22 ms·

Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

387 points by webmaven 3y ago

kokken 3y ago
The market seems to disagree with the piece. The stock was in free fall from early October and recovered a bit after the layoff announcement. Anyone have an idea why?
- lstamour 3y ago
  Literally, and speaking generally, the stock price might go up due to short term gains? Layoffs are a form of cost-cutting and assuming it doesn’t affect the service or product, this leads to short term increased profits or offsets expected incurred losses? Not everyone playing the stock market is a value investor. As the fine article notes: > At time of writing, it’s unclear why Hasbro’s chosen to lay off employees at the single strongest company in its portfolio. This year, Wizards debuted a critically if not commercially successful major motion picture, earned a Game of the Year trophy at the 2023 Game Awards, and was consistently profitable, but Hasbro’s still sacking its employees. It’s the sort of math that only makes sense if you’ve got shareholders to placate.
- happytiger 3y ago
  Because layoffs provide profitability, rough as it is. However! What Hasbro is doing to WOTC is tremendously short term thinking. You do not prune the organizations that are providing all of your liquidity in a time of crisis for fear of pruning the wrong branch and diminishing the growth by sending a message to key people that it’s time to go, which is always possible and arguably likely when you cut. I believe that Hasbro shareholders should insist on making WOTC’s management team responsible for the whole company, as they have time and again been the backbone of profitability, progressive projects that actually ship and make actual money and have been doing a lot of good decision making in recent years. Yes I’m aware of the CEO’s criticisms around short term decision making, but he’s always had to answer to the parent company and they are very corporate and MBA-logic oriented. Now on to the answer to your question, here is the math they look at: https://www.business.com/finance/big-tech-earnings-and-layoffs-compared/ https://www.business.com/finance/big-tech-earnings-and-layof... From the article: Key Takeaways Amazon had $2.8 million in earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – or EBITDA) for every staff member they laid off in January. Meta had $3.9 million in earnings for each of the 11,000 staff members they laid off in November. In response to Meta’s cost-cutting strategy, its stock price increased by 19 percent. Tech giant Microsoft had an EBITDA of $98.8 billion in 2022. This means they earned $9.8 million for each person they laid off in January 2023. Other companies’ layoffs weren’t as difficult to understand: WeWork ended 2022 with an EBITDA of -$824 million, and Spotify ended its fiscal year with an EBITDA of -$290 million.
  - grensley 3y ago
    The current CEO, Chris Cocks, was the President of WOTC from 2016 to 2022.
    - happytiger 3y ago
      Ah, then perhaps my opinion is outdated or incorrect. I did not know.
  - hatenberg 3y ago
    Short term thinking also doesn't matter to investors. They can drop the stock like a hot potato any time they want. There are no incentives built in for long term holding.
  - moogly 3y ago
    > have been doing a lot of good decision making in recent years. Wait, what? Aren't these the same people who tried to rug-pull the D&D license and caused a bunch of MtG drama with new cards that almost crashed the card market? Perhaps those decrees came from Hasbro, but we outsiders can't really know that, can we?
  - jcparkyn 3y ago
    Earnings per laid off employee seems like an odd metric. It makes the decision sound more "rational" the more employees are laid off (which is clearly backwards), and would give ridiculous numbers for companies with very few or zero layoffs. I only skimmed the linked article, but they don't seem to bother justifying why this metric matters.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Fed didn't raise rates in December due to lower than expected inflation. The entire market took off like a rocketship. You need to normalize against the market (ie: calculate Alpha) to negate the macroeconomic effects.
- jldugger 3y ago
  Browsing their most recent 10Q[1], it looks like they took a substantial loss on their investment in EntertainmentOne[2]. Which they did with borrowed money, meaning they don't have that much equity to lose. If you look at it from a business line perspective, WotC made 2x the profits of the next biggest, on half the revenue. My read: management bet the company on Film&TV in 2019, and lost so hard WoTC pays the price. [1]:https://investor.hasbro.com/static-files/69afb88f-126e-4604-856e-dae9826abbe6 https://investor.hasbro.com/static-files/69afb88f-126e-4604-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_One#Sale_to_Hasbro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_One#Sale_to_Hasb...
- Johnny555 3y ago
  The market is more focused on next quarter's profits than next years - if layoffs help the balance sheet next quarter, they don't care if game quality suffers and there's less profit in the years to come. Well, it's not that the market doesn't care about next year's profit, but they'll expect the company to figure it out by next year.
throw0101b 3y ago
Penny Arcade comic on the situation, "Isolator": * https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2023/12/15/isolator https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2023/12/15/isolator
- getwiththeprog 3y ago
  "D&D is, for lack of a better term than I have used previously, a culture. Serving that culture is such an honor. Does such a culture survive, truly survive, lodged within a pair of digital, aggressively monetized parentheses?" (Penny Arcade) D&D is the ony common RPG available these days is most of Australia - it certainly has the largest market share. As cultures go, RPG can easily rebuild itself from a fan-base. I personally liked 5th Ed core rules, yet I could be very happy to see D&D topple itself and reintroduce gamers to a new world of freshly minted RPGs.
  - Loughla 3y ago
    That's interesting. In the states there are an absolute abundance of rpg's available. Many rule sets, many settings. It's an actual renaissance of the field, I would argue.
  - whythre 3y ago
    …what? Dnd is the market leader but we have the internet, availability shouldn’t be an issue. You can download almost anything from drivethru rpg, and I ran a multi year World of Darkness game with pdfs and online resources. You might not be able to wander into a store and play with randos, but if you have some open minded friends, just about any tabletop game is an option.
    - drxzcl 3y ago
      BTW, I detest PDF for online use. It looks great, but the typesetting never matches whatever screen I'm using. If it's going to go paperless, the RPG industry needs to evolve beyond "let's pretend this is paper".
  - starkparker 3y ago
getwiththeprog 3y ago
As a long term Wizards player / purchaser, I think their product quality has been dropping over the last few years. In D&D, take the Planescape box set - it was a really empty world lacking in the imagination that the original second ed Planescape had. All the D&D content just seems like filler to me. In MTG, they are releasing so many sets that it would cost a fortune to keep up, and the cards are all like 'meh'. They are doing Dr Who and Lord of the Rings - so of course they are easy sells, but the quality is really average. I guess the equation is - people keep buying, we have market dominance, so who cares about the quality?
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  I think this hypothesis is a good example of an opinion I’m developing that any average executive team can follow the spreadsheet. But what makes a team truly exceptional is the ability and wisdom to identify and act on the subjective and immeasurable qualities of the business. If quality falls but sales rise, did quality not matter? Will it not matter? Maybe we’re not measuring the right things. Maybe we have the wrong models. Maybe there is no model and you just have a general intuition that this is probably important regardless.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    I actually think measurement is the source of “artificial stupidity”. We tend to measure what’s readily quantifiable. But these tend to be the most basic facts of a situation. And when we make decisions solely based on those metrics, we ignore significant higher order effects — which are difficult to measure. So we make reductive decisions. Which is where humanity had previously evolved tribal knowledge, parables, etc — because generationally, we can learn those effects. But we threw all of that data out of our models, which are based purely on numerics. However, the effect can be years to decades to manifest — much like modeling a farm as only basic inputs and outputs, then destroying the soil over years. (To reference another article today.)
    - AmericanOP 3y ago
      It would be like trying to measure the GDP of the renaissance, then predict which artists to invest in.
jmcgough 3y ago
A layoff gives managers the opportunity to fire people who they've wanted to fire for a while. The firings within WotC were likely opportunistic and not about trying to change the direction or strength of the company. Doing it as part of larger layoffs gives an excuse for it and in theory mitigates drama.
- el-dude-arino 3y ago
  Ah you beat me to it. Layoffs like this mitigate the drama for sure, but also mitigates legal liability, which just goes to show you; you're a fool to remain loyal to the company. A lot of the people fired were rated highly in their performance reviews, I'm sure. But if you're too ambitious or criticized the boss for making a mistake or just looked at him wrong... you're gone. My advice: - Always be interviewing - Never stay somewhere longer than 2-4 years - Don't take on extra work or go above and beyond - Try to work two or more remote jobs - Kiss your boss' ass - Never take a stand on anything
  - jen729w 3y ago
    > Try to work two or more remote jobs What, routinely? No.
    - el-dude-arino 3y ago
      It's not as hard as you think, especially if you do contract work on the side while you have a full time job.
      - jen729w 3y ago
        So now you have three jobs? You work too much.
      - mock-possum 3y ago
        How much money do you need?
monero-xmr 3y ago
[flagged]
- soneca 3y ago
  My understanding is that WotC is the only part of Hasbro that makes money. So it is not exactly like this
- dragontamer 3y ago
  WotC made tons of money. DnD movie, Baldurs Gate 3 royalties (Sword Coast writing is owned by WotC). Magic the Gathering. This section of the company literally prints money in a resounding success. Outside of the OGL misstep, WotC was one of the most successful brands this year.
kderbyma 3y ago
A bit of a hot take, but video games need a change. they have stagnated as their profit have soared but like most things....profits are a lagging indicator and like Disney marvel.....were on the slide down. this doesn't mean video game industry is dead....just that it needs to shed it's skin and remove the profit hungry leeches.... the big names will lose lots of money and will do all they can to consolidate anything left unscathed by their ineptitude and attempt acquisitions....it is time for a new dawn....break up the corpos....I look forward to a fresh empire of creators...
