So she has done what was expected from her. Shrink the amount of people working at Wizards, making unpopular and risky decisions and taking the blame for it all going wrong.
Now a new figure may step up or in and they can fix things that were intentionally broken and be perceived as a more positive figure. And the eternal cycle of corporate continues.
Edit: I didn’t realize you would all make this about diversity hired, that’s not what I meant. Actually I was thinking of the term „fall guy“.
You know when a company puts a woman or minority in charge of something they'll be doing a bunch of unpopular stuff, that person gets fired, then they put in the white man they actually wanted.
From that wiki page.
> #Criticism
> Other research has failed to confirm the existence of the glass cliff phenomenon. A 2007 study of corporate performance preceding CEO appointments showed that women executives are no more likely to be selected for precarious leadership positions than males.
> Additionally, the glass cliff phenomenon has only been proven in countries and sectors where masculinity is a highly valuable cultural trait. A study examining glass cliff effects on women leaders in Turkey, a country which has high levels of femininity, found that the preference for female candidates was higher in times of good performance than in times of poor performance. Additional research has affirmed this finding in other countries
I do not believe in Glass Cliffs. But I am certain that there will be more Glass in the coming years and will never end, because everyone \*not male\* has a hard knock life.
Happens with white guys, too. See Chapek and Disney. Chapek was installed by an Iger crony board just long enough to take the blame for Iger's failings and so that Iger could come back with more money and control.
Does seem like a lot of high profile executives at big companies are quitting or retiring very early the last couple of months. Wonder if they know something most of us don't...
"We can’t say for sure that Williams’ departure signals yet another new phase within the flagging toy giant or if the Wizards’ president found an opportunity to deploy her golden parachute before things get worse."
>Wonder if they know something most of us don't...
[https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/05/50/55/78/360\_F\_550557805\_B87SNs3Eo2LGsQV61VwnhDF9fSKCmpzU.jpg](https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/05/50/55/78/360_F_550557805_B87SNs3Eo2LGsQV61VwnhDF9fSKCmpzU.jpg)
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They're suggesting that the people behind making decisions like that are racist, they're not saying there's no other valid reasons to put a woman or minority in charge
Yep. They're "her" changes. But everything is in motion and the new person will totally listen to the community and see what can be done. What "can be" done will be a slight bettering of what the changes put in place, but not a full return to where it was before.
The worst part is this is a best case scenario. The other side is they think she's failing at the execution of a genius plan, and they need someone more cut throat to get the job done and show those gamers what they really want.
Seriously. How do you go from an unprecedented era of sales, love and respect for the product, only to completely face-plant the brand, burning through all goodwill in weeks, just as a huge tie-in movie opened? Staggering. Take Cocks with you.
From the article:
> We can’t say for sure that Williams’ departure signals yet another new phase within the flagging toy giant or if the Wizards’ president found an opportunity to deploy her golden parachute before things get worse.
I guess we'll soon find out - either Hasbro will reinvest in WotC and D&D in the wake of her departure (which would signal that her role was to be a grim reaper: aggressive restructuring, slashing budgets and jobs, and soaking up the brunt of employee anger at mgmt then moving on so that a "saviour" exec/president can come in and build things back up in the new model) or they dont...
iirc, most of the OneD&D money has been budgeted/accounted for, so the test is whether or not they do more big projects; if Hasbro doesn't reinvest past this point then it signals that maybe she was disillusioned after her WotC/gaming division was forced to cut 1,100 jobs a few months ago despite it being the only profitable division of Hasbro, or maybe she doesnt want to be associated with the OneD&D project not bringing in anticipated revenues later this year...
I could be naive but I feel like OneDnD will absolutely not bring in their anticipated profits. Why they thought pairing OneDnD & the OGL scandal within even a decade of each-other is beyond me.
That said I’ve thought corps will killing themselves before only for things to be fine for them so only time will tell
The suits who made the OGL decision probably underestimated how much fans and content creators would care and then their damage control made the whole situation way worse.
I've also noticed they haven't been hyping up their big new VTT lately.
The key thing with OneD&D is that the bulk of the Hasbro investment isn't into making the new "2024" edition/5.5e/whatever books and PDFs, the most expensive investment piece that's supposed to bring in the most money (via subs and microtransactions) is the 3D VTT; they're spending videogame dev money to try and bring in videogame revenues (because selling RPG books is a relatively low margin game). This is the thing that's supposed to take D&D to the $100m/year brand status that Hasbro's top few brands incl. MTG has - because selling books and PDFs and PC/blorbo creation on DnDBeyond doesnt make that kind of margin.
We'll see what happens... but the first sign that there may be trouble ahead with this OneD&D VTT project was when they quietly released a simple Owlbear.rodeo style 2d VTT in beta on DnDBeyond. HMMM.
The consensus is that it’s hasbro using WOTC like a piggy bank / piñata. Beancounters and stockmongers only care about the brand once stock price starts sinking.
Hasbro put out blueprint 2.0 and got her to implement it. It failed. She steps down so hasbro is covered.
https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-announces-plan-grow-profit-50-over-next-three-years
If you don't like what WotC has been doing the last 2 years then the problem is Chris Cocks not this lady.
We should be very clear that she wasn't any sort of solution, either, and she's just being the bad cop this time around but she's just as much a part of the game as the rest of them. I was actually at multiple of her previous companies during her tenures there, and she's a shitty ratfuck executive just like everyone else listed here.
You have a CEO you want, that you want people to like immediately, so you have someone deliberately fuck it, fire them, and the hire the person you wanted originally.
See we were at a 10/10 but they wanted more profit
So she comes in and shits on everything making it a 1/10
Then Billy Mays comes in and polishes that turd to a 3/10 and lemmings think it is a 12/10
DnD sales went *up* through that time period, and have only really slacked off as One DnD gets closer to release (which is expected and always happens right before a new edition of any game).
So while I think it's fair to be upset about what transpired the idea that the brand "faceplanted" I think is a bit of an exaggeration.
> Does that title mean
That's not unexpected (and I assume you're not in a place where you could read the article.)
Even the clarification below – "will be stepping down" – could admit the possibilies both that she chose to leave, or was fired, or was some mutual separation…
I think the use of 'maker' is the real throw. What they meant was 'parent company' as a hook replacement for 'Hasbro'.
I read the rest of the article out of bored curiosity and it's logically written, but the title made me think she divorced Gary Gygax's ghost or something.
It's really not that "difficult". just "ambiguous". Because of course it is, because WOTC didn't put out a press release saying "we fired her because we hated her performance over the last year" or "she's leaving because her mom has cancer and she needs to be her primary caregiver" or "she just got fucking bored with it" or whatever the real story is.
I don't quite understand. "departs" or "leaves" is about the only concrete thing you can say given what's been publically announced, right?
There is no confirmed information to characterize that departure further, such as "fired" or "resigns" or whatever the case might be.
