As a hardcore roll20 hater, I’m not too happy about this. Hopefully this at least makes R20 better and demiplane won’t just be killed off in 6 months.
Why the hate?
Roll 20 kind of sucks. They haven’t made tangible improvements in years for performance, and the gm and player tools are lacking compared to other options despite making money hand over fist.
That’s no reason to hate anything. You just mentioned there are alternatives, just switch to them.
P.S. I am very skeptic of any claim that any TTRPG product making money have over first these days. Especially one with a functional free tier.
Source: https://blog.roll20.net/posts/roll20-has-acquired-demiplane/?_hsmi=310100938
“We’re excited to announce that Roll20 has acquired Demiplane, the best-in-class character-building solution for tabletop roleplaying games! Demiplane joins a growing suite of TTRPG (tabletop roleplaying game) offerings from Roll20 that include Roll20 Tabletop, DriveThruRPG, and Dungeon Scrawl.”
I suppose “hand over fist” is a subjective term, but you don’t acquire companies for free.
DriveThruRPG (which merged with Roll20 in 2022) according to https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/roll20-buys-demiplane
Roll20’s making some cash to keep their payroll* and purchase other companies.
*the business running
Even worse, Roll20 development is not only slow, player made solutions to issues are locked behind a paywall.
Making your customers pay you a monthly subscription to fix your product for you and then charging other customers a monthly subscription to access the fixes you didn’t make is a grift so insane it’s bordering genius.