- fullshark 3y ago
  I unironically blame the consumer. I guess also some parents/game companies for exploitative practices on children. There's a mountain of games out there that aren't garbage but they keep shoveling money towards the games that are pretty much explicitly anti-user.
  - somestag 3y ago
    There is no "the consumer."
    - thatguy0900 3y ago
      Well someone is preordering all these games that are almost garunteed to be unfinished, at best. What shod we call them?
      - chii 3y ago
        suckers?
- chii 3y ago
  > a fresh empire of creators there's so many indie games out there that i have not even considered buying from a corp made game for many years. As for mobile games, it's a blight on the landscape, best left alone. Dont feed that industry, except to buy indie games that you want to support.
29athrowaway 3y ago
If I was one of the excellent artists at Wizards of the Coast, I would be worried about Stable Diffusion.
- jldugger 3y ago
  AFAIK, MtG art is all gig work. Art is part of the product and to the extent that AI gets involved it would be about elevating the value rather than cutting costs.
- wincy 3y ago
  One of the Dungeons and Dragons artists got in trouble for creating an amazing drawing of a giant then using Stable Diffusion to make it really pop. A different Ilya than the one we all know and love got in a bit of hot water [0]. [0] https://decrypt.co/151515/dungeons-dragons-ai-artificial-intelligence-art-artwork-artist-ilya-shkipin https://decrypt.co/151515/dungeons-dragons-ai-artificial-int...
snagglemouth 3y ago
As someone who's played these games, it's disheartening to see the layoffs at Wizards of the Coast. Their contributions to the gaming world are immense, and the potential brain drain to competitors is concerning. These games hold a special place in many hearts, and the recent controversies have cast a shadow. Hoping for a brighter future for the gaming community.
apstats 3y ago
I don’t think it’s possible to determine if a decision like this is a good one without working at the company. News articles like this are useless.
- jldugger 3y ago
  How does the board of directors evaluate management performance then?
  - rco8786 3y ago
    I think it's fair to consider a board of directors as people who "work at the company".
    - Retric 3y ago
      I don’t. Further it’s common for all stockholders to be asked to vote on decisions with 1 vote per share. While it’s true most people have only a trivial number of shares and are therefore largely irrelevant they also don’t have access to non public information.
      - Ensorceled 3y ago
        Most Boards of Directors contain a bunch of representatives of the largest institutional holders and some members hand picked by the CEO. In Hasbro's case, the Chair of the Board is listed as an employee of the company and was their interim CEO. The rest of board follows what you would expect.
    - michaelcampbell 3y ago
      If history is any guide, "work" might be a stretch but "employed by the company", sure. Only half joking.
  - bsdpufferfish 3y ago
    Have you ever read a news article about something you have insider knowledge of?
anuraaga 3y ago
This comes after this year selling the rights to the Transformers movie series, an arguably larger hit to their ability to have mainstream impact. It seems very unlikely they wouldn't be looking for a buyer for WotC as well, and trimming down to just the IP may be making it a better sale. The company is struggling and likely pulling out all the stops the avoid bankruptcy, when you need liquidity this could very much include cuts to otherwise profitable segments.
- busterarm 3y ago
  The quality of the IP that they sold off w/ eOne, both on the music side in their 2021 sale and the tv/movie side with this recent one, is staggering. Notably, the entire Death Row Records catalog, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, international distribution for The Walking Dead, etc.
  - oliwarner 3y ago
    Those notable titles are pretty old and past development. Same as Transformers. I guess they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      > they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business. Isn't that business basically free money? The way I see it, no capital investment is needed. You just need to keep a few accountants and lawyers around to handle occasional licensing paperwork. Am I missing something?
      - dageshi 3y ago
        It might not be that straightforward when dealing internationally?
        gavinray 3y ago
        But doesn't that mean that at least nationally, it's essentially a money printing machine? Because this is my layman's conception of how media licensing works, at least.
THENATHE 3y ago
I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different color neon border that made it spike to 3k for a while, let alone the new serialized cards. I wish we could go back to that, because I was so excited about collecting cards back then. Nowadays I feel like unless I open a pack with a crazy reprint or a REALLY lucky list card, there are essentially no cards worth anything. I remember pulling some shock lands and even when they were only 8 bucks it felt really great, like it was gambling. Now, I only ever get packs of remastered sets, and standard sets are wholly uninteresting. I do a $40 draft and get $3 worth of cards, and it is to be seen if these EVER go up in value. I still love the game, and I play it more than ever. But there are three groups of people: investors, people that realize it is a TCG, and people that think all cards should be worthless. The first is greedy, the middle is realistic, and the latter is idealistic. But I am solidly in the middle, and there is so much pushing on both sides that the middle group is demonized for wanting to play a game and have cards have relative value too.
- __turbobrew__ 3y ago
  I prefer having cheap cards. You are paying for the experience not the cards when you draft. What I don’t like is wotc printing new powerful cards in non-standard sets. Modern horizons, commander sets, etc print absolutely must play busted cards but the sets are limited print quantity and artificially scarce. If it was up to me all new cards would be printed in standard sets and supplemental sets are reprints only. 2016 magic was nice because you could play reserved list cards without having to sell a kidney…
  - Panzer04 3y ago
    Part of the point is that a lot of these cards would be busted in standard though, so printing straight to modern is a way to still get these kinds of cards out without powercreeping the standard of the day.
phone8675309 3y ago
WotC has multiple Marvel sets coming out for Magic over the next few years, so who needs a design staff?/s
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
Prepare for the enshittification and bedbathandbeyonding of Magic the gathering. If I had to make a guess as to why, given the fact that the people they laid off were all senior leaders and the numbers are good, it would be preparing for a pump and dump. if you want to be able to pump and dump a really strong brand then you need to be able to have leaders who don’t mind burning the brands equity in order to make money. My guess is that specifically what intending to do here. Change the leadership, make new “sticky” products, pump revenue numbers, then spin out a public offering of the magic brand that looks like a great new reboot and refresh. However the brand is only there to smuggle in the subscription model around new products that have strong margin. Everyone* gets rich cause they slaughtered their fattest pig and yet another cultural staple is killed. Don’t worry, another band of psychopaths will resurrect it in a few decades like Mattell is doing with the Barbie brand currently. *Not everyone - very few actually
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > Prepare for the enshittification and bedbathandbeyonding of Magic the gathering. That happened during the original design of the game. M:tG was one of the first products to sell you a pig in a poke. That was the concept! I've seen people say that it would be nice to regulate loot boxes in video games, but they can't figure out how to do it without banning Magic's business model. I never understood why that would be a problem.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    Exactly. It would be a better game if they just sold entire expansions where you get all of the cards.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      It may not even exist without such a model, on the other hand. Which may cause many other things to cease as well or never expand to mainstream-ish reception.
      - 3y ago
blobbers 3y ago
“now it’s a union shop in the same state as Wizards” - regarding unions is it considered a good thing? I still think of it as a crony workplace where only age is promoted and not merit. Am I wrong? Only did union job at a grocery store (UFCW)
- dmix 3y ago
  I worked at a unionized job as a teenager at an industrial plant and I asked how to get hired for real instead of temping and he explained how unions worked there and other plants in town. He said it's extremely neoptistic, they'd usually hire a kid of one of the workers or a friend and the odds of an outsider getting in was thin. They dealt out jobs like a mafia family.
  - rndmwlk 3y ago
    I have a few friends in the trades, all part of a union, and none of them would echo this sentiment. It's also funny because this is the exact same sentiment people complain about with the corporate world, where it's more about who you know than what you know.
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      Trade unions and Employment unions are very different. That said, i suspect the parent story was from years ago, most likely late 90's or early 00's when that type of thing was common Today most unions are very very very hard up to find anyone willing to work everyone that wants a job, and can actually follow instructions, and show up on time (harder than it sounds it seems) gets a job right now...
      - dmix 3y ago
        It was early 2000s in Southern Ontario Canada
  - rendall 3y ago
    I worked at a unionized job. It was not that way for us at all. Perhaps a different industry? It was mostly just protection from shenanigans. Once, for instance, the owner of the company tried not to give us a contracted wage increase - a wage increase he agreed to - and he got slammed by the civil judge. We were paid 3 times the wages that he had tried to steal.
ramesh31 3y ago
Can't new MtG sets literally be generated perfectly with AI now? Might be behind a lot of this. Looks like the layoffs were pretty heavy on the art department: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/18ij198/list_of_known_wotc_employees_let_go_by_hasbro/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/18ij198/list_of_kn... Reminds me of the transition from classical animation to CGI. It used to take teams of hundreds of animators to make a film simply because of the sheer amount of work to be done. Whole career paths were made obsolete by the switch.
- dathinab 3y ago