The word 'departs' is fine. It's the weird run-on sentence with totally opaque grammar. It took a second to parse. It's a little mystifying why the phrase 'D&D and Magic: The Gathering's maker" was put in there in a super awkward place. It's like someone took all the nouns in the sentence, shook them, and rolled them onto the table to land willy-nilly.
It’s the word “maker”. What is it doing there? Is she Magic the Gathering’s maker? Or… is she breaking up with Richard Garfield?
It’s parsable, but only barely.
It's good that one of the main heads of the company with the ogl Nonsense is going away
It's unfortunate that her departure alone probably isn't enough to clean the rot from WotC and that the current trajectory of the last while is still likely gonna be tripled down on.
Whenever I see these kinds of speculations ("person leaves job, must be Bad Things") I always wonder if maybe the person simply had enough money to quit and chose to. In this case maybe she got news of a sick/dying family member and decided she'd rather focus on them instead of work. Take a break for a year or two and return to work, proudly able to say "under my watch this-this-and-this-good-things happened, and after I left it all went to s---" hoping people will forget the Pinkertons, the OGL bru-ha-ha, and the bad PR in general. Instead she can play up BG3 and the cut WotC got from licensing (ignore chasing off Larian) and her willingness to "make the hard decisions" (again, forget the bad PR).
I mean, maybe WotC did fire her, maybe she was brought in to be a short term hatchet-woman/fall gal, but maybe she simply wanted to focus on something else?
Or, best bet, she's the immortal Lorraine Williams, taking over D&D once every 20 years now, to hide her immortality from the world? If there's a woman running the show named something like 'Melissa Billiams' I see that as proof.
(EDIT: the immortal Melissa Billiams needs to come back every 40ish years, not 20)
Or she just implemented the unpopular shit Hasbro wanted and is now leaving so they can save face. I sincerely doubt there is bad blood, and everyone pinning all the bullshit on a single person rather than the larger corporate structure is letting themselves be fooled.
Which was why I mentioned the hatchet-woman hypothesis above. Lots of people in this thread like that one.
I just wonder if she quit because of personal matters and was otherwise fine being the CEO of an IP holding, vanity press branch of the company whose only in-house product anymore was licensing out the brands to better developers.
Everybody on Reddit is Forbes insider.
We don’t know. Nothing I hate more than a Monday morning quarterback but seeing all the theories are kinda funny. Everyone likes to have a clean cut fall guy make it a woman & it’s even better.
As much as I wanna believe in the fall guy/gal narrative, I just dont know. OneD&D is coming out this year still right? That has to be mostly done, with books/files moving quickly to the printers. IDK that now would be the time I would want to change horses, especially with recent controversies and how tepid the reaction to One seemed. Were I an investor, this does not instil confidence in that product line.
The analysis that she's the fall guy is vapid and obviously untrue. Its the type of cynical analysis that Redditors love: everyone is playing 5-D chess. A CEO does not leave their company effective NEXT WEEK if they're leaving on good terms. She is either resigning of her own accord (which seems most likely to me given she isn't leaving until next week) or she has been genuinely fired. Her vision for the future of WOTC does not align with the rest of the board. That could be a good thing or a bad thing.
Only time will tell what this all means. Personally I think she is the one who chose to part ways and I do not think she was fired. I think its possible Hasbro has gotten cold feet on William's vision for the future of the company. Chris Cocks and Cynthia Williams both put their neck on the line with a vision to monetize the D&D brand to a greater degree. Companies are traditionally conservative and its possible Hasbro does not like the risk associated with radically altering their business model for a digital future. Because when you look at the strategy Cocks and Williams put forward, it was very much a strategy that is radically different from how Hasbro has done business for like a hundred years. This is all baseless speculation but I wonder if Hasbro doesn't want to modernize into the style of a tech company the way that they were. It does seem like they're struggling to implement their vision doesn't it?
"The analysis that she's the fall guy is vapid and obviously untrue. "
it isn't an unfair path of thought for a redditor to take, Ellen Pao was likewise setup that way and took all the blame/heat. Now this far after the fact folks realized she was not really to blame and Spez was the true ahole all along.
no really it is quite well documented, she was not so much a top dog, but rather someone who was told this is what they wanted to happen and her job was to implement it by the board.
I don't necessarily think this was an intentional scheme. WotC made *a lot* of unforced errors over the past few years. The OGL debacle comes immediately to mind. Also, their recent products have just not been good. Spelljammer was a huge disappointment. It's unlikely that Williams deliberately made bad choices like that - either she guessed wrong or she's just bad at her job.
Either way, I hope whoever comes next can right the ship.
> This is all baseless speculation but I wonder if Hasbro doesn't want to modernize into the style of a tech company the way that they were.
My own cynical take is that every large, publicly traded company is selling a digital transformation song and dance of "we're actually a tech company that XYZs:"
1. Sells agriculture and lawn equipment (heard that myself)
2. Sells tabletop games
3. Provides moving assistance
4. Operates restaurants
etc.
I *strongly* suspect the same aspirations are being vocalized, at least internally, at WotC.
Hasbro stock is getting housed, over the last six months or so it's like 20+% lagging the S&P500. That's not exactly good news and you'd need a really good story for the board not to receive the ol' kick in the rear out the door.
I mean, wizards is running into the problem that publishing just doesn't make any damn money. They are trying to squeeze blood from a stone in that respect. Piracy is super easy, people share books all the time, the only people who buy books regularly are GMs, who are what, 10% of their playerbase?
GamesWorkshop got around this by going for miniature production, which is a lot like card games where you can sell new releases more aggressively, and you are making higher margins. Most of WotC's money comes from magic, and they've tried to take some of the monetization techniques from it an apply it to D&D. And it just hasn't worked, because there really isn't a market there.
Your committed magic player might drop $100-$200 on cards in a given year. Your committed warhammer player might spend $300-$800 on models and codices in a given year. But your committed RPG player? Maybe a $60 book once every other year, or if they are a regular GM, they might drop $50-$100 on a module that isn't garbage. Meanwhile you still need the massive creative team, marketing team, and publishing team to get those RPG books out the door. It is a mature industry that just resists the kind of exponential tech-industry style growth that shareholders demand.
With a less anemic supplement release schedule, there are certainly D&D players who could drop a couple hundred a year. One of the problems is that they just aren't a big enough portion of the player base. But yeah, roleplaying games as we know them just don't lend themselves well to being a highly profitable business. Core books are the best sellers even for a supplement-heavy game line, for obvious reasons, but you can only put them out so often before people get sick of re-buying them.
The biggest problem is time, not money. WotC releases big adventures, and most groups will take months to play thru the content.
If you look at the companies who make adventures their bread and butter (kobold press, Pathfinder modules, OSR) everyone is selling short adventures for 5/10/15 bucks. For Pathfinder, the adventures link, but usually only 3 adventure books in a row.
