Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks has told GamesRadar that Dungeons and Dragons makes more sense as a live service game than a slate of hardback books. The interview dropped this week alongside the launch of D&D Beyond Drops, and signals where Wizards of the Coast wants to take the world's biggest tabletop RPG.
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Find events near you"A very high percentage use Foundry VTT or Roll20, and so it just makes sense that you should start to migrate your thinking about the way you play to more of a live service," Cocks said. He went on to argue that Wizards "doesn't have to wait 18 months for us to build a book," and can instead release content components over time.
Cocks did soften the pitch with a nod to physical books, calling them "a special totem that you can collect." Wizards announced its 2026 publishing slate at GAMA earlier in the year, organising the year into themed Seasons of Horror, Magic and Champions, anchored by tentpole books like Ravenloft: The Horrors Within on 16 June.
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Start organising for freeThe "live service" framing has already ruffled feathers. D&D Beyond launched its Drops feature on 7 May, dripping new spells, feats, maps and encounters to Hero and Master tier subscribers each week. Subscribers have spotted a catch. Drops content is not eligible for content sharing, so even Master tier DMs cannot pass new spells to their party. If a five-player table all wants the new options, they all need their own subscription. For a hobby that already has the OGL fiasco fresh in memory, the optics are not great.
For DMs who run weekly groups and pay £8 a month for the convenience, this might be a win. For everyone else, it's a clear signal that the next decade of D&D will lean a lot harder on subscriptions, even as the hardbacks keep coming.
Sources: GamesRadar | EN World | D&D Beyond