  > Can't new MtG sets literally be generated perfectly with AI now? no not quite you can generate cards sure but for a set to work you need more then just random generated cards especially if you want it to go well or if you want to continue to have success with crossovers where the choices of mechanics should synagize not just with the set in general but with the lore from the cross over, something mtg somewhat managed to do quite well for multiple of their cross over sets in the recent years but a lot of the current AI is really bad at getting any of this broader context right and there is the broader balancing both for draft, commander, balancing prices, reprints etc. Similar while there are always examples of AI are being extremely well made, most of it has subtle but clear signs it's AI art. That's not necessary bad art, but clearly different art. And a lot of the mtg players I did now over the years cared about the art quite a bit and would probably be very unhappy if it becomes AI art. I think for a lot of magic players AI generated cards (with similar price gauging selling structures as the current cards) might very well be the last straw causing them to exit the game. EDIT: Additionally AFIK you can't really copyright AI art in the US which would be a major problem for them.
  - ramesh31 3y ago
    Point in general is that the workload is massively reduced no matter what. You no longer need teams of people manipulating Illustrator files. It's just a single artist fine tuning a generated image.
solardev 3y ago
This is the same Hasbro that tried to retroactively close off the D&D Open Game License (and thus the third party ecosystem). It was a massive betrayal that caused a ton of pushback: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jan/12/dungeons-and-dragons-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jan/12/dungeons-and-d... They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them (just a few pieces of paper, not enough dice, sub par instructions ). Or really expensive character toys. D&D has undoubtedly gotten more popular, but I wish it were under the stewardship of someone more deserving, like a geekier board game shop than greed-enthralled Hasbro. They've become the Disney of board games, all quantity and profit and no real concern for a high quality gamer experience. I bet someone like Larian (Baldur's Gate 3) would've taken better care of the IP and rulesets (and they're working on a Divinity tabletop game!)
- dumpsterlid 3y ago
  We just need to move on from DnD to other IPs at this point, it is absurdly clear that everyone putting all their eggs in the basket with wizards of the coast and it is just a bad idea. There are plenty of fantastic alternatives, we really don’t need the DnD universe. I mean, as highly acclaimed as BG3 is, people in general seem to feel that the dev’s previous game Divinity Original Sin 2 has better combat mechanics… so idk I just think it’s time to move past wizards of the coast and embrace better systems.
  - solardev 3y ago
    I think Forgotten Realms has a special place in many people's hearts (especially the millennials and around them), being a formative part of our childhoods: Minsc and Boo, Drizzt, beholders, mimics, etc. It's like Star Wars or LOTR, people get attached and emotionally invested and it's not so easy to let go overnight. I enjoyed the Original Sin series and played them for many hours,but never finished either one. The characters and stories weren't their strong suit IMO (they were kinda cheesy, honestly), but yeah, tactically they played better than BG3. That's the downside of trying to accurately transfer tabletop mechanics, I guess, and combining it with the poor UI of the BG3 series (too many different types of actions and reactions to squeeze in the toolbars). Anyway that's beside the point. I agree new IPs would be great, but those are rare! It would be cool to see an open source fantasy world where high quality fanfic could be curated into canon.
jimbob45 3y ago
Getting laid off has got to be the single highest trigger of suicide. Maybe breakups or child loss are higher but it’s at least top 3. Watching companies perform layoffs on thousands of employees just for their stock price to temporarily bump is really disgusting. I’d like to see some legislation that significantly penalizes companies engaging in layoffs. They should be a last resort, not a well-worn tool.
- bsdpufferfish 3y ago
  Accept that your job can disappear at anytime and for any reason, no matter how loyal you are. Your sense of security should come from your confidence in getting work if needed.
  - quadrifoliate 3y ago
    This is more acceptable as a solution in a situation where your and your family's literal access to healthcare is not dependent upon your not getting laid off. Healthcare costs on the "open" market are enough to drive even families that think of themselves as well-off into poverty. One of the reasons that a single-payer healthcare system didn't take off in the 15 years between 2008 and now has been that the current system was working well enough. I wonder if the widespread layoffs and resulting loss of healthcare access will change voters' minds on that issue.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      Unemployment is actually at record lows now; it's just the tech industry seeing massive layoffs probably due to a ZIRP bubble popping. The indignities of the system are already well-known to the majority of people who don't have 6-figure work from home jobs. You'd think a single-payer system would be more popular, but that is not what people seem to prioritize. Instead it seems that they vote ever more to cut social safety nets (though I think they really vote for cultural reasons and right-wing politicians use their grievances to serve the wealthy). > Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor was not angry. In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told me. “I would rather die.” When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”[0] [0]https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying-whiteness/ https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying...
prakhar897 3y ago
thinly related but i could really use some advice. There's a board game called "quoridor" that I've been playing a lot lately. I found 2 platforms where u can play this online, major one being BGA (boardgamearena). It was kinda sad to see a game on par with chess in terms of simplicity and strategy, being lumped into the same group as kids games. So, I started building a platform for it myself in my free time. Still a work in progress (https://li-quoridor.vercel.app/ https://li-quoridor.vercel.app/). The issue is that I have no clue if the game mechanics are copyrighted or not. The wiki says "By 1997, the five biggest game companies in the world (including Gigamic) American bought the copyright [clarify] of this game and released it to the world". But wiki itself acknowleges that this is a statement has no source. So, how do i go about making sure i have the right permissions to build this stuff, and will they even give these permission or not?
- DylanSp 3y ago
  With the disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice: - Game mechanics generally can't be copyrighted. If you had a platform for playing "Prakhar's Game" that had the exact same rules as Quoridor, you'd be in the clear. - Specific pieces of art related to the game would definitely be copyrighted. Copying the exact box art of some commercially-released version of Quoridor would be an issue. - I think the issue to be concerned about would be whether you can use the name (which would be trademarked, not copyrighted). A quick search turned up a page from the US Patent and Trademark Office [1] showing that it's still held by Gigamic. I'd probably look for sources on that 1997 "release to the world" to see if you can find more details; looking around Gigamic's site might also turn up something. EDIT: BGA definitely isn't just for kid's games, incidentally. Something like Ark Nova or Agricola is a long ways from Battleship or Candy Land or what not. [1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75334527&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75334527&caseSearchType=U...
- morelisp 3y ago
  BGA is... not for kids games. I mean, there are kids games there, but there's also RftG, TtA, T&E... Quoridor is nice but I would not even put it in the top 10 modern abstracts, let alone on par with chess. Legality aside, it is a bit of a dick move to reimplement a modern abstract that people can play for free, or even make themselves for a low cost, just because you don't like the (free) site it's on.
black_13 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
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webdoodle 3y ago
MtG saw a huge increase in demand while people were mandated to stay at home. Now that the mandates are over, the demand is likely about to implode as people return to previous activities.
- srg0 3y ago
  > MtG saw a huge increase in demand while people were mandated to stay at home Did it? If anything, MTG Modern prices were going down until the end of 2020, both in paper and online. And it's one most popular formats. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/modern#paper https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/modern#paper
boringuser2 3y ago
Layoffs during periods of strong performance really raise an eyebrow to me. You should have to prove some economic need to make those kind of layoffs similarly how you have to prove economic need for work visas.
- keep_reading 3y ago
  Why do so many people think the economy is in a healthy position? Strong performance now means nothing. e.g., Department Store Sales 3-month average was $17B in 2008 and is now down to under $11B. It's a bloodbath. It has been steadily trending down since 2008. "Bill Ackman warns economy will fall off a cliff if the Fed doesn't hurry and cut rates" The Fed isn't going to cut rates for years. They're refusing to blink. These are Volcker-sized balls on JPow. Any rallying now is squeezing blood from the stone. Any massive layoffs, sales, mergers, bankruptcies, or consolidations is hedging for the unavoidable cliff. These are just smart, safe moves by corporations -- getting their affairs in order, per se. And now the workers are going to suffer because they didn't organize labor when the economy was booming and they weren't feeling the pinch. Hopefully they learn this time and don't let the unions weaken if they want to avoid being battered and left for a cheaper workforce or replaced with automation.
  - StableAlkyne 3y ago
    > Department Store Sales 3-month average was $17B in 2008 and is now down to under $11B. It's a bloodbath. It has been steadily trending down since 2008. No comment on the rest of your post, but I suspect this particular metric has more to do with the rise of online retailers and less to do with falling purchasing power.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    I think you in this case missed the tree for the forest. Hasbro right now os doing well. A company doing well should not be able to simply fire the labor that helped them succeed like they are tools. Layoffs wouldn't be an issue of they were respectable. Some mix of either foresight or proper severance. In reality, it's rarely either unless you're in a sector that is likely already well compensated. I think thars more in the heart of what the GP was talking about. >And now the workers are going to suffer because they didn't organize labor when the economy was booming and they weren't feeling the pinch. If we had good government labor laws, unions wouldn't be necessary. I don't know why everyone feels collective bargaining is the only road here. Moreover, they aren't mutually exclusive; we can vye for both unions and better government regulation of jobs and how easily you can lay someone off on a profitable quarter.