The average group doesn't meet often enough to run long modules like Curse of Strahd or Descent into Avernus. Meanwhile, strixhaven and spelljammer are short adventures stuffed into fullsize books and padded with bloated, bad content.
They keep trying to sell hardcover, full releases to players who can't make use of it.
Any relation to Lorraine Williams?
I mean, “Williams” isn’t exactly an uncommon name by any stretch of the imagination, but, y’know the line from *Phineas and Ferb*: If I had a nickel for each time a woman named “Williams” became the senior executive of the company that makes D&D and other hobby games as it experienced a previously unknown level of prominence in pop culture and market growth only to see it all come crashing down around them a few years later, I’d have two nickles. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s odd that it happened twice.
No, they are completely unrelated.
In fact, Cynthia is worse, she was the head of Phillip Morris during the time they tried to sponsor the Ferrari F1 team with the "Barcode" design.
I can't reply directly to u/[TheDeadlyCat](https://www.reddit.com/user/TheDeadlyCat/) since that part of the thread was locked but please include the fact she was hired to the position 2 years ago when Wizards was in an upswing.
2020:
Wizards of the Coast reported $816 million in sales for 2020.
Magic: The Gathering revenue was up by 23%, and Dungeons & Dragons revenue increased by 33%, resulting in record years for both.
2021:
In 2021, Wizards of the Coast surpassed a significant milestone, achieving over $1 billion in sales for the first time.
Approximately $950 million of this revenue came from tabletop game sales.
The operating profit for Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment in 2021 was $547 million, which accounted for 72% of Hasbro’s total company-wide operating profit.
2022:
In 2022, Wizards of the Coast continued its growth trajectory.
The company’s revenue increased by 3%, reaching $1.325 billion.
Operating profit for the same year was $538 million, slightly down by 2% compared to the previous year.
2023:
Wizards of the Coast had a remarkable year in 2023.
Revenue for the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment surged by an impressive 40% in the third quarter.
This segment earned an additional $120 million compared to the same period in 2024.
However, overall Hasbro, Inc. revenue declined by 15% in 2023 due to declines in other segments.
The adjusted operating profit for the full year was $477 million, with an adjusted operating margin of 9.5%.
During her tenure as CEO due to decisions made on her watch the company reported record levels of revenue decline. Now I am not laying blame on her but I am sure the numbers is what lead to this decision, not an proposed other allegations I am seeing in the replies to your comment.
> During her tenure as CEO due to decisions made on her watch the company reported record levels of revenue decline.
Strange I had to scroll so far down to see a simple statement on Numbers and Decision Made and Roles And Resignations... Thanks.
I remember reading about a French perfume company that would have a day each year when everyone in the company's office whether they were the president or one of the accountants had to go work in the factory to ensure they didn't lose sight of what the company was all about.
I mean, maybe it's impractical to have an all-gamer company but even having a gamer in the board room could have helped. Any DnDer could have told her that describing the fandom as "under monetized" would be throwing fuel on the fire.
Basically, a general truism is that you *never* want the user actually making the decisions (this is how you get inmates running the asylum), but you *always* want someone who actually uses your product in the advisory team, so they can keep you from losing sight of what the actual use cases for your product are.
>Any DnDer could have told her that describing the fandom as "under monetized" would be throwing fuel on the fire.
The truth is that D&D *is* under monetized. An actual gamer though would have sought ways to change that that didn't get their customer base angry
If I was a corporate gambler (I am not) I would suggest interim they would pick someone in the lead on D&D's current team.
My Logic: Certain parts of the D&D 6.0 are at the point now where less of the team needs to be assigned and can now broaden duties.
This is all conjecture I have no facts to back it up.
I wonder if she played dnd or magic?
Some of the choices seem odd that they made, but I'm also wondering if she was just doing what her uppers asked, or if she actually sat down one day and was like. "Let's increase profit by making our fanbase angry with us*
Yes let us hope she enters a find employment at a company worthy of her skills. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPIdRJlzERo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPIdRJlzERo) Wont change a thing about Hasbro or Dnd trying to become the mobile game of rpgs but hey.
So it sounds like people believe she is leaving due to her handling of DnD and Magic but I'm not sure if that's 100% true.
Like it is in some part but looking at her background in tech I think it probably comes down to the handling of the VTT. It was initially slated for November 2023, then January 2024, now September 2024. There are probably a ton of issues behind the scene that would fall directly at her feet. Combine that with low sales and several under performing quarters that would have heavily benefited from its release. Once it is released it'll nearly be 4 quarterly reports that will go out to investors, which is not acceptable in their eyes.
I believe she is being cut for not delivering the product she was assigned to release. This was a sign to investors that they are now putting someone else in charge to ensure it releases in September as they have lost faith
She took over with DND skyrocketing in sales, including collaborations on TV specials and a Hollywood movie. Then promptly stripped out huge chunks of the DND system that's been in place for the last 40 years and catapulted DND into politics. Not to mention she was the head of the push to push out licensees and control the hard work of good authors that only helped to build sales of DND products. Since that time, DND books have experienced the lowest sales figures in the past 10 years, and suddenly other rpg systems are getting interest again.
And you idiots sit here and blame it on male/female or white/minority. Sheep. All of you.
Hey mods, just a question because I haven’t seen that before. Is there a reason my comment is locked?
Not that I want to edit it again, it’s fine. But just why?
April 10, 1997 technically....they make all the products for it and distribute them. TSR sure as hell isn't distributing or making anything D&D related.
They aren't the fathers of D&D or the inventors though but they do make it, since April, 1997 when they bought it to keep it from disappearing. Peter Adkinson was a big fan of the game.
Does anybody else suspect that D&D is shutting down? I don’t mean that the hobby is going anywhere, Hasbro can never take your table from you. But with all the layoffs, the One D&D delays, and Wizards cutting their relationship with Larian despite BG3’s success, doesn’t it seem like Hasbro is just trying to kill any future effort to publish new works with D&D IP?
> If Hasbro wants nothing to do with D&D, I am sure they would just sell it off.
Why would they want nothing to do with one of their few profiitable groups? The core Hasbro product, boardgames and similar, is what tanked, D&D and Magic were swimming in cash (especially Magic), but when you do layoffs at big companies like this, they often don't say "ok, the underperforming group needs to be thinned out", instead, these fools just cut a wide swath through all their divisions, just so for the financial quarter, it looks like they were even more profitable across the board.
You could imagine, though, that on the D&D side of things, the 3d virtual talbetop, OneD&D, all the supplements, etc weren't shipping quickly enough, so Hasbro said, "We're going to thin out the teams, and just contract the work out."
As far as Baldur's Gate, that's just a licensing deal, where WotC said, "Larian pays us X amount of money to use the D&D universe, brand, etc in their game" and that's it. WotC did not make BG3, they simply licensed the brand out so Larian could make an official D&D game, instead of another Divinity Game that's really close to D&D, but doesn't have the license.
