism, because I couldn't even read the books on my commute to/from work (no signal in tunnels and some stations - this is true in many of the great cities of the world), or in the countryside (one of the best places to play D&D!), or really anywhere but at people's houses (given how unreliable and inconsistent coffee shops etc. are at offering wireless that works). The lack of any offline accessibility to the content means there's no way to justify paying the full RL purchase price and a subscription.
I also see absolutely no disability-friendly options on this site, where with a PDF, worst case, I can force disability-friendly stuff on it.
Your claim does not match the facts; D&D Beyond prices are roughly 60% of the full purchase price.
The current pricing scheme is flatly unreasonable.
We have a subscription, that, de facto, you, the DM, must pay (because otherwise all your players would have to purchase all the content separately), and on top of that, Amazon*/Curse wants full hardcopy price for each and every product you want to use, individually. And right now, you don't even really get an offline copy that is guaranteed to be available in, say, three years. Or any offline copy at all, right now, unless you buy 100% of each product.
I find the subscription completely understandable and fair. They have costs, fairly steady costs, and if the subscription gave full access to either all content, or a certain amount of content, that would absolutely make sense. You could have a player-relevant content sub, a DM and player-relevant content sub (but no adventures), perhaps with a small extra for sharing with player accounts, and a full content sub. I could also understand making adventures/APs (specifically), a separate add-on purchase. However, a character builder that doesn't let you use the options you actually have access to via physical books is literally worse than useless. I really mean literally, not metaphorically. In that situation you are literally better off not using Beyond at all, and instead relying solely on physical books. I would be happy to pay, say £7.99/month (pounds, not dollars), maybe more, for access to all non-adventure/AP-related content, and the ability for players to create and update characters on the system. Judging by what I did with 4E, I'd probably pay that for several years.
So I think a content sub would be a very good idea. I'd probably even pay more, so long as the content was available promptly, and with a sub I wouldn't even mind if offline availability was somewhat limited (i.e. if I had to print stuff - primarily characters, monsters, spells, etc. - I wanted to use to PDF before going offline).
However, that is not currently on offer.
Instead we have the worst of both worlds. Paying full price for digital products which I'm not sure are even available offline (it seems like they kinda sorta are in this beta mobile app being mentioned), and if they are, it seems like they're available in a revoke-able format (i.e. Amazon/Curse, could say, just instruct a future "update" to the app to delete the local content because they were shutting the service down, or lock it or just even accidentally update it and break it and never fix it - the latter has happened with products before), and on top of that you have to pay for a sub so your players can actually use the content to create and update their characters.
As a bonus, the "Legendary" bundle includes a ton of stuff useless to any DM who writes their own adventures. I don't want other people's APs and adventures, thanks. And there's no discount for people like me (15% not being a particularly wonderful or exciting discount anyway, and it's been executed in the least generous way physically possible).
So I'm disrecommending Beyond to all the 5E players I know (which is pretty easy because most of them have never even heard of it except from me!) for the moment. Amazon/Curse really need to shape up on this one and offer better options. As they've started out with a fairly unreasonable pricing structure, it's going to be difficult for them to back off from that, though (it's much easier to start reasonable, then make costs higher for later people joining).
* = Let's be clear. Curse are not an independent company. They are not struggling to get buy. They do not lack leverage with Hasbro/WotC. They are a wholly-owned part of Amazon. Amazon being the wealthiest company in human history, who have absolutely massive leverage. So suggestions that they're "at the mercy" of Hasbro/WotC are laughable. Any decisions on pricing they've made, are one hundred percent their own.
So how do you exaplain:
https://www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook-Dungeons-Dragons-Wizards/dp/0786965606/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_21_bs_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=V19P2ZKJKJ3RS361K62A
Amazon, who, by the way, OWN Curse, and thus own this, are selling the PHB for $29.97.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/marketplace
The same thing is $29.99 here. So yeah, I admit, it's actually over 100% of the real-world purchase price (not the fictional RRP, which not even physical stores typically charge).
I notice you additionally fail to address any of my other points.
That's not quite getting the facts right. Any one person in your group can pay the subscription, doesn't have to be the one whose account the books were bought on, and when sharing is enabled for a campaign the purchased content of any/all participants in the campaign is shared with all the others.
That's not getting the facts right either. Curse asks $29.99 for their version of Wizards of the Coast hardcopies that are priced at $49.95.
No such thing exists, digitally or physically. The things which can cause you to lose your copy differ depending on whether it is physical or digital, but neither is without ability to lose the copy in some way.
That's a significant misunderstanding of how licensing works. It's not WotC saying "a license will cost you X" and then Curse doing whatever they want after they have paid X. It's a lot more like WotC sets a price and a list of requirements, and Curse either A) does and pays what WotC decided they have to, or B) they don't get a license.No matter how much money is involved, the company with the ability to say "no, you don't get a license" is absolutely the one holding all the (figurative, but also happily appropriate considering context) cards.