pushedx 3y ago
Any more details on what Hasbro's "Entertainment" division does, and why it's lost more than $800M this year?
- sircastor 3y ago
  This might be a stretch (and also is 100% speculative), but maybe it’s a tax write-off thing. They put money into something, decided they wanted the tax breaks more than to sell the product, and there’s your loss.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  > Hasbro Entertainment, a division that will be dedicated to leveraging Hasbro’s most valuable brands to develop and produce premium content across platforms for audiences of all ages, following the close of Hasbro’s sale of eOne’s film & television business. The new division, which unifies Hasbro’s film, television, animation, and digital media expertise under one umbrella, reflects a significant step in the execution of Hasbro’s Blueprint 2.0 strategy, which is defined by increased investment in Hasbro’s priority brands https://newsroom.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-announces-leadership-team-new-entertainment-division https://newsroom.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-detai... Sounds like they're losing money on making media. Maybe it's Capex for a movie(s)? Maybe they're just not popular media? I don't know but that's the team losing money.
novemp 3y ago
What's baffling about it? It's just another corporation deciding it wants All The Money Ever and making dumb short-sighted decisions in search of profit. Old news.
dallas 3y ago
I play/run D&D three times a fortnight using the O.G. editions (AD&D, B/X, retroclones). The brand is dead, long live the game!
- Calamitous 3y ago
  > three times a fortnight I approve of this unit of measure.
  - dallas 3y ago
    "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT." [Gygax, 1979] (I missed a chance to use "thrice".)
    - nameless912 3y ago
      In this aspect, Gygax is wrong :)
      - dallas 3y ago
        I think the definition of "campaign" has drifted significantly since that book was written but I agree.
mynameisnoone 3y ago
It's not baffling, it's the latest in business lemmings' theater: when profits are at record levels, squeeze out even more money by suppressing wages with a good round or 3 of layoffs. That'll teach those corporate employees to stay hungry and not to earn too much because the CEO and investors needs those profits.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
edrxty 3y ago
I really wish I could sit on one of these decision meetings just so I could understand how the sausage is made. There's an entire class of people out there running the world yet operating in their own universe completely removed from the consensus reality we live in. "Ok we have this cash cow..." "Shoot it" "But..." "Shoot it, the cow accepted an open license" "That doesn't make any..." "I don't care, shoot the cow"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
pxeger1 3y ago
How can their board games etc. be losing money? It seems like they shouldn’t cost much to produce.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  Lot's of mistakes? They made about a billion Monopoly games for instance. I see Monopoly games for specific cities, other IPs etc. Cheaters Version, Classic, Monopoly Junior. I regularly see brand new Monopoly games for sale on clearance for $10.
  - pxeger1 3y ago
    I guess there’s quite a lot of risk in developing, producing and marketing new games which might not succeed
floppiplopp 3y ago
I've been playing ttrpgs for over 25 years now and have a substantial library around 500 books, mostly rulebooks, but also plenty of dnd supplements. Overall I can say, the quality of WotC material has never been particularly good, but in recent years has fallen even below its old mediocrity, especially compared to their much smaller competition (not that it matters for the market share). Sure, 5e is pretty much late-stage dnd and splatbooks have always been rather questionable at the end of an edition. But the quasi monopoly of dnd and its success is also its greatest problem. They remember the reactions of the community towards 4th edition, as well as the ogl disaster earlier this year and they probably know that they cannot simply push "new product" to replace the current material people have purchased. They can only extend it or make slight improvements that don't disturb the average player who already spend money on something they like and plays "fine" (i.e. an inoffensive, acceptable and conventional fantasy experience). "one d&d" playtest material, anyone? d&d players are a rather conservative bunch of weirdos, why else would they cling to such a dusty system? So, what's there to promise the shareholders? A successful new edition? Unlikely. Maybe digital products? But you hardly need the old staff for that. We'll see, I guess. On a personal note, I've all the dnd I ever need and I've been rather bored with it. For my ttrpg future it's currently at the bottom of my list of things I want to play. The market of ttrpgs is generally pretty over-saturated and while the last years have been great as far as products by small publishers go, there's been less and less interesting material, e.g. even reputable publishers are desperately picking up tv and movie franchises to turn into rpg books. The hobby has had ups and downs, the early 80s, the late 90s, and the last few years were high points, now expect a downturn. Don't get me wrong, it will remain popular, but there will be less money in it for conventional material. And I guess WotC knows it, too.
chaostheory 3y ago
Reminds of when Rockstar laid off Red Dead Redemption staff despite great sales figures.
- jmcgough 3y ago
  Game dev is pretty different though. There's huge internal shifts in need for headcount since everything is often tied to development of a specific game. It's pretty common to lay off employees after a game gets shipped.
  - consp 3y ago
    > It's pretty common to lay off employees after a game gets shipped. While it is common... Why? You can employ people on a limited time or production span duration. I don't see the point in pretending to give someone a permanent job to only lay them off anyways.
    - bonton89 3y ago
      Probably helps keep their wages lower and prevents them from bailing on a late project like if they had a contract with a time limit. On the other hand, I wouldn't exactly be killing myself to ship on time if I was going to get laid off afterwards.
ddtaylor 3y ago
Hasbro is ruining the brand at alarming levels. They think they are doing it "smart" because MTGA and some other plays to try and split the audience of regular players and whales. There is no "smart" way to destroy your business. Also as a player right now is one of the worst lore breaking and general worst story related times to care in any way about these characters, assets, places or anything else. Hasbro blows
Dave3of5 3y ago
Most of these layoffs have been very odd. These are companies making bank and then laying off people left right and center that are key to them making that bank. Corporate companies are totally baffling Hasbro is no different.
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  What did you expect from a bunch of MBAs? They are not known for being particularly sharp, are they.
earthboundkid 3y ago
Hedge funds have a goal of creating reliable profits by systematically dismantling profitable businesses. This is that.
- roguas 3y ago
  How do you dismantle profitable business?
  - earthboundkid 3y ago
    Well, for example, when I worked at the Baltimore Sun, the owners at Tribune Media sold the already owned outright headquarters of the Sun, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, etc. and has us all lease office space from somewhere else instead. This is an insane business decision. No one who wants to keep a business alive would think to replace a money making asset (just lease out the other floors of the building) with a money losing ongoing expense. But it gives you one quarter of extremely high profitability in exchange for lower profits for the rest of time, so they did it.
flerchin 3y ago
Hasbro laid off 1100, of which 20 are at WoTC. But how many folks are at WoTC? Are those 20 involved in the actual money printer they have with WoTC?
- morgango 3y ago
  Very astute observation. It is sometimes worth it to take people who are unhappy in their job and/or not performing well and give them a package when they are available. I would guess there are 20 of these people at any company of that size, not just WOTC.
- Templa 3y ago
  Apparently (don't quote me on that, that's something I was told and I am not sure of) someone that designed the Universes Beyond sets was fired.
nurettin 3y ago
The question is: who are they really firing? There are thousands of tournament organizers, consultants, dealers and judges. Perhaps they aren't touching the core creation and balance team which churns out a new expansion every rotation.
soundnote 3y ago
They burned me out of Magic. It used to be that the game had distinct spoiler seasons, and the Standard format and game as a whole used to stand still for a while and be explored at length. Even the rotating Standard format had a period where you could grow really familiar with the format as it was even if you weren't a really plugged in grinder. Eternal formats changed slowly because power creep, while present, wasn't completely nuts. Now, the environment is a neverending spoiler season that it's impossible to keep up with unless you're one of those NYC squirrels on crack. See a graphical representation here: https://onlyontuesdays27.com/2022/10/18/30-years-of-magic-the-gathering-products/ https://onlyontuesdays27.com/2022/10/18/30-years-of-magic-th... Meanwhile, power creep is out of hand, which means more releases are more relevant to more formats, the quality of the flavour has progressively gotten worse. There's more and more of "millenial writing" that substitutes being good with being sassy. When the game costs an arm and a leg, why bother. D&D, similar deal. You have a fantasy setting, which should mean different creatures. What does Wizards do? Progressively remove more and more differentiation between different races and creatures. A 3m/10ft tall minotaur and a half-orc are both defined by strength, both get a +2STR which just feels wrong. But wait, there's more! A halfling can now decide to have the same bonus. It cheapens the setting when things don't mean something anymore. Similarily, RPGs are generally about overcoming challenges. And we get, what. Wheelchair-accessible dungeons?? Coffee shop modules for D&D, of all things, instead of doing the concept in a more suitable system like a FATE derivative? College student representation obsession's run completely off the rails, and it means the product starts failing at its core purpose.
bradknowles 3y ago
Here's the process. Your company can't do shit and is losing market share everywhere. So, you buy another company that can do shit, transfer the brand to the same people who can't do shit, and then fire all the people from the new company. For a brief period, while you've got the new brand, your company can start to regain a bit of market share. But that period never lasts, and you go back to the status quo. Rinse and repeat.

