Hasbro (who are actually the Comcast of table top games) bought WotC in 1999, initially operating it as a legal subsidiary. I only followed MtG from 2001 to 200

Hasbro (who are actually the Comcast of table top games) bought WotC in 1999, initially operating it as a legal subsidiary. I only followed MtG from 2001 to 2005; at that time it seemed pretty clear to me that Hasbro was taking a fairly hands-off approach. I don’t know what has happened in the interim but recent news indicated WotC was something like 70% of Hasbro’s entire revenue, so I imagine what happened was, as WotC grew and Hasbro shrank, Hasbro started exercising more of the power of WotC that they have long held but rarely used - basically, becoming more hands-on as the profits grew (unsurprisingly). There seems to have been several reshuffles of just how legally independent WotC is from Hasbro over the years, although I’m not sure those legal reshuffles are indicative of how much actual power Hasbro was exercising. My general impression is that WotC had found a point on the Pareto curve of “greedy” vs “respectful” where they were quite greedy but also quite respectful, and Hasbro’s more recent influence has pushed them into “very greedy”, not realizing the Pareto curve was extremely steep and so this caused a corresponding move all the way from “quite respectful” to “very disrespectful”.