Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
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D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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I've been recently told by my DM that Hasbro made an announcement that everyone is required to have a D&D Beyond subscription to play and access content. Is this true? I've had a free account for a while and I don't think I can afford to pay for a subscription service.
Where did you hear it? I have not heard that they have made such an announcement, but i would not put it past them.
I can't tell you if it is true or not because this is the first i am hearing it. But I may be out of the loop, since i don't use Beyond for my games anymore.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
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To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
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No, that is not true.
pronouns: he/she/they
if you want access to the content in the weekly Drops then yes you need to subscribe
That's true, but that is not the question that was asked.
It is very much not true that "everyone is required to have a D&D Beyond subscription to play and access content" and there has been no announcement to that effect by Hasbro.
pronouns: he/she/they
I believe this is just a continuation of the overreactions to Drops. Do you now need a subscription to access a minascule subset of content that happens to be unsharable? Yes. Does that mean "everyone is required to have a D&D Beyond subscription to play and access [all?] content"? Absolutely not. And I'm quite sure that with the current userbase split among subs and non-subs, if they tried that in the near future they'd be seriously shooting themselves in the foot.
Will it ever get to the point where they do require subs to play on DnDB? Honestly... probably. But they will want to wait until a much larger chunk of players are already subscribers. They will also want to make sure that their tools are superior to the competition's (and not just character creation integration with the rules). At least one of those things is not happening in the very near future (I do like the direction they are going with the new Maps features, but it's been too long since I've used anything else to compare it to).
TLDR: Keep your pitchforks in the shed.
Not true.
It's good that you didn't just take your DM's word for it. I would have recommended going to the front page of dndbeyond.com to look at announcements and news posts first. It's fine to ask the community of course, but if someone tells you "D&D Beyond just announced this" then a quick way to fact check that claim is to go directly to the source and look at D&D Beyond's announcements to get the facts firsthand.
> I've been recently told by my DM that Hasbro made an announcement that everyone is required to have a D&D Beyond subscription to play and access content. Is this true? I've had a free account for a while and I don't think I can afford to pay for a subscription service.
It's 0% accurate. There's also zero information suggesting it's coming. Just more disinformation
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
hmmm Davyd, that statement is 0% accurate.
D&D "drops" as they are being called, is the inaugural step of D&D going to a 100% digital subscription model. This first step is what in corporate we call a tolerance step. Where you build up the tolerance of what is coming by giving everyone a smaller, less intrusive version.
You start with a small, piece of content, and you slowly increase the amount of digital content to entice more and more people to get on board with the subscription model. Then, you start doing bigger and bigger pieces. Eventually, you can do entire books, and by then, everyone is used to it, and there will be plenty of community defenders. Eventually, when it's time to make a new edition, you announce that it's "free" with a subscription service, and boom, D&D is a subscription model game.
They are claiming right now that they will "never stop making books", but Hasbro's and Wizards of the Coast's promises are worth exactly ZERO.
It is 100% that in a couple of years time, to play the current version of D&D you will need a subscription and the cost of subscriptions is going to rapidly increase as people get invested in the content they have collected. Esepcially since the next step to drops is going to have something like "preimum drops"... aka, your subscription is not enough, but for an extra one-time fee of 9.99 you can get X or Y digital thing.
Anyone with even the slightest clue understands that this is where its going, they don't need to announce it.
I think the reason people are getting worried is because Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro, has been constantly trying to move D&D Beyond into a live-service model and has been saying this for years now. Then the "drops" happened, and then he did an interview with Games Radar furthering the idea he wants players to "shift their thinking" to this live service model. People are jumping to the conclusions that he wants to double-paywall everything into a similar drops system but he never actually stated that. In the interview it is suggested that aside from campaign book most rules/options content will be released in stages that can be purchased individually rather than as one book.
