85% say they’ll spend less on D&D Beyond following removal of a la carte purchases

See the results of our survey asking players how they feel about the removal of a la carte purchases on D&D Beyond

Recently, D&D Beyond announced the removal of a la carte purchases from all books. These types of purchases allowed players to buy parts of books that were relevant to them without having to shell out for the whole book. This was useful for players that had little use for an entire book but found value in having a subclass, race or other option available in that book.

There were frustrated views expressed online at the change so I shared a survey on Reddit to gather people’s opinions. Thank you to everyone that shared their opinions, we managed to get a huge 803 responses. More than I expected and certainly helps to create a detailed picture of people’s sentiments around the change.

I will try to remain unbiased on this and report the data as much as possible. The change isn’t something that affects me personally as I prefer to buy physical books, but did want the opportunity for others to combine their voices and let their opinions be known.

Here’s what I found:

What do players buy?

83% of respondents say they’ve made some kind of a la carte purchases with 49% saying that they usually or always make a la carte purchases when buying digital content on D&D Beyond.

Class and subclass options were the most popular a la carte purchase types with 79% of respondents making these types of purchases. Below shows which types of content people tend to buy using a la carte purchases:

We also asked players what types of books they were buying content from on D&D Beyond. A lot of respondents are buying content from multiple sources with 80% saying they buy from supplementary rulebooks like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and 77% buying content from the core rulebooks. It’s not clear from the data how many of these purchases are la carte and how many are whole book purchases.

A lot of respondents still buy from other types of books where there are often less player options available. The full results are below:

It’s not surprising to see the most respondents buying content from core and supplementary rulebooks as 65% of respondents stated that they are players at least half the time they play. Even then, DMs also need the types of content found in these books too.

What’s more interesting is the proportion of respondents buying content from setting and campaign books. I imagine many are DMs, but many are likely players wanting some of the options available exclusively to those settings or campaigns (I’m sure many players would enjoy playing a Kender in a Dragonlance campaign or a Fairy in a Feywild campaign for instance).

Why do players make a la carte purchases?

When asked why players make a la carte purchases, the majority (56%) explained that they don’t need a lot of the information in the books. This makes a lot of sense as while some books are geared around both players and DMs, in many cases, large parts of books are useful only for the DM.

Take Spelljammer: Adventures in Space for example. While it has 6 new races and some backgrounds, these are some of the few options a player is going to be interested in from the books. DM’s will likely use many other parts of the books such as those focused around the adventure, lore and monsters, but DMs only represent about 20% of the user base according to WOTC’s research. This means that a whopping 80% of players are going to have to spend $49.99 to get about 6 pages worth of material if they want Spelljammer exclusive player options (yes, there are ways for DMs to share material, but this isn’t an option at many tables).

Another example would be books like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. It has a lot more value to a player with a lot of new player options around things like subclasses, a whole new class, new magic items, spells, tattoo options etc. While even these books may be a lot more player-centric, many players are unlikely to use all these options. They may only use a handful of subclasses or use one or 2 new spells from the list (certainly this has been my experience, and I own the book).

On top of this, 16% of respondents said they didn’t find the books offered enough value to purchase the whole thing. Another 12% said they couldn’t afford to purchase the whole book and a handful of respondents said that they already had the physical book so didn’t want to buy the whole thing again when using certain options through D&D Beyond.

How will this change affect player purchases on D&D Beyond?

This is the crucial part for WOTC as presumably, this move was made to increase sales of full books. Obviously, it will be expected that less purchases will be made overall, but the hope on their part will be that the increase in full book sales compensates for the removal of microtransaction purchases.

We can’t know what the full impact will be, and likely only WOTC will really know in the coming months, but I did want to encapsulate this by asking how respondent’s spending will change.

The big thing is that most respondents expect to spend less on D&D Beyond with 85% of respondents stating this. 15% of people said they would spend about the same amount as they did before. Only a couple of people said they would spend more as a result.

How has this affected sentiment towards D&D Beyond and WOTC?

89% of respondents said they feel more negatively towards the companies with 59% saying they feel much more negatively towards the companies. 9% felt that the move didn’t change how they feel about the companies while 2% felt that it improved their feelings towards the businesses.

Unsurprisingly, most respondents feel negatively about this change. I offered respondents the chance to provide written feedback as if they were feeding back directly to the D&D Beyond team. 48% of respondents replied, a surprisingly high number and a lot of data for me to sift through, but I wanted people to have an opportunity to express their opinions more fully.

There were a range of sentiments expressed which I’ve tried to summarise below:

• Many people felt that the move is very anti-consumer
• Many people complained that it makes the options players wanted to buy too expensive by giving no other option than purchasing a whole book
• Some people were frustrated at the lack of communication from the D&D Beyond team prior to these changes
• Some users expressed that a la carte purchases were one of the best selling points of the D&D Beyond platform and are frustrated that the service as a whole has been made worse
• Some explained that on top of other issues, that this decision is the nail in the coffin for them to stop using D&D Beyond
• Many simply expressed anger and frustration at the decision
• Some were concerned that they might lose out on discounts to purchase the full book after having already made a la carte purchases
• Some people suggested alternatives to removing a la carte purchases altogether such as increasing the price of these types of purchases
• Some felt that the hobby has become less accessible to newer players as a result as they have to invest more heavily to start playing the game
• Some felt that a la carte purchases were a gateway to buying the full book and might cause less book purchases instead
• Some users are worried about the future of other D&D Beyond features that could be removed
• Some expressed concerns that this change would lead to more piracy of book content as access to book content becomes more expensive
• Some people felt the change didn’t make much difference
• Some people also expressed their dislike for microtransactions and were pleased with the change

Conclusion

While some amount of self-selection bias should be taken into consideration, the survey results are very clear; removing a la carte options has been a very unpopular decision among players.

Not only has it eroded player’s feelings towards the brand, most respondents are indicating that the move will encourage them to spend less on D&D Beyond. If this ends up being the case, it would certainly be a lose/lose situation for both players and WOTC.

People were very vocal on the subreddit channels I posted this survey on so if you do want to see some of the specific feedback users have been sharing, you can find it on r/dndnext and r/dndbeyond

I empathise with those that feel D&D Beyond has been made worse by this decision and feel there could have been better ways to handle the situation if profitability truly is an issue.

As a starting point, communicating early on with a passionate and dedicated user base is important. It would have given people an opportunity to voice their feelings and potentially allow a change or adaptation of the approach.

I’d also question whether there could have been alternative ways to adapt a la carte purchases. While the nature of business means that they will always seek to earn more, I suspect there are ways this could have been done while protecting the long term interests of the business and fans. I’ve shared some examples below (some of which have been shared by respondents, others are my own ideas):

• Increase the price of a la carte purchases
• Bundle a la carte options together (for instance, you can just buy all the player options from the Spelljammer books without needing to purchase all the DM options)
• Removing a la carte options for books that contain large amounts of content for players (like the player’s handbook) but retaining these options for more DM focused books (like campaign books with player options that a player wouldn’t buy the whole book of anyway)

While these options may not be as popular for users as they were previously, they still feel like better options for players while achieving Wizard’s goal of increasing revenue.