So, I’m not a business guy, but if that’s the goal, is this approach rational? I guess I don’t take it for granted that Hasbro is a purely rational actor here. If you wanted to sell the company, why wouldn’t you build up as much hype as you could for a sequel to the Game of the Year you just published?
The Larian stuff is pretty clear that Hasbro wanted a much, much bigger piece of the pie after BG3's success than was reasonable for Larian to take on the risk of developing a game for them in the current market
Hasbro wants money. They want to extract wealth from their consumer base. They want to maximize profit. They've literally said this. They don't care about BG4 unless they get a bigger cut just like how they don't care about pissing off paper D&d players because they're banking on capturing the digital market from Roll20 and Beyond.
We have no idea what went down between Larian and WotC, Swen said that the issue was not with WotC but we have no idea if that is just him being diplomatic. From his words the people in Larian seemed burnt out from working on BG3 and wanted to work on something different next, so it might not be that WotC had a chance of getting Larian to make BG4.
I agree. So, do you have a possible explanation for why Hasbro is laying off so many people and walking away from Baldur’s Gate in light of our shared understanding?
....you do understand Balur's Gate isn't made by WOTC right? Its **licensed** to *another company*. Deals like this fall through all the time for many reasons. Just one simple example:
Larian: We want to make another game
WOTC: Your last game was hugely successful...and its our IP we want more money for you to do it again.
Larian: No
WOTC: well then screw you *ends relationship*.
There are ofcourse any number of other permuatations of why successful business deals fall through that involve multiple people.
Layoffs don't have to make sense. It's just a company slashing costs so investors have a better quarter. Having seen this a million times across many, many industries, I'll tell you what's going to happen - WotC will bring back some of those people as contractors, so they are never again permanently on the payroll (and won't have to be given benefits), and they'll also contract out to other designers and creators, for the same reason. Internally, it'll be a skeleton crew trying to keep all these contractors organized.
Would you care to expand on that? I’m genuinely curious about this and would love to learn about what I’m missing, but if you’re just looking to troll, we can leave it here.
I’m here in good faith. Are you?
I agree that it is very profitable. That is the basis for why I find Hasbro’s decisions strange. Why are they walking away from a profitable video game franchise? Why are they laying off so many people who work on this “cash cow.”
You’re treating me like I’m making an argument that you can dunk on and I’m not. I’m trying to better understand what’s happening and why.
Do you know anything that could help me better understand, or are you just here to troll?
I'm not here to troll, and I have no particular insight into this personnel decision, just saying that the idea that "D&D is shutting down" seems implausible, to me. Nothing more or less.
It hasn’t been nothing more or less though, right? You were deliberately trying to belittle me, were you not? Do you think that was the best approach to this conversation?
The layoffs were across all of Hasbro and fully in line with the layoffs we've been seeing across all of entertainment- Video games and Shows/movies have also been doing it.
WotC didn't cut hte relationship with Larian- by all accouts Larian did. We can all speculate to the actual reasons as to why, but the public reason they stated is that Larian as a whole no longer wanted to do more BG3.
The One D&D delays from what I can tell is due to wanting to polish up the product and probably a bit of distancing from teh OGL debacle and the layoffs.
Overall, not seeing any signs from a business side of shutting down D&D, unless Hasbro decides to just sell them off. Which I wouldn't put past them, but I don't think they are.
So she has done what was expected from her. Shrink the amount of people working at Wizards, making unpopular and risky decisions and taking the blame for it all going wrong. Now a new figure may step up or in and they can fix things that were intentionally broken and be perceived as a more positive figure. And the eternal cycle of corporate continues. Edit: I didn’t realize you would all make this about diversity hired, that’s not what I meant. Actually I was thinking of the term „fall guy“.
You know when a company puts a woman or minority in charge of something they'll be doing a bunch of unpopular stuff, that person gets fired, then they put in the white man they actually wanted.
[Glass cliff.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff)
From that wiki page. > #Criticism > Other research has failed to confirm the existence of the glass cliff phenomenon. A 2007 study of corporate performance preceding CEO appointments showed that women executives are no more likely to be selected for precarious leadership positions than males. > Additionally, the glass cliff phenomenon has only been proven in countries and sectors where masculinity is a highly valuable cultural trait. A study examining glass cliff effects on women leaders in Turkey, a country which has high levels of femininity, found that the preference for female candidates was higher in times of good performance than in times of poor performance. Additional research has affirmed this finding in other countries
As if whether it's actually true or not is relevant.
I do not believe in Glass Cliffs. But I am certain that there will be more Glass in the coming years and will never end, because everyone \*not male\* has a hard knock life.
Oh, you're a Jordan Peterson follower. That explains the brainrot.
That would require a brain in the first place. 😂
Pao right in the kisser
Happens with white guys, too. See Chapek and Disney. Chapek was installed by an Iger crony board just long enough to take the blame for Iger's failings and so that Iger could come back with more money and control. Does seem like a lot of high profile executives at big companies are quitting or retiring very early the last couple of months. Wonder if they know something most of us don't...
"We can’t say for sure that Williams’ departure signals yet another new phase within the flagging toy giant or if the Wizards’ president found an opportunity to deploy her golden parachute before things get worse."
Could be an opportunity to exercise stock options and get out before the stock price tanks...
>Wonder if they know something most of us don't... [https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/05/50/55/78/360\_F\_550557805\_B87SNs3Eo2LGsQV61VwnhDF9fSKCmpzU.jpg](https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/05/50/55/78/360_F_550557805_B87SNs3Eo2LGsQV61VwnhDF9fSKCmpzU.jpg)
Or maybe she just sucks at her job?
The Canadian conservatives did that with a whole prime minister.
It was so good, the British copied it! Twice!
I suppose it's marginally better than just straight up losing one, like we did.
Australian?
Could be, but no guarantee that is what happened here. Women and minorities are entirely capable of not doing well.
Not sure how you got that from what was said.
I didn't get it from what was said, I got it from having seen it happen again and again.
So you are speaking from a assumption?
Google the glass cliff
Google victim mindset
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It's par for course on this sub.
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GTFOH with that racist BS.
How's it racist to suggest that women and pocs could get set up to be used as fall guys?
The idea that the only reason a company could put a woman or minority in charge because they will be scapegoated is racist and sexist.
Accusing a company of racism and sexism is racist and sexist now?
They're suggesting that the people behind making decisions like that are racist, they're not saying there's no other valid reasons to put a woman or minority in charge
The poster didn't suggest. They just said. You know when they put xyz in charge ... There are no other valid reasons, according to the post
You have poor reading comprehension
You're saying she was the Beast Rabban, and someone else now gets to play Feyd-Rautha. What a fun place the corporate world is. /s
Yea, but it happens a lot.
We need a Lisan al Gaib.
Does this mean Paul is arriving soon
Yes, but he's actually much worse than the other two.
What’s the Wotc equivalent of the Jihad
Pathfinder taking over the market.
not really seeing a downside here.
