WotC's Annual Xmas Layoffs

Pickles JG · Dec 15, 2011

I have no memories of Rich Baker fond or otherwise but I thought his "Rule of 3 Column" was excellent.

I wish them both well!

ExploderWizard · Dec 15, 2011

Sadly, the holiday season brings with it two more victims of the Dread Pirate WOTC. :.-(

OnlineDM · Dec 15, 2011

Sigh. This is sad.

Folks have been talking in this thread about WotC doing these Christmas layoffs every year; I seem to remember some unpleasant discussion in 2010 with people predicting the layoffs, but that there actually weren't any layoffs at Christmas 2010. Am I misremembering? That doesn't make these layoffs any better, but I thought it was worth clarifying if there weren't layoffs last year that it isn't literally an "every year" occurrence.

So, who works on D&D now? I don't know much about the inner workings of the company. Only a few names come to mind for me (Mike Mearls, James Wyatt, Monte Cook, Chris Perkins, Rodney Thompson), but I know that there are more folks involved. Does anyone know how many people actively work on D&D in design and development? What about editing? Other D&D-related departments?

Did they just lay off 20% of their D&D staff? 10%? 5%? 2%?

Aegeri · Dec 15, 2011

You know I can take the poor, neglectful and sometimes just plain bizarre design of 4E since essentials because ultimately the game still works. Yeah, Wizards have dropped the ball on a lot of things for me - epic tier especially - but even with my computer dead (and my campaigns on hiatus as a result for various reasons relating or tangentially related to that) I was always planning to "come back".

But this? Firing one of the best designers at Wizards? The guy who was largely responsible for the best designed campaign setting in 4E by miles? This is beyond idiotic as a decision and shows the intense hubris and disregard for 4E that Wizards has now. I will really miss him and his contributions to 4E are among the best that were made. I really hope he has a good future elsewhere designing awesome content.

As for 4E, I think with this it just confirms for me the sinking quality and definite "5E is coming, who cares" vibe for it that Wizards has. I believe that if I wasn't sure before if I was done with it or not, this will absolutely seal the deal.

talok55 · Dec 15, 2011

If D&D was selling like it did before the edition wars, before Paizo essentially re-sold WotC's v3.5 rules under a new name (which Paizo admits because they needed it in print to support their bread and butter, Adventure Paths), these layoffs would not happen. But when Hasbro shuts down D&D, if the upcoming edition (they will not admit to using Monte Cook in an attempt to go back to something more like 3ed edition but different enough to call it 5th) does not meet sales quotas, then D&D will become an IP used only for video games, novels, and board games. Hasbro will never sell the IP because to sell it would be selling Drizzit.

And if that happens, Future Generations will never know D&D, only it's clones and retro refits. And that would be sad for gaming.[/QUOTE]

I'm pretty sure they have been laying people off like clockwork since before the edition wars started. I think they've been doing it since shortly after 3.0 was released, so I don't think that the edition wars or Pathfinder, or the poor reception of Essentials can be blamed for it. They may be a factor, but it really seems like that's just the way WotC does business, which really makes you not want to support WotC anymore. I'm almost of the mindset that I would rather D&D die than continue to mismanaged by WotC. I have Pathfinder, I don't need to play an RPG just because it has the D&D logo on the cover of the books.

I'm A Banana · Dec 15, 2011

S'mon said:
Reading "State of the Mongoose", I saw Matt Sprange does the typical thing for UK companies in bad times and boasts of their efforts to *avoid* redundancies. It seems like (many) US companies measure their virility by how many employees they've laid off.

I'm fairly confident in making an educated guess that, for all the layoffs, Greg Leeds isn't taking a significant pay cut or benefits reduction any time soon.

How about we have an airline CEO demonstrate what responsible corporate leadership in tough economic times looks like:

JAL CEO Cuts Pay - YouTube

It strikes me that laying off your senior creative staff, while the management that brought the company to the point of having to lay off people sit rather comfortably in their jobs, smacks of a moral hollowness. Not on the part of the company, of course -- WotC is a construct, not an entity that can have a morality. But on the part of the people in management who make these decisions, for whatever justification they see for themselves.

I dunno. Maybe I've just been spending too much time at Occupy and reading 99 Percenter stories.

I do get that sometimes layoffs are inevitable, that companies exist to make money, and that staff goes through changes. And WotC hasn't laid off people EVERY year. And there are good folks still working there (I'm fond of Mike and Monte, and Rodney Thompson is a good mind). But it is a bad habit, and one that certainly doesn't bring to mind anything like stability or confidence.

