DDB has been behind the ball on implementing new books for forever.  Their pace of new article content slowed drastically and is now basically completely shut off.  They brought new talent on board, only to get rid of that talent almost as soon as it showed up.  The website's health has been on the decline for some time now, and this latest raft of leave-takings isn't any better a sign.  Especially when one knows that a corporation will do anything to hide any sort of weakness, to the point where everyone knows that what the company says about its current health almost assuredly has only coincidental at best bearing on the truth.

So...yeah.  Nice of Stormknight and Lauren to try and reassure folks, but since they'd be contractually obligated to do so no matter the actual state of DDB, people will suspect incipient insolvency regardless.

Actually, DnDBeyond being a prestige item in a resume − might be a good sign!

I think, as the official folks said in other ways, is the programming is the bulk of the site.

I mean, I know I use the site a lot but didn't engage in the articles and videos much until very recently, in part because similar content is available in so many other places online.

From a purely business standpoint I can definitely see someone going "Do we really need to be paying for video production and articles whenever an new UA is released when most of our users are getting that same info from any of the other channels on youtube that are covering the same exact things?" 

There are some programming bits that still concern me (Primal Companion!) but they do work pretty quickly for most things, and that suffering would be a much bigger sign to worry. 

I can't see why 4 of the top people are leaving DDB so close together without more details. The only reason I can see, in my opinion, is a falling out with Fandom; like maybe Fandom is going to do something they all didn't agree with. And without earlier warnings???

Interesting thread. I was wondering about the significance of this development. Not that I’m any the wiser. 
I’m going to be a bit more reserved about my purchases here until the implications become more transparent. 

Quote from pangurjan >>

Quote from Cyb3rM1nd >>

The overall perception of things just screams "uh oh" in literally all avenues. These people leaving , on its own, isn't what made me concerned. It's this on top of so many other things that, combined, portrays itself as a glaring red flag.

And I personally find it difficult to think everything's OK, despite the reassurance, because the signs have been there for months now - this is just the biggest (to our perspective) and too often companies will say "it's fine" right up until the end. 

 What are all these "so many other things"?

 
Less articles

Less writers

Less streamed content / games

Longer times between system updates

Updates we do get are smaller (we're waiting longer for less)

More complaints about increased wait times in support.

Less sponsorship to Critical Role 

Quality of implementation is reduced from new books despite easier features - taking WAY too long to implement all features. Stuff their competitors, like Roll20, have already implemented within days of release. Yet we still have to homebrew Piety workarounds. Woeful.

Less bug fixes

The bug fixes that do get done take longer to get done. Even the big serious bugs like the homebrew lag they promised was being looked into and yet nothing has been done at all to this day, months later. 

Less active moderation - there's been an increase in how threads get derailed, necro'd or duplicated, even when reported sometimes takes day to get resolved or not done at all. It used to be, no matter when, any issue was seen to within an hour or two thanks to a large list of very active mods/staff. Now it's like it's just Storm and Dave struggling on their own for most of it.

Less general community interaction, at least on forums.

And more I'm too tired to list.

In recent months so many areas are just getting... less and slower for the most part. So that was worrying. And now all the big names are leaving. Something feels off, is all.

 (( EDIT It took me a while to type this out [multitasking is hard], so it did get answered before I submitted, notably by Yurei, so it's good to know I'm not noticing something that wasn't there. ))

It looks a bit like a poach, which is not super unusual, but it's almost always easier to poach from companies that have other problems going on.

Honestly, I think D&D Beyond has the problem that they're trying to compete in the game tools space and they aren't a VTT. As an online reference it's good, but it's not really optimal for being your primary platform for running a game.

Side tangent for shits: am I the only human being in existence that's glad DDB isn't a VTT?  Every VTT I've ever seen or heard of is ridiculously over-complicated to use, with massively unintuitive tools and a learning curve that's a bit more like a learning cinderblock wall with hidden claymore mines waiting for an errant face to hit their trigger switches.  DDB not trying to force me to figure out how to work an obnoxious and unhelpful VTT interface - this is me staring squarely at Roll20 - is one of the reasons it got money in the first place.

I just watched the video.  All I can say is neither of them looked like leaving was done in anger or that they were pushed.    I'd go the they got their start up payout and are heading off to new things.   It's been a few years, people change jobs it's not everything is a huge old conspiracy. 

No Yurei, you're not.