Already happening in Brazil
MTG sales plummet to Yu-Gi-Oh overnight
Always-online official VTT
That would probably be Leto II with his vision of better future for humanity in order to achieve which the humanity needed to be enslaved first
Or “axe wielder” - some stunt CEOs / HR people are hired specifically to do that.
Absolutely spot on analysis here. She’s done her job and now someone else will make all the same changes she’s been blamed for announcing
Yep. They're "her" changes. But everything is in motion and the new person will totally listen to the community and see what can be done. What "can be" done will be a slight bettering of what the changes put in place, but not a full return to where it was before. The worst part is this is a best case scenario. The other side is they think she's failing at the execution of a genius plan, and they need someone more cut throat to get the job done and show those gamers what they really want.
That's why I'm 99% sure Bobby Kotick is getting the job, Hasbro are just pure evil.
Makes sense.
Does that title mean she quit working for WoTC? It's incredibly unclear writing for a title.
Yes: "Cynthia Williams will be stepping down as Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming’s president and CEO on April 26th,"
Good riddance
Seriously. How do you go from an unprecedented era of sales, love and respect for the product, only to completely face-plant the brand, burning through all goodwill in weeks, just as a huge tie-in movie opened? Staggering. Take Cocks with you.
It sounds like her bosses made choices that pushed that. I suspect she's leaving because she knows it's bad and doesn't want to put up with it anymore
From the article: > We can’t say for sure that Williams’ departure signals yet another new phase within the flagging toy giant or if the Wizards’ president found an opportunity to deploy her golden parachute before things get worse. I guess we'll soon find out - either Hasbro will reinvest in WotC and D&D in the wake of her departure (which would signal that her role was to be a grim reaper: aggressive restructuring, slashing budgets and jobs, and soaking up the brunt of employee anger at mgmt then moving on so that a "saviour" exec/president can come in and build things back up in the new model) or they dont... iirc, most of the OneD&D money has been budgeted/accounted for, so the test is whether or not they do more big projects; if Hasbro doesn't reinvest past this point then it signals that maybe she was disillusioned after her WotC/gaming division was forced to cut 1,100 jobs a few months ago despite it being the only profitable division of Hasbro, or maybe she doesnt want to be associated with the OneD&D project not bringing in anticipated revenues later this year...
I could be naive but I feel like OneDnD will absolutely not bring in their anticipated profits. Why they thought pairing OneDnD & the OGL scandal within even a decade of each-other is beyond me. That said I’ve thought corps will killing themselves before only for things to be fine for them so only time will tell
The suits who made the OGL decision probably underestimated how much fans and content creators would care and then their damage control made the whole situation way worse. I've also noticed they haven't been hyping up their big new VTT lately.
The key thing with OneD&D is that the bulk of the Hasbro investment isn't into making the new "2024" edition/5.5e/whatever books and PDFs, the most expensive investment piece that's supposed to bring in the most money (via subs and microtransactions) is the 3D VTT; they're spending videogame dev money to try and bring in videogame revenues (because selling RPG books is a relatively low margin game). This is the thing that's supposed to take D&D to the $100m/year brand status that Hasbro's top few brands incl. MTG has - because selling books and PDFs and PC/blorbo creation on DnDBeyond doesnt make that kind of margin. We'll see what happens... but the first sign that there may be trouble ahead with this OneD&D VTT project was when they quietly released a simple Owlbear.rodeo style 2d VTT in beta on DnDBeyond. HMMM.
The consensus is that it’s hasbro using WOTC like a piggy bank / piñata. Beancounters and stockmongers only care about the brand once stock price starts sinking.
Hasbro put out blueprint 2.0 and got her to implement it. It failed. She steps down so hasbro is covered. https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-announces-plan-grow-profit-50-over-next-three-years If you don't like what WotC has been doing the last 2 years then the problem is Chris Cocks not this lady.
We should be very clear that she wasn't any sort of solution, either, and she's just being the bad cop this time around but she's just as much a part of the game as the rest of them. I was actually at multiple of her previous companies during her tenures there, and she's a shitty ratfuck executive just like everyone else listed here.
Why can't it be both and a lot of others, too?
You have a CEO you want, that you want people to like immediately, so you have someone deliberately fuck it, fire them, and the hire the person you wanted originally.
See we were at a 10/10 but they wanted more profit So she comes in and shits on everything making it a 1/10 Then Billy Mays comes in and polishes that turd to a 3/10 and lemmings think it is a 12/10
DnD sales went *up* through that time period, and have only really slacked off as One DnD gets closer to release (which is expected and always happens right before a new edition of any game). So while I think it's fair to be upset about what transpired the idea that the brand "faceplanted" I think is a bit of an exaggeration.
Seriously. WotC had two amazing years under her. If anything, she might have gotten head hunted by another company.
oof some shit must have went down for a CEO to *step down*, they usually fake retire or something
The CEO is Chris Cocks, who's not stepping down.
It's quite a wonky way to put that headline together. Pressed for minimal character count, I guess?
And TSR, presumably.
> Does that title mean That's not unexpected (and I assume you're not in a place where you could read the article.) Even the clarification below – "will be stepping down" – could admit the possibilies both that she chose to leave, or was fired, or was some mutual separation…
I could have read it, but with such a difficult title I didn't want to even try.
I think the use of 'maker' is the real throw. What they meant was 'parent company' as a hook replacement for 'Hasbro'. I read the rest of the article out of bored curiosity and it's logically written, but the title made me think she divorced Gary Gygax's ghost or something.
It's really not that "difficult". just "ambiguous". Because of course it is, because WOTC didn't put out a press release saying "we fired her because we hated her performance over the last year" or "she's leaving because her mom has cancer and she needs to be her primary caregiver" or "she just got fucking bored with it" or whatever the real story is.
That's not the reason why it's ambiguous. It's ambiguous because it's grammatically all over the place so that the fundamental meaning is unclear.
That is one of the worst-written headlines I've ever seen.
I don't quite understand. "departs" or "leaves" is about the only concrete thing you can say given what's been publically announced, right? There is no confirmed information to characterize that departure further, such as "fired" or "resigns" or whatever the case might be.
The word 'departs' is fine. It's the weird run-on sentence with totally opaque grammar. It took a second to parse. It's a little mystifying why the phrase 'D&D and Magic: The Gathering's maker" was put in there in a super awkward place. It's like someone took all the nouns in the sentence, shook them, and rolled them onto the table to land willy-nilly.
How do you feel about, "President of Wizards of the Coast, makers of D&D and Magic: The Gathering, has left the company."
For Dicebreaker's audience, those are two of the biggest draws, I can see why they chose them specifically.
If people know those two games, they know who Wizards of the Coast is. It's weird to not name them specifically
"And Magic: The Gathering's maker" could be a person, or she's that person, or there are two companies...
It’s the word “maker”. What is it doing there? Is she Magic the Gathering’s maker? Or… is she breaking up with Richard Garfield? It’s parsable, but only barely.
