EDIT:: Never let it be said I don't eat my crow when it's time to eat crow.  We have direct word from a D&D Beyond staffer, linked below from Davyd and also here, from me, saying that this is indeed a hoax and much hullaballoo about nothing.  Until and unless that changes, the post is stricken and I'll take my  lumps.  Bad Rei.  No ghost snacks for you.  Thanks to the DDB team for getting in front of this much faster than usual for forum fires.

Observe.

This was originally brought up in the "Request and Vote for New Features" section of DDB, under the request "can you not jack up the price of my subscription to 30 dollars a month?"  Which strikes me as a very fair request.  Now, in fairness to DDB (for the moment), this could easily be a faked image, somebody trying to trolldick the forums (which it looks like it was, huzzah dumbasses)...but honestly, it's far too on point for Wizards for me to truly believe that.  DDB's current monetization scheme, i.e. a modest and affordable subscription for helpful-but-unessential benefits followed by a reasonable per-book price for the main content, is too fair and non-predatory towards consumers to be allowed to stand by the company that made an art and science of fleecing people for every nickle they have with booster packs.

This pricing schema magnifies your subscription price by a factor of over 10, if you're a current Hero subscriber.  It gives you "benefits" you never asked for, didn't want, but are now being required to pay through the absolute nose for.  A "Discount" on physical books - that you very likely weren't using in the first place because you're here using the digital goods service.  Access to Every D&D Book Ever - which you likely either already had, or didn't want because there's books Wizards releases that you don't care about.  Now you get to pay for those books whether you use them or not.  And let us not forget, "Free" users lose three of their current six characters and lose access to homebrew entirely.  So if you drop your subscription due to the absolutely otrageous, highly predatory new price point, not only do you lose almost all your characters but you cannot access any of your existing homebrew anymore, at all.

Oh, but hey!  You get access to all the dice, all the sheet shinies, and all the other ancillary fluff things!  ...that you already paid for.  When it was offered for sale.  The first time.  But now, if you don't cough up an absolutely ludicrous nearly four hundred dollars a year, all the things you already bought are going to get locked so you cannot use them anymore.

Me and my group play exclusively online, because we're scattered across the country.  We do not play in person, we've never played in person, we never will play in person.  We do not give a single fat frog **** about the Big Benefit from this move, i.e. "Physical book discounts!"  If this is the answer to "why don't I get a free DDB book when I buy a physical book?!" complaints, then every last single person who's ever asked that question can now rot in Hell forever because this schema is so godawful predatory and anti-consumer that it will cost millions of DDB players their accounts.

Take note, Wizards.  You are not ******* Netflix.  You are not ******* World of Warcraft.  Those companies produce a thousandfold your content for half the monthly price you're demanding for access to DDB, and they're still on rocky ground.  I could not care less about most of your half-assed adventure books, nor are all of your sourcebooks worth my time and money.  So long as you let me choose what I buy?  We'll remain cordial.  The moment you pull the trigger on this and demand I buy EVERYTHING - and also nothing, because all by 'benefits' turn off the moment I stop paying your godawful predatory overinflated subscription fee?  We're going to have Disagreements.

I like this game.  DDB is the only real way/reason I get to play it.  It's gonna suck real hard when we have to drop D&D entirely due to Wizards' horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE monetary decisions.  But we're still gonna do it.  Nobody in their right mind is willing to pay four hundred dollars a year for literally ******* nothing.

I recommend putting the (rumored) pricing right in the title of this thread.

Yeah, really not thrilled about this, and I say that as someone who buys all of these books digitally and most of them physically. I want to be able to drop $30 on a digital book and then not have to worry about doing so every month after to keep reading it.

has this been confirmed as real?

I wonder, is there any way we can get someone to confirm this? (probably not)
cuz I just got master tier cuz it was only a bit more and this....this just feels like a massive ripoff

are we gonna lose access to books that we already bought then?
I can understand them turning off hb for free account ppl, that makes monetary sense, but like....just...ahhhhhhhhhhhh

We won't know til tomorrow or until someone confirms/denies.

isnt there an announcement stream thing tomorrow? and there is a big thing saying 'not for external discussion prior to 8/18/2????' so I guess we will find out tomorrow

Something tells me the "discount on physical books" is going to hurt FLGSes, too, which I'm doubly unhappy about.

Yeah, there is literally nothing beneficial in this schema to any-damned-one except Wizards of the Coast.  it's worse for FLGS's, it's worse for customers, it's worse for prospective customers...it's just godawful all around.

Man....this is just sad

Official response here

Quote from Davyd >>

Official response here

 WOOOOO TY

so much text and anger, for so little purpose.

And original post edited to account for new information.  Thank you, Davyd.  And thank you to Sarahiscoffee (heeh), who is apparently our new Community Manager.  Probably not the introduction she wanted (unless she was already introduced and I'm just living under a gravestone rock somewhere), but I'm relieved to hear from Official Heads in either case.

Nothing quite like a trial by fire to hit the ground running

Every silver lining has a cloud. I was almost looking forward to having another great homebrew reset so I could clean up my menus and sort through all the versions of my brews properly.

additional "slides" are being leaked....the couple i saw show some rather poor grammar and frankly corpo-speak way to convoluted for even corporations to actually use.

just be wary as people outside of the loop may be posting more images here.

I mean, being realistic?  A "gain access to all books while you pay your sub" thing is something enough people have asked for that I wouldn't be surprised if DDB offered it as an option in the future.  Just...not the ONLY option, and not at that gobsmack ridiculous price point.