I'm fine with VTTs but frankly, TOTM is better for me. The character sheet tools and searching and whatnot are all I really need for this site. I use Roll20 only for the convenience of the chat and dice rolling. D&D Beyond could just focus on that aspect and be a complete package for me. I find Roll20 easier than other VTT but it can certainly be a paid to use sometimes - it's character sheet is dreadful (and thanks to Beyond20 I don't have to deal with that nonsense), and how it formats stuff (like spells) is horrible to read and awkward. 

D&D Beyond will never be a proper VTT. Not as their own thing. If the more simple stuff like piety, classes and custom invocations and such things just stump D&D Beyond so much, then the sincerely more complicated VTT is just way beyond them (puns!). They're better off getting a few features working, like campaign dice logs (which still needs work) and then making their public API so it can be more easily used with external services, like the existing VTTs, if we want to. This way we can use a VTT more easily if we want and D&D Beyond don't have to bother wasting so much dev resource towards their own VTT and can focus on fixing the stuff that's been broken for years, or to provide the basics we've been asking for since the day of its inception, which all of its competitors offer, like custom classes. That stuff is far more useful than a VTT, anyday.

a lot of speculation from not much info here

Quote from ChrisAu >>

a lot of speculation from not much info here

 This is the internet, our goal is to make a whole lot from very little. 

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Side tangent for shits: am I the only human being in existence that's glad DDB isn't a VTT? 

 I mostly agree with you. Whilst a VTT would be awesome in the future, I'd rather DDB focus on getting the Character Sheet/Combat Tracker/Encounter Builder etc perfected first. They'd essentially be playing catch up to all the other VTTs out there, of which there are quite a few, so I'd definitely prefer that they fully spruce up their existing content first. 

not just 4e, they tried under 3e, and it was abysmal.  

But being another company, i cant see Hasbro buying it.  It doesnt make sense.  

I sold my few physical books early on and own every book available through DDB and have the master subscription for my groups to make characters. Since the pandemic I've moved to FoundryVTT and use it to integrate DDB stats...

With that said I think its not unreasonable to be concerned by the exodus while waiting on more info... but its premature to jump to conclusions. Obviously I have my D&D Library heavily invested in DDB so I'm looking forward to more information/assurance.

everyone keeps asking for more info but seems to be ignoring the staff that have literally commented.

People - it is frankly normal for staff to leave in groups, almost ever place I have worked one person gets a job offer and a few more get one within the month.  The fact that 4 people got job offers at other places is not odd, it is only odd because they are the people at the company we know and talk to. But that does not mean anything for the business or what devious motives have these people leaving.

Seriously talk about how bad it looks but continue to ignore the staff (one is even one of the ones leaving) that are telling you all you are over reacting.

Being an IT person by trade, I get that the smiling faces aren't the people slaving away in the back. So I'm not particularly alarmist about this, but it seems like it would be a good idea for corporate messaging to transition into some new faces.

Like an introduction video with the metaphorical passing of the torch, or could even gamify it into a one-shot, like TPK turning into new party killing the bad guy, cooperation of parties, literal hand off of torch McGuffin, etc. Just feels like a little wasted potential to get people on board and invested in new humans.

As the public and community facing part of the company, maybe they got sick of having to tend with or get dragged through this forum.  People do time at a place and move on.  It's the start of a new year, entities in the same industry work in similar cycles, it just seems a lot of folks doomsaying all this don't seem to know how professional mobility and turnover works.

We at Quests and Chaos will certainly miss these guys!    We're also available if you need a channel to sponsor and help bring to new heights!

The issue, Hollow, is that anyone who's worked in a corporation of any size, scale or scope before knows that the people leaving are contractually obligated to speak of the company in glowing terms, to tell everyone that it's simply a lifestyle change, and to wish everyopne the best.  I have no doubt that for these folks that's mostly true, but Stormknight, Lauren, and the rest actually, factually cannot say anything but what they've said in this thread before the end of their terms of employment (and, often, long after) without severe professional repercussions.  Regardless of the actual truth of the matter.

Corporations' absolutely pathological, overriding terror at letting anyone know anything is remotely wrong means they will assure you that Everything Is Fine even while the headquarters is burning down behind the spokesperson for the company.  It's impossible to believe them, even if you want to, as they always say the exact same stuff regardless of the actual state of the company.  So...people look elsewhere, try to read between the lines, and speculate due to the 100% unreliability of firsthand sources in cases like this.

It's ridiculous, it's obnoxious, it sucks for the people who KNOW their word can't be trusted in situations like this but who still have to do the corporate-mouthpiece thing anyways, and it's well and truly sad...but it's also just the way business works.  Lie, lie, and lie some more, because you go under the guillotine if you cause a hit to stock prices one single nanosecond before Reality would force the company's hand.