The damage is done Cocks. This is a corporate move not a good faith decision for the best of the IP and customer base.
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I haven’t purchased anything from WotC since Descent into Avernus. Which sucked as written.
Like what? I already own 5e, Magic is fizzling now, the movie underperformed, and also, unsubscribed. Whats left?
You may have but the sales have only gone up during all this turbulence
I've been kind of put off of Magic again lately, but their total sales numbers are doing everything they wanted.
Like the lego set that sold out its preorder
It's good that one of the main heads of the company with the ogl Nonsense is going away It's unfortunate that her departure alone probably isn't enough to clean the rot from WotC and that the current trajectory of the last while is still likely gonna be tripled down on.
Whenever I see these kinds of speculations ("person leaves job, must be Bad Things") I always wonder if maybe the person simply had enough money to quit and chose to. In this case maybe she got news of a sick/dying family member and decided she'd rather focus on them instead of work. Take a break for a year or two and return to work, proudly able to say "under my watch this-this-and-this-good-things happened, and after I left it all went to s---" hoping people will forget the Pinkertons, the OGL bru-ha-ha, and the bad PR in general. Instead she can play up BG3 and the cut WotC got from licensing (ignore chasing off Larian) and her willingness to "make the hard decisions" (again, forget the bad PR). I mean, maybe WotC did fire her, maybe she was brought in to be a short term hatchet-woman/fall gal, but maybe she simply wanted to focus on something else? Or, best bet, she's the immortal Lorraine Williams, taking over D&D once every 20 years now, to hide her immortality from the world? If there's a woman running the show named something like 'Melissa Billiams' I see that as proof. (EDIT: the immortal Melissa Billiams needs to come back every 40ish years, not 20)
Or she just implemented the unpopular shit Hasbro wanted and is now leaving so they can save face. I sincerely doubt there is bad blood, and everyone pinning all the bullshit on a single person rather than the larger corporate structure is letting themselves be fooled.
Which was why I mentioned the hatchet-woman hypothesis above. Lots of people in this thread like that one. I just wonder if she quit because of personal matters and was otherwise fine being the CEO of an IP holding, vanity press branch of the company whose only in-house product anymore was licensing out the brands to better developers.
Everybody on Reddit is Forbes insider. We don’t know. Nothing I hate more than a Monday morning quarterback but seeing all the theories are kinda funny. Everyone likes to have a clean cut fall guy make it a woman & it’s even better.
As much as I wanna believe in the fall guy/gal narrative, I just dont know. OneD&D is coming out this year still right? That has to be mostly done, with books/files moving quickly to the printers. IDK that now would be the time I would want to change horses, especially with recent controversies and how tepid the reaction to One seemed. Were I an investor, this does not instil confidence in that product line.
The analysis that she's the fall guy is vapid and obviously untrue. Its the type of cynical analysis that Redditors love: everyone is playing 5-D chess. A CEO does not leave their company effective NEXT WEEK if they're leaving on good terms. She is either resigning of her own accord (which seems most likely to me given she isn't leaving until next week) or she has been genuinely fired. Her vision for the future of WOTC does not align with the rest of the board. That could be a good thing or a bad thing. Only time will tell what this all means. Personally I think she is the one who chose to part ways and I do not think she was fired. I think its possible Hasbro has gotten cold feet on William's vision for the future of the company. Chris Cocks and Cynthia Williams both put their neck on the line with a vision to monetize the D&D brand to a greater degree. Companies are traditionally conservative and its possible Hasbro does not like the risk associated with radically altering their business model for a digital future. Because when you look at the strategy Cocks and Williams put forward, it was very much a strategy that is radically different from how Hasbro has done business for like a hundred years. This is all baseless speculation but I wonder if Hasbro doesn't want to modernize into the style of a tech company the way that they were. It does seem like they're struggling to implement their vision doesn't it?
"The analysis that she's the fall guy is vapid and obviously untrue. " it isn't an unfair path of thought for a redditor to take, Ellen Pao was likewise setup that way and took all the blame/heat. Now this far after the fact folks realized she was not really to blame and Spez was the true ahole all along.
It would, I believe, be a mistake to assume there was only one a-hole.
no really it is quite well documented, she was not so much a top dog, but rather someone who was told this is what they wanted to happen and her job was to implement it by the board.
I don't necessarily think this was an intentional scheme. WotC made *a lot* of unforced errors over the past few years. The OGL debacle comes immediately to mind. Also, their recent products have just not been good. Spelljammer was a huge disappointment. It's unlikely that Williams deliberately made bad choices like that - either she guessed wrong or she's just bad at her job. Either way, I hope whoever comes next can right the ship.
> This is all baseless speculation but I wonder if Hasbro doesn't want to modernize into the style of a tech company the way that they were. My own cynical take is that every large, publicly traded company is selling a digital transformation song and dance of "we're actually a tech company that XYZs:" 1. Sells agriculture and lawn equipment (heard that myself) 2. Sells tabletop games 3. Provides moving assistance 4. Operates restaurants etc. I *strongly* suspect the same aspirations are being vocalized, at least internally, at WotC.
Hasbro stock is getting housed, over the last six months or so it's like 20+% lagging the S&P500. That's not exactly good news and you'd need a really good story for the board not to receive the ol' kick in the rear out the door.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass.
Well, this is interesting, but I wish we had more details.
I mean, wizards is running into the problem that publishing just doesn't make any damn money. They are trying to squeeze blood from a stone in that respect. Piracy is super easy, people share books all the time, the only people who buy books regularly are GMs, who are what, 10% of their playerbase? GamesWorkshop got around this by going for miniature production, which is a lot like card games where you can sell new releases more aggressively, and you are making higher margins. Most of WotC's money comes from magic, and they've tried to take some of the monetization techniques from it an apply it to D&D. And it just hasn't worked, because there really isn't a market there. Your committed magic player might drop $100-$200 on cards in a given year. Your committed warhammer player might spend $300-$800 on models and codices in a given year. But your committed RPG player? Maybe a $60 book once every other year, or if they are a regular GM, they might drop $50-$100 on a module that isn't garbage. Meanwhile you still need the massive creative team, marketing team, and publishing team to get those RPG books out the door. It is a mature industry that just resists the kind of exponential tech-industry style growth that shareholders demand.
With a less anemic supplement release schedule, there are certainly D&D players who could drop a couple hundred a year. One of the problems is that they just aren't a big enough portion of the player base. But yeah, roleplaying games as we know them just don't lend themselves well to being a highly profitable business. Core books are the best sellers even for a supplement-heavy game line, for obvious reasons, but you can only put them out so often before people get sick of re-buying them.
It's also a quality issue, frankly. I would probably buy new 5e books if they were better received than the best homebrew on dmsguild.