That's easy. I explain it the same way that Amazon and Curse would explain it; Amazon sells physical copies of books at a discounted price (click your link, and look at the price on the right, and just below it you will see "list price: $49.95", and below that the expression "Save: $19.98 (40%)" which clearly labels the price as being not the normal price), and Curse sells digital versions of those books with the material integrated into their tools at a discounted price (one that happens to be different than the physical book discount).
Sellers electing to offer discounts doesn't change what the non-discounted (read: 100%) price is.
Check my other post in the now merged thread. If I haven't addressed your other points there, it is because I'm not trying to tell you what opinion or feelings you should have about or because of the facts - I'm just pointing out what the facts are so that whatever opinion or feelings you settle upon can be based on the facts.Edit to add: I actually forgot to address one of the other facts here. The comparison between physical book and digital book + tool integration isn't actually even the most accurate possible comparison. Curse sells an option that is just the digital version of the book (same text and art, but no special features) for $19.99 for books that the list price is $49.95.
"That's not quite getting the facts right. Any one person in your group can pay the subscription, doesn't have to be the one whose account the books were bought on, and when sharing is enabled for a campaign the purchased content of any/all participants in the campaign is shared with all the others."
That seems to have been a later update and not reflected in the FAQ or pricing information I could find - I did see in a comment from a non-dev later. It's a minor improvement, but the total cost remains the same.
"That's not getting the facts right either. Curse asks $29.99 for their version of Wizards of the Coast hardcopies that are priced at $49.95."
That's complete nonsense. Apparently you haven't looked at the links I provided above. Amazon owns Curse, and Amazon charges $29.97 for the PHB. Curse, who are owned by Amazon (just trying to make this very clear) charge $29.99 for the virtual PHB. $49.95 is the RRP, which is a completely different figure. I used the term "purchase price" not RRP intentionally, not by accident.
"No such thing exists, digitally or physically. The things which can cause you to lose your copy differ depending on whether it is physical or digital, but neither is without ability to lose the copy in some way."
I know I'm tempting fate here, but in thirty years of gaming, I have never lost or destroyed, or even severely damaged a physical gaming book. Why? Because they're under my control, and I don't let things happen to them.
With a PDF, I absolutely can guarantee I will have access to it in three years (indeed I still have game-related PDFs from over twenty years ago!), contrary to your assertion, too. I simply back it up in enough places, and short of the world ending, in which case obviously no-one cares, I will be access it either from Drive, or my back portable HDD, or just from my PC or phone or tablet. Again, this is on me. Even if I did lose a PDF or physical gaming book, that would be MY FAULT, and I, as a responsible adult, would accept that, and be willing to repurchase it or the like.
That's not the case here, is it?
Instead we can virtually purchase virtual copies of books, for the same price it would cost to buy the real book (let's phrase it like that, because that's the reality - PHB is around $30 wherever I get it from), and I don't get a PDF even. I get to download a beta version of an app which gives me access to the data, in a proprietory format (possibly even encrypted, I have no idea), and the app could be either updated to remove my access, or simply removed from the store so when phone breaks, I can't re-download it, or it could be updated in a way that broke it (entirely accidentally and non-maliciously), and never updated again. All these things have happened with apps in real life. They are not fictional or theoretical events. They're real things that happen, and they're data stored solely in proprietory formats is always much, much, much more risky than physical or PDF.
So it's not remotely the same level of risk. It's a vastly higher risk, and the same price as physical.
"That's a significant misunderstanding of how licensing works. It's not WotC saying "a license will cost you X" and then Curse doing whatever they want after they have paid X. It's a lot more like WotC sets a price and a list of requirements, and Curse either A) does and pays what WotC decided they have to, or B) they don't get a license.
No matter how much money is involved, the company with the ability to say "no, you don't get a license" is absolutely the one holding all the (figurative, but also happily appropriate considering context) cards."
No, I understand licensing and I've actually been involved in making decisions about licensing products, on both sides (ahhhh things you couldn't have said when you were twenty! Sometimes being old has its upsides!). So don't talk nonsense. It's a negotiation between the companies, especially in a scenario like this, where the license and product are unique (but even in generic situations, with business-to-business licensing for anything worth more than a few hundred dollars, which isn't a discrete one-off product, it's almost always a negotiation).
