D&D Beyond Drops: Update on the Program

Quote from MilhouseBaxter >>

One concern WoTC\DND Beyond should consider are the fact when you "buy" it online you can lose access in the event of the company shutting down the servers. People like me will spend thousands on books but aren't really inclined to buy something that's actually being leased with no real means of ensuring ownership of what I paid for. If you dedicate to providing a PDF of paid for digital content in the event of the sever\services being shut down, or allow people to buy annual or quarterly printed versions even if it's a soft back I'd buy it. As it stands I don't do subscriptions for access, and if I bought it digital only I'd need guarantees about not losing access because of bankruptcy, corporation businesses decisions to shut down services, or other legal trickery.

While your argument about renting vs buying applies to most subscription services, it does not work here. The content on D&D Beyond is not audio or video. It is TEXT. You can just COPY AND PASTE / SCREENSHOT whatever content you have access to, save it to your own computer and "own" it forever. 

I am genuinely surprised by the amount of people apparently missing this.

For the same reason, you do not even have to wait for WotC to make the annual D&D Beyond Drops content purchasable. You can simply "subscribe" for a single month, pay USD 2.17, save whatever content you like, and cancel your subscription, thus "owning" everything available on D&D Beyond Drops at that time.

I think it's really awesome that you're listening to feedback from the community. I didn't have much of a problem with the way it was originally but a lot of other people did and hopefully this makes them happier.

I do have a question And it's mostly because this is the first Thursday of the month and I see the weekly encounter drop but I don't see all the other things. Are they coming later in the day?

Will the yearly D&D Beyond Drops bundles be limited time and replaced when a new yearly bundle releases, or will every bundle stay available?

Oh look at that, not having the content shareable was the wrong choice overall. Who could have known except myself and everyone else in the other post? I hope to see this content shareable since it makes no sense for a DM to have player options they can't share

Availability for Non-Subscribers

We didn’t tell players about any way in which they could get DDB Drops content without having a subscription. While this was a possibility we had discussed internally, we made the wrong choice at rollout not to commit to anything yet. I’m here to correct that today. We will commit to releasing at least yearly D&D Beyond Drops bundles on the D&D Beyond marketplace every year (in May), covering the previous year’s content and purchasable for all players. We have ways to further augment this with player feedback. For now, I wanted to make that baseline commitment clear.

This is awesome. I hope we get a print on demand option like DMsguild stuff.  I think it was Ted from Nerdimersion that I saw that suggested that and it seems like a great idea to me.

Technically they already are, as you can add it to their character sheet for them. Buuuuuuutt that is really stupid and clunky.

I've bought digital content before that I no longer have access too, through no fault of my own.

Some people like to actually own what they buy

For the subscription content, can you put out a physical book each year? Please. 

Thank-you for making this change!

Quote from LaTiaJacquise >>

Quote from Amanda42882 >>

I think it's really awesome that you're listening to feedback from the community. I didn't have much of a problem with the way it was originally but a lot of other people did and hopefully this makes them happier.

I do have a question And it's mostly because this is the first Thursday of the month and I see the weekly encounter drop but I don't see all the other things. Are they coming later in the day?

 Drops do release later in the day, yes :)

Awesome! Thanks so much!

Those guys are very kind. But, still I think that they shall give like the 20% or the 15% of the content for free, for those with no big budget(like me).

I have no idea what drops is, but I gained a ton of respect for a company that listens to feedback and public ally admits when they've made a mistake.

Hi! I just want to thank you for your transparency and for doing your best to always side with the players and community. I know firsthand how hard it could be to defend these kind of stances and values from the business standpoint, and defend them before upper management. I admire and respect immensely what you are doing with the D&D and D&D Beyond right now, thank you all so much for the work, I truly hope you will be able to keep it up in this direction. Thank you!

Thank you for listening to the community's concerns! It was important to me to be able to share these drops with my players.

applause brian! and the wotc decision making team. Your accountability and the way you listen to us is absolutely commendable! I think i speak for all of us when i say we absolutely love seeing this!

The only update I care about is the whole drops thing being put down. It's genuinely disgusting to have content locked behind a suscription instead of a one-time payment

You also need to address the part where its garbage tier content that obviously hasn't been sufficiently playtested. 

Try making good content if you want people to pay for it

Excellent! Thank you for listening to and considering our feedback. These decisions are quite satisfying!

I've been a Master Subscriber for multiple years, I do NOT want additional supplementary content to be provided through a Subscription. Infact, that will be one of the things to push me out of the subscription; I should have the same opportunity to get content as the next person. .

Content should be available in publicly purchasable books. Not turning it into MtG and having Master be a *necessity* for content. All it's going to do is push me away pretty hard and use alternatives that aren't as anal about Homebrew.