387 points by webmaven 3y ago

The market seems to disagree with the piece. The stock was in free fall from early October and recovered a bit after the layoff announcement. Anyone have an idea why?

lstamour 3y ago
Literally, and speaking generally, the stock price might go up due to short term gains? Layoffs are a form of cost-cutting and assuming it doesn’t affect the service or product, this leads to short term increased profits or offsets expected incurred losses? Not everyone playing the stock market is a value investor. As the fine article notes: > At time of writing, it’s unclear why Hasbro’s chosen to lay off employees at the single strongest company in its portfolio. This year, Wizards debuted a critically if not commercially successful major motion picture, earned a Game of the Year trophy at the 2023 Game Awards, and was consistently profitable, but Hasbro’s still sacking its employees. It’s the sort of math that only makes sense if you’ve got shareholders to placate.
happytiger 3y ago
Because layoffs provide profitability, rough as it is. However! What Hasbro is doing to WOTC is tremendously short term thinking. You do not prune the organizations that are providing all of your liquidity in a time of crisis for fear of pruning the wrong branch and diminishing the growth by sending a message to key people that it’s time to go, which is always possible and arguably likely when you cut. I believe that Hasbro shareholders should insist on making WOTC’s management team responsible for the whole company, as they have time and again been the backbone of profitability, progressive projects that actually ship and make actual money and have been doing a lot of good decision making in recent years. Yes I’m aware of the CEO’s criticisms around short term decision making, but he’s always had to answer to the parent company and they are very corporate and MBA-logic oriented. Now on to the answer to your question, here is the math they look at: https://www.business.com/finance/big-tech-earnings-and-layoffs-compared/ https://www.business.com/finance/big-tech-earnings-and-layof... From the article: Key Takeaways Amazon had $2.8 million in earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – or EBITDA) for every staff member they laid off in January. Meta had $3.9 million in earnings for each of the 11,000 staff members they laid off in November. In response to Meta’s cost-cutting strategy, its stock price increased by 19 percent. Tech giant Microsoft had an EBITDA of $98.8 billion in 2022. This means they earned $9.8 million for each person they laid off in January 2023. Other companies’ layoffs weren’t as difficult to understand: WeWork ended 2022 with an EBITDA of -$824 million, and Spotify ended its fiscal year with an EBITDA of -$290 million.
- grensley 3y ago
  The current CEO, Chris Cocks, was the President of WOTC from 2016 to 2022.
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Ah, then perhaps my opinion is outdated or incorrect. I did not know.
- hatenberg 3y ago
  Short term thinking also doesn't matter to investors. They can drop the stock like a hot potato any time they want. There are no incentives built in for long term holding.
- moogly 3y ago
  > have been doing a lot of good decision making in recent years. Wait, what? Aren't these the same people who tried to rug-pull the D&D license and caused a bunch of MtG drama with new cards that almost crashed the card market? Perhaps those decrees came from Hasbro, but we outsiders can't really know that, can we?
- jcparkyn 3y ago
  Earnings per laid off employee seems like an odd metric. It makes the decision sound more "rational" the more employees are laid off (which is clearly backwards), and would give ridiculous numbers for companies with very few or zero layoffs. I only skimmed the linked article, but they don't seem to bother justifying why this metric matters.
dragontamer 3y ago
Fed didn't raise rates in December due to lower than expected inflation. The entire market took off like a rocketship. You need to normalize against the market (ie: calculate Alpha) to negate the macroeconomic effects.
jldugger 3y ago
Browsing their most recent 10Q[1], it looks like they took a substantial loss on their investment in EntertainmentOne[2]. Which they did with borrowed money, meaning they don't have that much equity to lose. If you look at it from a business line perspective, WotC made 2x the profits of the next biggest, on half the revenue. My read: management bet the company on Film&TV in 2019, and lost so hard WoTC pays the price. [1]:https://investor.hasbro.com/static-files/69afb88f-126e-4604-856e-dae9826abbe6 https://investor.hasbro.com/static-files/69afb88f-126e-4604-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_One#Sale_to_Hasbro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_One#Sale_to_Hasb...
Johnny555 3y ago
The market is more focused on next quarter's profits than next years - if layoffs help the balance sheet next quarter, they don't care if game quality suffers and there's less profit in the years to come. Well, it's not that the market doesn't care about next year's profit, but they'll expect the company to figure it out by next year.

throw0101b 3y ago

Penny Arcade comic on the situation, "Isolator": * https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2023/12/15/isolator https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2023/12/15/isolator

getwiththeprog 3y ago
"D&D is, for lack of a better term than I have used previously, a culture. Serving that culture is such an honor. Does such a culture survive, truly survive, lodged within a pair of digital, aggressively monetized parentheses?" (Penny Arcade) D&D is the ony common RPG available these days is most of Australia - it certainly has the largest market share. As cultures go, RPG can easily rebuild itself from a fan-base. I personally liked 5th Ed core rules, yet I could be very happy to see D&D topple itself and reintroduce gamers to a new world of freshly minted RPGs.
- Loughla 3y ago
  That's interesting. In the states there are an absolute abundance of rpg's available. Many rule sets, many settings. It's an actual renaissance of the field, I would argue.
- whythre 3y ago
  …what? Dnd is the market leader but we have the internet, availability shouldn’t be an issue. You can download almost anything from drivethru rpg, and I ran a multi year World of Darkness game with pdfs and online resources. You might not be able to wander into a store and play with randos, but if you have some open minded friends, just about any tabletop game is an option.
  - drxzcl 3y ago
    BTW, I detest PDF for online use. It looks great, but the typesetting never matches whatever screen I'm using. If it's going to go paperless, the RPG industry needs to evolve beyond "let's pretend this is paper".
- starkparker 3y ago

getwiththeprog 3y ago

As a long term Wizards player / purchaser, I think their product quality has been dropping over the last few years. In D&D, take the Planescape box set - it was a really empty world lacking in the imagination that the original second ed Planescape had. All the D&D content just seems like filler to me. In MTG, they are releasing so many sets that it would cost a fortune to keep up, and the cards are all like 'meh'. They are doing Dr Who and Lord of the Rings - so of course they are easy sells, but the quality is really average. I guess the equation is - people keep buying, we have market dominance, so who cares about the quality?

Waterluvian 3y ago
I think this hypothesis is a good example of an opinion I’m developing that any average executive team can follow the spreadsheet. But what makes a team truly exceptional is the ability and wisdom to identify and act on the subjective and immeasurable qualities of the business. If quality falls but sales rise, did quality not matter? Will it not matter? Maybe we’re not measuring the right things. Maybe we have the wrong models. Maybe there is no model and you just have a general intuition that this is probably important regardless.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  I actually think measurement is the source of “artificial stupidity”. We tend to measure what’s readily quantifiable. But these tend to be the most basic facts of a situation. And when we make decisions solely based on those metrics, we ignore significant higher order effects — which are difficult to measure. So we make reductive decisions. Which is where humanity had previously evolved tribal knowledge, parables, etc — because generationally, we can learn those effects. But we threw all of that data out of our models, which are based purely on numerics. However, the effect can be years to decades to manifest — much like modeling a farm as only basic inputs and outputs, then destroying the soil over years. (To reference another article today.)
  - AmericanOP 3y ago
    It would be like trying to measure the GDP of the renaissance, then predict which artists to invest in.

jmcgough 3y ago

A layoff gives managers the opportunity to fire people who they've wanted to fire for a while. The firings within WotC were likely opportunistic and not about trying to change the direction or strength of the company. Doing it as part of larger layoffs gives an excuse for it and in theory mitigates drama.

el-dude-arino 3y ago
Ah you beat me to it. Layoffs like this mitigate the drama for sure, but also mitigates legal liability, which just goes to show you; you're a fool to remain loyal to the company. A lot of the people fired were rated highly in their performance reviews, I'm sure. But if you're too ambitious or criticized the boss for making a mistake or just looked at him wrong... you're gone. My advice: - Always be interviewing - Never stay somewhere longer than 2-4 years - Don't take on extra work or go above and beyond - Try to work two or more remote jobs - Kiss your boss' ass - Never take a stand on anything
- jen729w 3y ago
  > Try to work two or more remote jobs What, routinely? No.
  - el-dude-arino 3y ago
    It's not as hard as you think, especially if you do contract work on the side while you have a full time job.
    - jen729w 3y ago
      So now you have three jobs? You work too much.
    - mock-possum 3y ago
      How much money do you need?

monero-xmr 3y ago

[flagged]

soneca 3y ago
My understanding is that WotC is the only part of Hasbro that makes money. So it is not exactly like this
dragontamer 3y ago
WotC made tons of money. DnD movie, Baldurs Gate 3 royalties (Sword Coast writing is owned by WotC). Magic the Gathering. This section of the company literally prints money in a resounding success. Outside of the OGL misstep, WotC was one of the most successful brands this year.

kderbyma 3y ago

A bit of a hot take, but video games need a change. they have stagnated as their profit have soared but like most things....profits are a lagging indicator and like Disney marvel.....were on the slide down. this doesn't mean video game industry is dead....just that it needs to shed it's skin and remove the profit hungry leeches.... the big names will lose lots of money and will do all they can to consolidate anything left unscathed by their ineptitude and attempt acquisitions....it is time for a new dawn....break up the corpos....I look forward to a fresh empire of creators...

fullshark 3y ago
I unironically blame the consumer. I guess also some parents/game companies for exploitative practices on children. There's a mountain of games out there that aren't garbage but they keep shoveling money towards the games that are pretty much explicitly anti-user.
- somestag 3y ago
  There is no "the consumer."
  - thatguy0900 3y ago
    Well someone is preordering all these games that are almost garunteed to be unfinished, at best. What shod we call them?
    - chii 3y ago
      suckers?
chii 3y ago
> a fresh empire of creators there's so many indie games out there that i have not even considered buying from a corp made game for many years. As for mobile games, it's a blight on the landscape, best left alone. Dont feed that industry, except to buy indie games that you want to support.