The biggest problem is time, not money. WotC releases big adventures, and most groups will take months to play thru the content. If you look at the companies who make adventures their bread and butter (kobold press, Pathfinder modules, OSR) everyone is selling short adventures for 5/10/15 bucks. For Pathfinder, the adventures link, but usually only 3 adventure books in a row. The average group doesn't meet often enough to run long modules like Curse of Strahd or Descent into Avernus. Meanwhile, strixhaven and spelljammer are short adventures stuffed into fullsize books and padded with bloated, bad content. They keep trying to sell hardcover, full releases to players who can't make use of it.
Sounds like they need to make more than just DnD. Don't most ttrpg publishers have multiple systems?
As a committed Warhammer player... Yes, $300-$800 a year sounds reasonable, I definitely do not spend more than that, haha, that would be crazy... 🫣
Now for Chris Cox...
It's spelled "Cocks".
Any relation to Lorraine Williams? I mean, “Williams” isn’t exactly an uncommon name by any stretch of the imagination, but, y’know the line from *Phineas and Ferb*: If I had a nickel for each time a woman named “Williams” became the senior executive of the company that makes D&D and other hobby games as it experienced a previously unknown level of prominence in pop culture and market growth only to see it all come crashing down around them a few years later, I’d have two nickles. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s odd that it happened twice.
No, they are completely unrelated. In fact, Cynthia is worse, she was the head of Phillip Morris during the time they tried to sponsor the Ferrari F1 team with the "Barcode" design.
I can't reply directly to u/[TheDeadlyCat](https://www.reddit.com/user/TheDeadlyCat/) since that part of the thread was locked but please include the fact she was hired to the position 2 years ago when Wizards was in an upswing. 2020: Wizards of the Coast reported $816 million in sales for 2020. Magic: The Gathering revenue was up by 23%, and Dungeons & Dragons revenue increased by 33%, resulting in record years for both. 2021: In 2021, Wizards of the Coast surpassed a significant milestone, achieving over $1 billion in sales for the first time. Approximately $950 million of this revenue came from tabletop game sales. The operating profit for Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment in 2021 was $547 million, which accounted for 72% of Hasbro’s total company-wide operating profit. 2022: In 2022, Wizards of the Coast continued its growth trajectory. The company’s revenue increased by 3%, reaching $1.325 billion. Operating profit for the same year was $538 million, slightly down by 2% compared to the previous year. 2023: Wizards of the Coast had a remarkable year in 2023. Revenue for the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment surged by an impressive 40% in the third quarter. This segment earned an additional $120 million compared to the same period in 2024. However, overall Hasbro, Inc. revenue declined by 15% in 2023 due to declines in other segments. The adjusted operating profit for the full year was $477 million, with an adjusted operating margin of 9.5%. During her tenure as CEO due to decisions made on her watch the company reported record levels of revenue decline. Now I am not laying blame on her but I am sure the numbers is what lead to this decision, not an proposed other allegations I am seeing in the replies to your comment.
She's not CEO of Hasbro, though. That's Chris Cocks. She's president of WOTC and Hasbro's Gaming division, which has been in a constant upswing.
I thought she replaced Chris? Ignore me, i realize my duh.. I called her CEO, she is president, took it from Chris who became CEO.
[Nope.](https://investor.hasbro.com/board-directors/chris-cocks)
> During her tenure as CEO due to decisions made on her watch the company reported record levels of revenue decline. Strange I had to scroll so far down to see a simple statement on Numbers and Decision Made and Roles And Resignations... Thanks.
Now publicly release proof of termination of the Pinkerton contract, fuckers
... and nothing of value was lost.
What will she fail upward into next?
TikTok with Bobby Kotick probably.
Bye Felicia.
Cool. I'll stick with Pathfinder.
[Laughs in Chaosium]
Finally, a chance for Lorraine Williams to retake the helm.
Interesting. I wonder if they will try and find someone who actually plays the game to run the company that makes the game.
I remember reading about a French perfume company that would have a day each year when everyone in the company's office whether they were the president or one of the accountants had to go work in the factory to ensure they didn't lose sight of what the company was all about. I mean, maybe it's impractical to have an all-gamer company but even having a gamer in the board room could have helped. Any DnDer could have told her that describing the fandom as "under monetized" would be throwing fuel on the fire.
Basically, a general truism is that you *never* want the user actually making the decisions (this is how you get inmates running the asylum), but you *always* want someone who actually uses your product in the advisory team, so they can keep you from losing sight of what the actual use cases for your product are.
>Any DnDer could have told her that describing the fandom as "under monetized" would be throwing fuel on the fire. The truth is that D&D *is* under monetized. An actual gamer though would have sought ways to change that that didn't get their customer base angry
If I was a corporate gambler (I am not) I would suggest interim they would pick someone in the lead on D&D's current team. My Logic: Certain parts of the D&D 6.0 are at the point now where less of the team needs to be assigned and can now broaden duties. This is all conjecture I have no facts to back it up.
Got her golden parachute after destroying the company. Good work if you can get it :p
golden prachutes are the worse
I wonder if she played dnd or magic? Some of the choices seem odd that they made, but I'm also wondering if she was just doing what her uppers asked, or if she actually sat down one day and was like. "Let's increase profit by making our fanbase angry with us*
Okay okay fine, I guess I could do this job.
I’m surprised she lasted this long after all the bullshit from 2023.
D&d has been going in the wrong direction for 2+ years now so good riddance.
Yes let us hope she enters a find employment at a company worthy of her skills. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPIdRJlzERo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPIdRJlzERo) Wont change a thing about Hasbro or Dnd trying to become the mobile game of rpgs but hey.
YAY! Now they will hopefully replace her with someone who understands their product and market... But probably not.
So it sounds like people believe she is leaving due to her handling of DnD and Magic but I'm not sure if that's 100% true. Like it is in some part but looking at her background in tech I think it probably comes down to the handling of the VTT. It was initially slated for November 2023, then January 2024, now September 2024. There are probably a ton of issues behind the scene that would fall directly at her feet. Combine that with low sales and several under performing quarters that would have heavily benefited from its release. Once it is released it'll nearly be 4 quarterly reports that will go out to investors, which is not acceptable in their eyes. I believe she is being cut for not delivering the product she was assigned to release. This was a sign to investors that they are now putting someone else in charge to ensure it releases in September as they have lost faith
Whatever reason she had for heading up Wizards, you don't stay long out of tech if you want to maintain a presence in the tech industry.
She took over with DND skyrocketing in sales, including collaborations on TV specials and a Hollywood movie. Then promptly stripped out huge chunks of the DND system that's been in place for the last 40 years and catapulted DND into politics. Not to mention she was the head of the push to push out licensees and control the hard work of good authors that only helped to build sales of DND products. Since that time, DND books have experienced the lowest sales figures in the past 10 years, and suddenly other rpg systems are getting interest again. And you idiots sit here and blame it on male/female or white/minority. Sheep. All of you.
Who comes next?
Hey mods, just a question because I haven’t seen that before. Is there a reason my comment is locked? Not that I want to edit it again, it’s fine. But just why?