It's not like not buying their product will help, y'know? The middle-to-upper management that makes these decisions are well insulated from the consequences of their actions. Ultimately, the weight falls on the shoulders of the worker who puts in an honest day's labor for an honest living wage in something they love for decades of their life. They are the ones who get let go. It is rarely the senators or emperors who face the barbarians at the gates. It is the farmers and the soldiers.

smug · Dec 15, 2011

Dausuul said:
Agreed. Sometimes you have to lay people off; that's the reality of business. And if somebody's not doing their job, of course you fire them. But annual layoffs, in good times and in bad, are a sign that somebody in management is doing a crappy job.

I suspect the impetus here is coming from Hasbro rather than WotC. Not to say Wizards isn't capable of making bad choices, but this smells like some exec trying to make next quarter's share price look shinier, which is mostly a pathology of big publicly traded companies rather than small tight-knit ones.

I doubt any Hasbro execs know who Rich Baker is and I highly doubt they're picking out individuals at their WotC subsidiary and saying "fire that guy". Wizards lays people off, it has done for years.

mudbunny · Dec 15, 2011

Kamikaze Midget said:
I'm fairly confident in making an educated guess that, for all the layoffs, Greg Leeds isn't taking a significant pay cut or benefits reduction any time soon.

But do you know if Greg Leeds' salary/benefits are so significantly higher than those of Steve and Rich that they would have a substantial effect were he to cut them?

It strikes me that laying off your senior creative staff, while the management that brought the company to the point of having to lay off people sit rather comfortably in their jobs, smacks of a moral hollowness. Not on the part of the company, of course -- WotC is a construct, not an entity that can have a morality. But on the part of the people in management who make these decisions, for whatever justification they see for themselves.

As mentioned upthread, WotC has been doing layoffs like this for quite a few years, since well before Greg Leeds entered the picture. There are quote a number of reasons why Rich and Steve could have been laid off:

Salaries/benefits too high to allow the D&D group to hire more people.
They do not agree with the editorial direction that 4E has been given for the medium/long term.
Steve/Rich decided to take the hit as opposed to allowing more numerous younger staff members to get laid off.

Does it suck, yes, but, as is mentioned every time this happens, people who work at WotC would have to be going through their career there wilfully ignorant of the hiring/firing practices of the company.

smug · Dec 15, 2011

talok55 said:
If D&D was selling like it did before the edition wars, before Paizo essentially re-sold WotC's v3.5 rules under a new name (which Paizo admits because they needed it in print to support their bread and butter, Adventure Paths)...

"Admits"? "Announced" is more accurate, it was the whole point (at least at the time; it might be that RPG sales have been pretty profitable in and of themselves since that).

I'm A Banana · Dec 15, 2011

mudbunny said:
But do you know if Greg Leeds' salary/benefits are so significantly higher than those of Steve and Rich that they would have a substantial effect were he to cut them?

Oh, it would have a substantial effect. In purely psychological terms, people work harder for a cause they feel worth supporting, and for a leader they feel is sympathetic, so a cut in management pay/benefits, to put them at a level equivalent with or even lower than the design/creative staff, would give a pretty hefty boost to productivity. Self-sacrifice is a brilliant leadership tactic that everyone from cult leaders to military leaders to philanthropists to rock stars to political icons have used to get people motivated to do remarkable things. It may be temporary, but there are few moments when one could use a temporary boost in morale and productivity than in the heart of a rough economic climate, when the company isn't doing so hot.

It might not have saved Rich's job, but it certainly would have skewed the odds in favor of not having to fire Rodney Thompson and James Wyatt (or whatever) next year.

mudbunny said:
As mentioned upthread, WotC has been doing layoffs like this for quite a few years, since well before Greg Leeds entered the picture. There are quote a number of reasons why Rich and Steve could have been laid off:

I'm not blaming Greg Leeds alone. I did say "people." It's a systemic problem that Greg Leeds did not create, but has inherited, and has, apparently, not fixed (though her certainly may have tried to fix it!). I'm also not exempting him, though. Rich and Steve lost their job on his watch. He can justify it however he needs to, and he probably doesn't stand alone (remember, insulated from the consequences of the actions), but he has been at least partially responsible for hitting two families with a not-insignificant sudden financial burden.

The ultimate problem is that this is habitual. When layoffs happen once in a while, it's a sad state of affairs, and can be explained by things like a change in direction, or making room for new employees. When they happen year after year for a decade or more, through success and struggle, it is no longer just a sad state of affairs. It is a systemic failure of management and leadership. The problem pretty clearly isn't with Rich and Steve. The problem is deeper.