WotC did not "lay down the law" to Amazon/Curse on this. They negotiated. Now whether they got a good deal, we have no idea. But claims that they have to sell it for X amount because WotC are making them do not ring true, and indeed I see no evidence, whatsoever, that the developers have said WotC was involved in price-setting. I mean, can you find that? All I can see is "We can't give you free digital books, because we're not WotC". That's a reasonable position, but it is no way the same thing as or even similar to claiming WotC is setting the prices. I think it would be smart for the developers of this product to look at getting cosy-er with their bosses at Amazon, maybe make some deals so that you can buy a digital copy HERE, and Amazon will massively discount a physical copy of the same, or vice-versa, but I see no sign that's happening either (even though it absolutely could, given Curse is wholly-owned by Amazon).
And no "you don't get a license" isn't "holding all the cards", because WotC profits from there being a digital offering, so they realistically have to offer it to someone, or they will be fighting an endless, losing war against fan-created digital products, and every single time they C&D one, it's bad PR for them, really bad. Plus they want to make money off the offering - I mean I have no doubt they get some percentage of the digital one-off sales, and probably either a percentage of the sub fees, and/or an on-going licensing fee (maybe all three - certainly two of those).
Just breaking out a comment from the above as a clear suggestion people may be interested in:
Curse, and D&D Beyond, are wholly-owned by Amazon.
That's not a criticism, it's just a fact.
Amazon is the major place most people get their physical books from.
Beyond has a PR problem in that people who buy the physical books don't get to use them digitally, and vice-versa.
This problem could largely be solved by getting their bosses at Amazon to make some sort of link with Beyond. Either have it so buying a book here entitles you to a discount at Amazon (again, the same company as this, essentially), or buying it at Amazon entitles you to a discount here, or even both ways, then, suddenly, you might have something quite attractive, and you'd have pushed a huge amount of purchasing traffic currently going to FLGSes and the like to Amazon (which Amazon would surely approve of).
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
D&D Beyond FoundersPun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
"Edit to add: I actually forgot to address one of the other facts here. The comparison between physical book and digital book + tool integration isn't actually even the most accurate possible comparison. Curse sells an option that is just the digital version of the book (same text and art, but no special features) for $19.99 for books that the list price is $49.95."
I'm a bit unclear on this, what are "special features" in this context? Integration into Beyond you mean? So you're describing essentially a digital copy in a proprietory format? This is the one that doesn't even work in the mobile app, right? So it's online-only, effectively.
I mean that wouldn't be an unreasonable price for a PDF or similar format. For a proprietory digital format which I can't use disability tools on (unlike PDF), which requires me to use a specific app to access, an app I can't customize the look of, and which could be removed from the store at a later date, or modified so it was basically (or literally) unusuable (again, these things have happened, IRL, not theoretically)? I don't think that's a very reasonable price.
Not without real guarantees from Curse. I mean, they could give guarantees, reasonably.
For example, they could give access to older versions of the app, going forwards, and they could make the app accessible outside of normal "walled garden" store channels. That wouldn't help iOS users, but those chose a walled garden in a way Android and PC users didn't. They could also make the app open-source. And perhaps they could talk to people with disabilities about app design, instead of designing an app for whoever they regard as an average user.
Or they could just sell a PDF... (I suspect they actually can't because of their licensing agreement with WotC, but that's on them to deal with, not us.)
I'm going to assume that you haven't read the other post I've already made, and not respond to this particular point again - which I am only saying here in hopes of reducing further missing of previous posts from happening.
No spills? No drops? No accidental ripping a page here or there while trying to quickly look something up? No chance at all that your house experience natural disaster or other massive accidents like flood or fire?To phrase those rhetorical questions differently; Having never actually lost or severely damaged any of your books is luck, not lack of risk. I took exquisite care of my gaming collection (and still take exquisite care of my much smaller replacement collection), but a hurricane named Katrina didn't give me long enough advance notice to take everything I'd collected from the early '90s up through 2005 out of my home at the time (Slidell, Louisiana) before she pushed an entire lake into town and left my neighborhood in the state of just tree tops and roofs poking up from the surface of the water.
Well, that's entirely unfair - you over-simplify and it's fine, but I over-simplify and I get "don't talk nonsense."Yes, it's a negotiation - but in that negotation WotC has the power to establish dealbreakers - by which I mean they get certain say-so about details of how their property is licensed - and Curse either has to agree to those demands or they aren't the one that gets the license, someone else willing to meet the conditions WotC has set does. So if WotC were to have said as part of the negotiation something specific about what pricing can or can't be, Curse has to follow that or not get to use the license, which would absolutely not be Curse having 100% control over their pricing decisions like you claimed that they have (which maybe they do, I don't know - but neither do you, unless one of the licensing decisions you were involved in was this exact licensing negotiation... but if that were the case, it'd be pretty weird for you to take the "trust me, I know what I'm talking about because I've done this sort of thing before" approach rather than "I know, I was there" approach).
Yeah, but in that particular bad relation, it's not WotC making it bad, it's the public - by acting like WotC has done something out of line by not just sitting back and taking it with a smile.