If you don’t mind, I’d like to share my thoughts on this as well. I knew what I was paying for when I bought all of my books on dndbeyond. And, even though I deleted my account, I don’t really regret all the money I spent because the sheer amount of hours used related to money spent over the years was a lot. Compare that to something like cable or even video games, and the value is easy to see. This is true despite the fact that it was more than if I just used books.
When you left, you said all the right things, but I am old enough that I knew what was going on. And, as logos said, here you are doing the same thing. But, I don’t mean this in a bad way. I believe you are sincere in what you are doing; but, what it gets down to is how do we know that Disney (or whatever) won’t buy Demiplane out and turn it into something completely different – something that none of the existing users will like, but that they are sure will make them money with kids moms who see movies and such? Well, we don’t. And there is no way to honestly say we ever will. Would you turn down $1 billion? I know I would not, and I cannot fault you if that happens.
This is the same thing with any industry. My mortgage got sold this year (really irritating because they did not automatically switch the autopay, so we had to re-set that up.) Companies get bought and sold all the time.
So, is there some recourse? One thing I noticed that you are implementing – at least with PF2, not sure about the others – is the ability to get the pdf from Paizo, or discounts if stuff was bought through Paizo. This is a huge step in the right direction. And then I saw the ad (see above) that says pre-order the Hardcover + digital for the Vampire series and it occurred to me that this seems like the perfect solution. I usually watch the streams, but did not make it this time so forgive me if this was mentioned by you, but the discount is STEEP. The book all by itself is $55 (I don’t see anything on VTM website indicated that the pdf is included in this price, but am unsure).
I intend, now that I see the option, to buy all future products in that fashion. The OGL debacle has opened a curiosity and interest for me that was not there before, and I would love to have a collection of weird but fun TTRPG books on my shelf (Its good for interviews, first dates, etc.)
TLDR: To be clear, I in no way think that you deserted the fanbase by what happened in the past, and I would encourage others to have the same mindset. You saw the writing on the wall, and left to make a better version before it got worse.
Complete aside (hopefully you are still reading – sorry for the wall of text): I follow several TTRPG youtubers. As of me writing this, here is a break down of some of them about the 5e nexus announcement:
indestructoboy - 4.6k views
nerd immersion - 5.6k views
demiplane announcement - 2.8k views
That is a lot of eyeballs not seeing the announcement. Some of them seemed to have very little (if any) knowledge about what has been going on here, and were completely blindsided. If you haven’t already, I would encourage your staff to reach out to them.