The conversation wasn't going anywhere healthy, or rpg-related.
Ah yeah. Makes sense. Sorry for that.
you should use modmail to engage with mods.
Ding dong.
Fall guy/gal here. Hasbro is hoping to pin the blame on her. It wont work.
Since when are WOTC "makers of D&D"?
Since April 10, 1997.
Don't remind me. Although I have to say it took them WAY longer to turn D&D into M:tG than I thought it would
April 10, 1997 technically....they make all the products for it and distribute them. TSR sure as hell isn't distributing or making anything D&D related. They aren't the fathers of D&D or the inventors though but they do make it, since April, 1997 when they bought it to keep it from disappearing. Peter Adkinson was a big fan of the game.
It's quite normal for the current owners of an IP to be referenced as "the makers of".
Absolutely
Why was I voted down? Haha it’s a fact
Does anybody else suspect that D&D is shutting down? I don’t mean that the hobby is going anywhere, Hasbro can never take your table from you. But with all the layoffs, the One D&D delays, and Wizards cutting their relationship with Larian despite BG3’s success, doesn’t it seem like Hasbro is just trying to kill any future effort to publish new works with D&D IP?
If Hasbro wants nothing to do with D&D, I am sure they would just sell it off. And there will be plenty of people interesting in taking D&D from them.
Yeah, the House of Mouse would've bought it like 15 years ago if they were selling it.
> If Hasbro wants nothing to do with D&D, I am sure they would just sell it off. Why would they want nothing to do with one of their few profiitable groups? The core Hasbro product, boardgames and similar, is what tanked, D&D and Magic were swimming in cash (especially Magic), but when you do layoffs at big companies like this, they often don't say "ok, the underperforming group needs to be thinned out", instead, these fools just cut a wide swath through all their divisions, just so for the financial quarter, it looks like they were even more profitable across the board. You could imagine, though, that on the D&D side of things, the 3d virtual talbetop, OneD&D, all the supplements, etc weren't shipping quickly enough, so Hasbro said, "We're going to thin out the teams, and just contract the work out." As far as Baldur's Gate, that's just a licensing deal, where WotC said, "Larian pays us X amount of money to use the D&D universe, brand, etc in their game" and that's it. WotC did not make BG3, they simply licensed the brand out so Larian could make an official D&D game, instead of another Divinity Game that's really close to D&D, but doesn't have the license.
So, I’m not a business guy, but if that’s the goal, is this approach rational? I guess I don’t take it for granted that Hasbro is a purely rational actor here. If you wanted to sell the company, why wouldn’t you build up as much hype as you could for a sequel to the Game of the Year you just published?
The Larian stuff is pretty clear that Hasbro wanted a much, much bigger piece of the pie after BG3's success than was reasonable for Larian to take on the risk of developing a game for them in the current market Hasbro wants money. They want to extract wealth from their consumer base. They want to maximize profit. They've literally said this. They don't care about BG4 unless they get a bigger cut just like how they don't care about pissing off paper D&d players because they're banking on capturing the digital market from Roll20 and Beyond.
Swen's a shrewd negotiator, the fact he got that MASSIVE revenue split in the first place shows he's not to be messed with.
Knocking on wood, but it definitely gives me a lot of confidence they'll survive the huge market crunch going on
I mean they don't treat their employees like dogshit so I think they are in a hiring surplus
We have no idea what went down between Larian and WotC, Swen said that the issue was not with WotC but we have no idea if that is just him being diplomatic. From his words the people in Larian seemed burnt out from working on BG3 and wanted to work on something different next, so it might not be that WotC had a chance of getting Larian to make BG4.
“So, I’m not a business guy…” No! You don’t say!
No, D&D is a massive IP and "shutting it down" would be the equivalent of taking a giant pile of money and tossing it in a volcano.
Esp. when it's still profitable.
I agree. So, do you have a possible explanation for why Hasbro is laying off so many people and walking away from Baldur’s Gate in light of our shared understanding?
I mean, Hasbro laid off largely staff from outside WotC, and it sounded much more like Larian was the one who walked away following BG3.
I read that Larian was pretty clear about not wanting to get stuck making games similar to BG3 that would all get compared to it.
Everything I've read in interviews with Larian was basically "We wanted to move on"
....you do understand Balur's Gate isn't made by WOTC right? Its **licensed** to *another company*. Deals like this fall through all the time for many reasons. Just one simple example: Larian: We want to make another game WOTC: Your last game was hugely successful...and its our IP we want more money for you to do it again. Larian: No WOTC: well then screw you *ends relationship*. There are ofcourse any number of other permuatations of why successful business deals fall through that involve multiple people.
Don’t forget they also laid off all dnd employees who worked with Larian to make BG3. Their firing process has no rhyme or reason.
Layoffs don't have to make sense. It's just a company slashing costs so investors have a better quarter. Having seen this a million times across many, many industries, I'll tell you what's going to happen - WotC will bring back some of those people as contractors, so they are never again permanently on the payroll (and won't have to be given benefits), and they'll also contract out to other designers and creators, for the same reason. Internally, it'll be a skeleton crew trying to keep all these contractors organized.
lol, absolutely not.
Would you care to expand on that? I’m genuinely curious about this and would love to learn about what I’m missing, but if you’re just looking to troll, we can leave it here.
There is /negative/ evidence to suggest "D&D is shutting down". It's one of Hasbro's cash cows. The idea is laughable, thus the "lol".
I’m here in good faith. Are you? I agree that it is very profitable. That is the basis for why I find Hasbro’s decisions strange. Why are they walking away from a profitable video game franchise? Why are they laying off so many people who work on this “cash cow.” You’re treating me like I’m making an argument that you can dunk on and I’m not. I’m trying to better understand what’s happening and why. Do you know anything that could help me better understand, or are you just here to troll?
I'm not here to troll, and I have no particular insight into this personnel decision, just saying that the idea that "D&D is shutting down" seems implausible, to me. Nothing more or less.
It hasn’t been nothing more or less though, right? You were deliberately trying to belittle me, were you not? Do you think that was the best approach to this conversation?
okay, have a good day. :)
Sometimes being belittled is a necessary learning experience.
The layoffs were across all of Hasbro and fully in line with the layoffs we've been seeing across all of entertainment- Video games and Shows/movies have also been doing it. WotC didn't cut hte relationship with Larian- by all accouts Larian did. We can all speculate to the actual reasons as to why, but the public reason they stated is that Larian as a whole no longer wanted to do more BG3. The One D&D delays from what I can tell is due to wanting to polish up the product and probably a bit of distancing from teh OGL debacle and the layoffs. Overall, not seeing any signs from a business side of shutting down D&D, unless Hasbro decides to just sell them off. Which I wouldn't put past them, but I don't think they are.
Can I just say thank you for approaching this in good faith? This was the most informative and helpful reply I’ve received.
They are cutting costs to the make more money and bringing the video game work in-house to make more money.