Link: https://www.gamesradar.com/tabletop-gaming/our-players-are-going-to-be-pretty-psyched-hasbro-ceo-talks-d-and-d-video-games-and-playing-to-win/
This does not state they're going to paywall everything into a subscription. But following talk of live service models right after Drops was not the best look, causing the leaps people made and this is exacerbated by clickbait fear-mongering youtubers like Dungeons & Discourse (their video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qujlPbKNBdY ) going off on how doomed D&D is now.So far the answer to OP is no. No statement of such exists. However, there is a cause for concern if we take the CEO statements and his aims for putting D&D into a live service model and look at Drops - it becomes understandable why people are jumping to conclusions. It's not a massive leap.
But no. There are no statements at this time that they plan to lock everything behind a double-paywall of purchase + sub. At most the statement was saying that rather than buying a book of extra options all at once you will buy parts of it over time - similar to a la carte purchases. There was no indication you needed a subscription for it. The system of comparison shouldn't be Drops - it's the Starter Packs.
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I can't believe you'd seriously link a Dungeons & Discourse video, their content is the most unserious, bottom of the barrel D&D content out there 😂. In the last year, they've claimed D&D is "over" or "done" or "dead" a total of ten times. They just straight up lie about things for clicks.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Ok lets put this in another way.
Here is a list of companies that swore their services would never be converted to subscription model.
Adobe
Autodesk
Avid Technology
Microsoft
Intuit
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Nintendo
Electronic Arts
YouTube
Netflix
BMW
Mercedes-Benz
HP
Fitbit
JetBrains
Corel
MAGIX
TeamViewer
Plex
Evernote
Unity Technologies
Maxon
SketchUp
Ableton
Canva
Not to mention the countless video/PC games.
Saying you're not going to do it and then doing it is the standard practice for subscription models. It's literally the go-to move.
This is not a question of if, its a question of when.
I'm finding it hard to take this part seriously. We had that. It was removed while Cocks was CEO.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Yes and no. A la carte never gave us the options to buy non "listing" components of books. If something wasn't a subclass, species, feat, background, spell, magic item, or monster, you couldn't buy it. You were never able to say buy the chapter in the DMG that covers making your own monsters for example. You couldn't buy just the survival rules from Icewind Dale. It wasn't possible to get the sidekicks chapter from Tasha's. What he's describing is a form of a la carte purchasing, but not the form we had.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
But I was told that there was NO basis for thinking Dungeons & Discourse was influencing people. That it was just a conspiracy theory. Speculation.
Puts the nail on the coffin in that regard.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I know but the problem is there are people who do listen to this, who do take it serious and jump to conclusions because of it and it does result in panic and overreaction and misinformation - such as what caused this thread.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
I watched this video mostly out of morbid curiosity as I agree, just the title is a clear indication that the intention is shock value.
While there is a lot of opinion on what this person is saying, I completely disagree that it's "straight up lies for clicks". You could fact-check that entire video; everything that was said is objectively true. You can agree or disagree with the opinions she has, but her opinion is based on pure fact.
Arguably, her opinion/prediction is that D&D IS going to a subscription model, not because it was announced, but that there is a very clear indication citing several sources that, if you really look at, don't really require you to make a terribly big leap to make that prediction.
I mean.. I definitely think they are going to end up in a pure subscription model, again, not really a question of IF, that is 100% certain, it's just a question of when. The only way this will change is if Chris Cocks gets canned and someone else takes over and decides to go in a different direction. It is without question a 100% certainty that this is what the CEO Hasbro wants and he makes that abundantly clear. He is careful with his words right now, a very obvious obfuscation of his desire and intent.
Drops are an obvious first step in a multi-stage plan to turn D&D into an online-only service.
The reality is that he is not wrong. I mean, there is going to be resistance to this change, but there is no future in which D&D books will make anywhere near as much money as he can get from a subscription model, and if you think a CEO like Chris Cocks "cares" about D&D or anything else other than making money, I don't know how to help you. This is a man with a singular purpose; access to your wallet, your preferences, desires, wishes, hopes, and dreams means a grand total of ZERO to him. Money.. That's it, D&D is not about anything else at all to this guy.
Notice the hypermajority of those are big tech & video games
Hasbro is a toy company,. WotC is a card & physical book company.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Fair point and mores the pity. Sometimes I do yearn for a simpler time of online D&D community.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here