29athrowaway 3y ago

If I was one of the excellent artists at Wizards of the Coast, I would be worried about Stable Diffusion.

jldugger 3y ago
AFAIK, MtG art is all gig work. Art is part of the product and to the extent that AI gets involved it would be about elevating the value rather than cutting costs.
wincy 3y ago
One of the Dungeons and Dragons artists got in trouble for creating an amazing drawing of a giant then using Stable Diffusion to make it really pop. A different Ilya than the one we all know and love got in a bit of hot water [0]. [0] https://decrypt.co/151515/dungeons-dragons-ai-artificial-intelligence-art-artwork-artist-ilya-shkipin https://decrypt.co/151515/dungeons-dragons-ai-artificial-int...

snagglemouth 3y ago

As someone who's played these games, it's disheartening to see the layoffs at Wizards of the Coast. Their contributions to the gaming world are immense, and the potential brain drain to competitors is concerning. These games hold a special place in many hearts, and the recent controversies have cast a shadow. Hoping for a brighter future for the gaming community.

apstats 3y ago

I don’t think it’s possible to determine if a decision like this is a good one without working at the company. News articles like this are useless.

jldugger 3y ago
How does the board of directors evaluate management performance then?
- rco8786 3y ago
  I think it's fair to consider a board of directors as people who "work at the company".
  - Retric 3y ago
    I don’t. Further it’s common for all stockholders to be asked to vote on decisions with 1 vote per share. While it’s true most people have only a trivial number of shares and are therefore largely irrelevant they also don’t have access to non public information.
    - Ensorceled 3y ago
      Most Boards of Directors contain a bunch of representatives of the largest institutional holders and some members hand picked by the CEO. In Hasbro's case, the Chair of the Board is listed as an employee of the company and was their interim CEO. The rest of board follows what you would expect.
  - michaelcampbell 3y ago
    If history is any guide, "work" might be a stretch but "employed by the company", sure. Only half joking.
- bsdpufferfish 3y ago
  Have you ever read a news article about something you have insider knowledge of?

anuraaga 3y ago

This comes after this year selling the rights to the Transformers movie series, an arguably larger hit to their ability to have mainstream impact. It seems very unlikely they wouldn't be looking for a buyer for WotC as well, and trimming down to just the IP may be making it a better sale. The company is struggling and likely pulling out all the stops the avoid bankruptcy, when you need liquidity this could very much include cuts to otherwise profitable segments.

busterarm 3y ago
The quality of the IP that they sold off w/ eOne, both on the music side in their 2021 sale and the tv/movie side with this recent one, is staggering. Notably, the entire Death Row Records catalog, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, international distribution for The Walking Dead, etc.
- oliwarner 3y ago
  Those notable titles are pretty old and past development. Same as Transformers. I guess they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business. Isn't that business basically free money? The way I see it, no capital investment is needed. You just need to keep a few accountants and lawyers around to handle occasional licensing paperwork. Am I missing something?
    - dageshi 3y ago
      It might not be that straightforward when dealing internationally?
      - gavinray 3y ago
        But doesn't that mean that at least nationally, it's essentially a money printing machine? Because this is my layman's conception of how media licensing works, at least.

THENATHE 3y ago

I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different color neon border that made it spike to 3k for a while, let alone the new serialized cards. I wish we could go back to that, because I was so excited about collecting cards back then. Nowadays I feel like unless I open a pack with a crazy reprint or a REALLY lucky list card, there are essentially no cards worth anything. I remember pulling some shock lands and even when they were only 8 bucks it felt really great, like it was gambling. Now, I only ever get packs of remastered sets, and standard sets are wholly uninteresting. I do a $40 draft and get $3 worth of cards, and it is to be seen if these EVER go up in value. I still love the game, and I play it more than ever. But there are three groups of people: investors, people that realize it is a TCG, and people that think all cards should be worthless. The first is greedy, the middle is realistic, and the latter is idealistic. But I am solidly in the middle, and there is so much pushing on both sides that the middle group is demonized for wanting to play a game and have cards have relative value too.

__turbobrew__ 3y ago
I prefer having cheap cards. You are paying for the experience not the cards when you draft. What I don’t like is wotc printing new powerful cards in non-standard sets. Modern horizons, commander sets, etc print absolutely must play busted cards but the sets are limited print quantity and artificially scarce. If it was up to me all new cards would be printed in standard sets and supplemental sets are reprints only. 2016 magic was nice because you could play reserved list cards without having to sell a kidney…
- Panzer04 3y ago
  Part of the point is that a lot of these cards would be busted in standard though, so printing straight to modern is a way to still get these kinds of cards out without powercreeping the standard of the day.

phone8675309 3y ago

WotC has multiple Marvel sets coming out for Magic over the next few years, so who needs a design staff?/s

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

Prepare for the enshittification and bedbathandbeyonding of Magic the gathering. If I had to make a guess as to why, given the fact that the people they laid off were all senior leaders and the numbers are good, it would be preparing for a pump and dump. if you want to be able to pump and dump a really strong brand then you need to be able to have leaders who don’t mind burning the brands equity in order to make money. My guess is that specifically what intending to do here. Change the leadership, make new “sticky” products, pump revenue numbers, then spin out a public offering of the magic brand that looks like a great new reboot and refresh. However the brand is only there to smuggle in the subscription model around new products that have strong margin. Everyone* gets rich cause they slaughtered their fattest pig and yet another cultural staple is killed. Don’t worry, another band of psychopaths will resurrect it in a few decades like Mattell is doing with the Barbie brand currently. *Not everyone - very few actually

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> Prepare for the enshittification and bedbathandbeyonding of Magic the gathering. That happened during the original design of the game. M:tG was one of the first products to sell you a pig in a poke. That was the concept! I've seen people say that it would be nice to regulate loot boxes in video games, but they can't figure out how to do it without banning Magic's business model. I never understood why that would be a problem.
- dontlaugh 3y ago
  Exactly. It would be a better game if they just sold entire expansions where you get all of the cards.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    It may not even exist without such a model, on the other hand. Which may cause many other things to cease as well or never expand to mainstream-ish reception.
    - 3y ago

blobbers 3y ago

“now it’s a union shop in the same state as Wizards” - regarding unions is it considered a good thing? I still think of it as a crony workplace where only age is promoted and not merit. Am I wrong? Only did union job at a grocery store (UFCW)

dmix 3y ago
I worked at a unionized job as a teenager at an industrial plant and I asked how to get hired for real instead of temping and he explained how unions worked there and other plants in town. He said it's extremely neoptistic, they'd usually hire a kid of one of the workers or a friend and the odds of an outsider getting in was thin. They dealt out jobs like a mafia family.
- rndmwlk 3y ago
  I have a few friends in the trades, all part of a union, and none of them would echo this sentiment. It's also funny because this is the exact same sentiment people complain about with the corporate world, where it's more about who you know than what you know.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    Trade unions and Employment unions are very different. That said, i suspect the parent story was from years ago, most likely late 90's or early 00's when that type of thing was common Today most unions are very very very hard up to find anyone willing to work everyone that wants a job, and can actually follow instructions, and show up on time (harder than it sounds it seems) gets a job right now...
    - dmix 3y ago
      It was early 2000s in Southern Ontario Canada
- rendall 3y ago
  I worked at a unionized job. It was not that way for us at all. Perhaps a different industry? It was mostly just protection from shenanigans. Once, for instance, the owner of the company tried not to give us a contracted wage increase - a wage increase he agreed to - and he got slammed by the civil judge. We were paid 3 times the wages that he had tried to steal.

ramesh31 3y ago

Can't new MtG sets literally be generated perfectly with AI now? Might be behind a lot of this. Looks like the layoffs were pretty heavy on the art department: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/18ij198/list_of_known_wotc_employees_let_go_by_hasbro/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/18ij198/list_of_kn... Reminds me of the transition from classical animation to CGI. It used to take teams of hundreds of animators to make a film simply because of the sheer amount of work to be done. Whole career paths were made obsolete by the switch.

dathinab 3y ago
> Can't new MtG sets literally be generated perfectly with AI now? no not quite you can generate cards sure but for a set to work you need more then just random generated cards especially if you want it to go well or if you want to continue to have success with crossovers where the choices of mechanics should synagize not just with the set in general but with the lore from the cross over, something mtg somewhat managed to do quite well for multiple of their cross over sets in the recent years but a lot of the current AI is really bad at getting any of this broader context right and there is the broader balancing both for draft, commander, balancing prices, reprints etc. Similar while there are always examples of AI are being extremely well made, most of it has subtle but clear signs it's AI art. That's not necessary bad art, but clearly different art. And a lot of the mtg players I did now over the years cared about the art quite a bit and would probably be very unhappy if it becomes AI art. I think for a lot of magic players AI generated cards (with similar price gauging selling structures as the current cards) might very well be the last straw causing them to exit the game. EDIT: Additionally AFIK you can't really copyright AI art in the US which would be a major problem for them.
- ramesh31 3y ago
  Point in general is that the workload is massively reduced no matter what. You no longer need teams of people manipulating Illustrator files. It's just a single artist fine tuning a generated image.

solardev 3y ago

This is the same Hasbro that tried to retroactively close off the D&D Open Game License (and thus the third party ecosystem). It was a massive betrayal that caused a ton of pushback: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jan/12/dungeons-and-dragons-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jan/12/dungeons-and-d... They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them (just a few pieces of paper, not enough dice, sub par instructions ). Or really expensive character toys. D&D has undoubtedly gotten more popular, but I wish it were under the stewardship of someone more deserving, like a geekier board game shop than greed-enthralled Hasbro. They've become the Disney of board games, all quantity and profit and no real concern for a high quality gamer experience. I bet someone like Larian (Baldur's Gate 3) would've taken better care of the IP and rulesets (and they're working on a Divinity tabletop game!)

dumpsterlid 3y ago
We just need to move on from DnD to other IPs at this point, it is absurdly clear that everyone putting all their eggs in the basket with wizards of the coast and it is just a bad idea. There are plenty of fantastic alternatives, we really don’t need the DnD universe. I mean, as highly acclaimed as BG3 is, people in general seem to feel that the dev’s previous game Divinity Original Sin 2 has better combat mechanics… so idk I just think it’s time to move past wizards of the coast and embrace better systems.
- solardev 3y ago
  I think Forgotten Realms has a special place in many people's hearts (especially the millennials and around them), being a formative part of our childhoods: Minsc and Boo, Drizzt, beholders, mimics, etc. It's like Star Wars or LOTR, people get attached and emotionally invested and it's not so easy to let go overnight. I enjoyed the Original Sin series and played them for many hours,but never finished either one. The characters and stories weren't their strong suit IMO (they were kinda cheesy, honestly), but yeah, tactically they played better than BG3. That's the downside of trying to accurately transfer tabletop mechanics, I guess, and combining it with the poor UI of the BG3 series (too many different types of actions and reactions to squeeze in the toolbars). Anyway that's beside the point. I agree new IPs would be great, but those are rare! It would be cool to see an open source fantasy world where high quality fanfic could be curated into canon.

jimbob45 3y ago

Getting laid off has got to be the single highest trigger of suicide. Maybe breakups or child loss are higher but it’s at least top 3. Watching companies perform layoffs on thousands of employees just for their stock price to temporarily bump is really disgusting. I’d like to see some legislation that significantly penalizes companies engaging in layoffs. They should be a last resort, not a well-worn tool.

bsdpufferfish 3y ago
Accept that your job can disappear at anytime and for any reason, no matter how loyal you are. Your sense of security should come from your confidence in getting work if needed.
- quadrifoliate 3y ago
  This is more acceptable as a solution in a situation where your and your family's literal access to healthcare is not dependent upon your not getting laid off. Healthcare costs on the "open" market are enough to drive even families that think of themselves as well-off into poverty. One of the reasons that a single-payer healthcare system didn't take off in the 15 years between 2008 and now has been that the current system was working well enough. I wonder if the widespread layoffs and resulting loss of healthcare access will change voters' minds on that issue.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    Unemployment is actually at record lows now; it's just the tech industry seeing massive layoffs probably due to a ZIRP bubble popping. The indignities of the system are already well-known to the majority of people who don't have 6-figure work from home jobs. You'd think a single-payer system would be more popular, but that is not what people seem to prioritize. Instead it seems that they vote ever more to cut social safety nets (though I think they really vote for cultural reasons and right-wing politicians use their grievances to serve the wealthy). > Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor was not angry. In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told me. “I would rather die.” When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”[0] [0]https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying-whiteness/ https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying...

prakhar897 3y ago

thinly related but i could really use some advice. There's a board game called "quoridor" that I've been playing a lot lately. I found 2 platforms where u can play this online, major one being BGA (boardgamearena). It was kinda sad to see a game on par with chess in terms of simplicity and strategy, being lumped into the same group as kids games. So, I started building a platform for it myself in my free time. Still a work in progress (https://li-quoridor.vercel.app/ https://li-quoridor.vercel.app/). The issue is that I have no clue if the game mechanics are copyrighted or not. The wiki says "By 1997, the five biggest game companies in the world (including Gigamic) American bought the copyright [clarify] of this game and released it to the world". But wiki itself acknowleges that this is a statement has no source. So, how do i go about making sure i have the right permissions to build this stuff, and will they even give these permission or not?

DylanSp 3y ago
With the disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice: - Game mechanics generally can't be copyrighted. If you had a platform for playing "Prakhar's Game" that had the exact same rules as Quoridor, you'd be in the clear. - Specific pieces of art related to the game would definitely be copyrighted. Copying the exact box art of some commercially-released version of Quoridor would be an issue. - I think the issue to be concerned about would be whether you can use the name (which would be trademarked, not copyrighted). A quick search turned up a page from the US Patent and Trademark Office [1] showing that it's still held by Gigamic. I'd probably look for sources on that 1997 "release to the world" to see if you can find more details; looking around Gigamic's site might also turn up something. EDIT: BGA definitely isn't just for kid's games, incidentally. Something like Ark Nova or Agricola is a long ways from Battleship or Candy Land or what not. [1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75334527&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75334527&caseSearchType=U...
morelisp 3y ago
BGA is... not for kids games. I mean, there are kids games there, but there's also RftG, TtA, T&E... Quoridor is nice but I would not even put it in the top 10 modern abstracts, let alone on par with chess. Legality aside, it is a bit of a dick move to reimplement a modern abstract that people can play for free, or even make themselves for a low cost, just because you don't like the (free) site it's on.

black_13 3y ago

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webdoodle 3y ago

MtG saw a huge increase in demand while people were mandated to stay at home. Now that the mandates are over, the demand is likely about to implode as people return to previous activities.

srg0 3y ago
> MtG saw a huge increase in demand while people were mandated to stay at home Did it? If anything, MTG Modern prices were going down until the end of 2020, both in paper and online. And it's one most popular formats. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/modern#paper https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/modern#paper

boringuser2 3y ago

Layoffs during periods of strong performance really raise an eyebrow to me. You should have to prove some economic need to make those kind of layoffs similarly how you have to prove economic need for work visas.

keep_reading 3y ago
Why do so many people think the economy is in a healthy position? Strong performance now means nothing. e.g., Department Store Sales 3-month average was $17B in 2008 and is now down to under $11B. It's a bloodbath. It has been steadily trending down since 2008. "Bill Ackman warns economy will fall off a cliff if the Fed doesn't hurry and cut rates" The Fed isn't going to cut rates for years. They're refusing to blink. These are Volcker-sized balls on JPow. Any rallying now is squeezing blood from the stone. Any massive layoffs, sales, mergers, bankruptcies, or consolidations is hedging for the unavoidable cliff. These are just smart, safe moves by corporations -- getting their affairs in order, per se. And now the workers are going to suffer because they didn't organize labor when the economy was booming and they weren't feeling the pinch. Hopefully they learn this time and don't let the unions weaken if they want to avoid being battered and left for a cheaper workforce or replaced with automation.
- StableAlkyne 3y ago
  > Department Store Sales 3-month average was $17B in 2008 and is now down to under $11B. It's a bloodbath. It has been steadily trending down since 2008. No comment on the rest of your post, but I suspect this particular metric has more to do with the rise of online retailers and less to do with falling purchasing power.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I think you in this case missed the tree for the forest. Hasbro right now os doing well. A company doing well should not be able to simply fire the labor that helped them succeed like they are tools. Layoffs wouldn't be an issue of they were respectable. Some mix of either foresight or proper severance. In reality, it's rarely either unless you're in a sector that is likely already well compensated. I think thars more in the heart of what the GP was talking about. >And now the workers are going to suffer because they didn't organize labor when the economy was booming and they weren't feeling the pinch. If we had good government labor laws, unions wouldn't be necessary. I don't know why everyone feels collective bargaining is the only road here. Moreover, they aren't mutually exclusive; we can vye for both unions and better government regulation of jobs and how easily you can lay someone off on a profitable quarter.

pushedx 3y ago

Any more details on what Hasbro's "Entertainment" division does, and why it's lost more than $800M this year?

sircastor 3y ago
This might be a stretch (and also is 100% speculative), but maybe it’s a tax write-off thing. They put money into something, decided they wanted the tax breaks more than to sell the product, and there’s your loss.
vineyardmike 3y ago
> Hasbro Entertainment, a division that will be dedicated to leveraging Hasbro’s most valuable brands to develop and produce premium content across platforms for audiences of all ages, following the close of Hasbro’s sale of eOne’s film & television business. The new division, which unifies Hasbro’s film, television, animation, and digital media expertise under one umbrella, reflects a significant step in the execution of Hasbro’s Blueprint 2.0 strategy, which is defined by increased investment in Hasbro’s priority brands https://newsroom.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-announces-leadership-team-new-entertainment-division https://newsroom.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-detai... Sounds like they're losing money on making media. Maybe it's Capex for a movie(s)? Maybe they're just not popular media? I don't know but that's the team losing money.

novemp 3y ago

What's baffling about it? It's just another corporation deciding it wants All The Money Ever and making dumb short-sighted decisions in search of profit. Old news.

dallas 3y ago

I play/run D&D three times a fortnight using the O.G. editions (AD&D, B/X, retroclones). The brand is dead, long live the game!

Calamitous 3y ago
> three times a fortnight I approve of this unit of measure.
- dallas 3y ago
  "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT." [Gygax, 1979] (I missed a chance to use "thrice".)
  - nameless912 3y ago
    In this aspect, Gygax is wrong :)
    - dallas 3y ago
      I think the definition of "campaign" has drifted significantly since that book was written but I agree.

mynameisnoone 3y ago

It's not baffling, it's the latest in business lemmings' theater: when profits are at record levels, squeeze out even more money by suppressing wages with a good round or 3 of layoffs. That'll teach those corporate employees to stay hungry and not to earn too much because the CEO and investors needs those profits.

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edrxty 3y ago

I really wish I could sit on one of these decision meetings just so I could understand how the sausage is made. There's an entire class of people out there running the world yet operating in their own universe completely removed from the consensus reality we live in. "Ok we have this cash cow..." "Shoot it" "But..." "Shoot it, the cow accepted an open license" "That doesn't make any..." "I don't care, shoot the cow"

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pxeger1 3y ago

How can their board games etc. be losing money? It seems like they shouldn’t cost much to produce.

Ensorceled 3y ago
Lot's of mistakes? They made about a billion Monopoly games for instance. I see Monopoly games for specific cities, other IPs etc. Cheaters Version, Classic, Monopoly Junior. I regularly see brand new Monopoly games for sale on clearance for $10.
- pxeger1 3y ago
  I guess there’s quite a lot of risk in developing, producing and marketing new games which might not succeed

floppiplopp 3y ago

I've been playing ttrpgs for over 25 years now and have a substantial library around 500 books, mostly rulebooks, but also plenty of dnd supplements. Overall I can say, the quality of WotC material has never been particularly good, but in recent years has fallen even below its old mediocrity, especially compared to their much smaller competition (not that it matters for the market share). Sure, 5e is pretty much late-stage dnd and splatbooks have always been rather questionable at the end of an edition. But the quasi monopoly of dnd and its success is also its greatest problem. They remember the reactions of the community towards 4th edition, as well as the ogl disaster earlier this year and they probably know that they cannot simply push "new product" to replace the current material people have purchased. They can only extend it or make slight improvements that don't disturb the average player who already spend money on something they like and plays "fine" (i.e. an inoffensive, acceptable and conventional fantasy experience). "one d&d" playtest material, anyone? d&d players are a rather conservative bunch of weirdos, why else would they cling to such a dusty system? So, what's there to promise the shareholders? A successful new edition? Unlikely. Maybe digital products? But you hardly need the old staff for that. We'll see, I guess. On a personal note, I've all the dnd I ever need and I've been rather bored with it. For my ttrpg future it's currently at the bottom of my list of things I want to play. The market of ttrpgs is generally pretty over-saturated and while the last years have been great as far as products by small publishers go, there's been less and less interesting material, e.g. even reputable publishers are desperately picking up tv and movie franchises to turn into rpg books. The hobby has had ups and downs, the early 80s, the late 90s, and the last few years were high points, now expect a downturn. Don't get me wrong, it will remain popular, but there will be less money in it for conventional material. And I guess WotC knows it, too.

chaostheory 3y ago

Reminds of when Rockstar laid off Red Dead Redemption staff despite great sales figures.

jmcgough 3y ago
Game dev is pretty different though. There's huge internal shifts in need for headcount since everything is often tied to development of a specific game. It's pretty common to lay off employees after a game gets shipped.
- consp 3y ago
  > It's pretty common to lay off employees after a game gets shipped. While it is common... Why? You can employ people on a limited time or production span duration. I don't see the point in pretending to give someone a permanent job to only lay them off anyways.
  - bonton89 3y ago
    Probably helps keep their wages lower and prevents them from bailing on a late project like if they had a contract with a time limit. On the other hand, I wouldn't exactly be killing myself to ship on time if I was going to get laid off afterwards.

ddtaylor 3y ago

Hasbro is ruining the brand at alarming levels. They think they are doing it "smart" because MTGA and some other plays to try and split the audience of regular players and whales. There is no "smart" way to destroy your business. Also as a player right now is one of the worst lore breaking and general worst story related times to care in any way about these characters, assets, places or anything else. Hasbro blows

Dave3of5 3y ago

Most of these layoffs have been very odd. These are companies making bank and then laying off people left right and center that are key to them making that bank. Corporate companies are totally baffling Hasbro is no different.

bitcharmer 3y ago
What did you expect from a bunch of MBAs? They are not known for being particularly sharp, are they.

earthboundkid 3y ago

Hedge funds have a goal of creating reliable profits by systematically dismantling profitable businesses. This is that.

roguas 3y ago
How do you dismantle profitable business?
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  Well, for example, when I worked at the Baltimore Sun, the owners at Tribune Media sold the already owned outright headquarters of the Sun, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, etc. and has us all lease office space from somewhere else instead. This is an insane business decision. No one who wants to keep a business alive would think to replace a money making asset (just lease out the other floors of the building) with a money losing ongoing expense. But it gives you one quarter of extremely high profitability in exchange for lower profits for the rest of time, so they did it.

flerchin 3y ago

Hasbro laid off 1100, of which 20 are at WoTC. But how many folks are at WoTC? Are those 20 involved in the actual money printer they have with WoTC?

morgango 3y ago
Very astute observation. It is sometimes worth it to take people who are unhappy in their job and/or not performing well and give them a package when they are available. I would guess there are 20 of these people at any company of that size, not just WOTC.
Templa 3y ago
Apparently (don't quote me on that, that's something I was told and I am not sure of) someone that designed the Universes Beyond sets was fired.

nurettin 3y ago

The question is: who are they really firing? There are thousands of tournament organizers, consultants, dealers and judges. Perhaps they aren't touching the core creation and balance team which churns out a new expansion every rotation.

soundnote 3y ago

They burned me out of Magic. It used to be that the game had distinct spoiler seasons, and the Standard format and game as a whole used to stand still for a while and be explored at length. Even the rotating Standard format had a period where you could grow really familiar with the format as it was even if you weren't a really plugged in grinder. Eternal formats changed slowly because power creep, while present, wasn't completely nuts. Now, the environment is a neverending spoiler season that it's impossible to keep up with unless you're one of those NYC squirrels on crack. See a graphical representation here: https://onlyontuesdays27.com/2022/10/18/30-years-of-magic-the-gathering-products/ https://onlyontuesdays27.com/2022/10/18/30-years-of-magic-th... Meanwhile, power creep is out of hand, which means more releases are more relevant to more formats, the quality of the flavour has progressively gotten worse. There's more and more of "millenial writing" that substitutes being good with being sassy. When the game costs an arm and a leg, why bother. D&D, similar deal. You have a fantasy setting, which should mean different creatures. What does Wizards do? Progressively remove more and more differentiation between different races and creatures. A 3m/10ft tall minotaur and a half-orc are both defined by strength, both get a +2STR which just feels wrong. But wait, there's more! A halfling can now decide to have the same bonus. It cheapens the setting when things don't mean something anymore. Similarily, RPGs are generally about overcoming challenges. And we get, what. Wheelchair-accessible dungeons?? Coffee shop modules for D&D, of all things, instead of doing the concept in a more suitable system like a FATE derivative? College student representation obsession's run completely off the rails, and it means the product starts failing at its core purpose.

bradknowles 3y ago

Here's the process. Your company can't do shit and is losing market share everywhere. So, you buy another company that can do shit, transfer the brand to the same people who can't do shit, and then fire all the people from the new company. For a brief period, while you've got the new brand, your company can start to regain a bit of market share. But that period never lasts, and you go back to the status quo. Rinse and repeat.