D&D 5E Hasbro Acquires D&D Beyond For $146M

D&D owner WotC and D&D Beyond have announced that the online tools platform is being acquired by WotC.

DDB’s (former) owner was Fandom, which acquired it in 2018, and which also acquired the Cortex Prime TTRPG system recently. Fandom is producing a range of licensed games using the Cortex Prime system starting with the recent Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince RPG. Several DDB core staff members and founders moved on to other projects last year.

D&D General - Adam Bradford, Lauren Urban, Todd Kenrick Leave D&D Beyond

They join lead writer James Haeck, who left a couple of weeks ago. Adam Bradford is the D&D Beyond co-founder, and VP of Tabletop Gaming at its owner, Fandom. Lauren Urban is DDB's Community Manager. Todd Kenrick is the company's Creative Manager. D&D Beyond, launched in 2017, is currently...

www.enworld.org

This move has been widely expected for some time. The purchase figure being circulated is $146 million. By comparison, when WotC purchased then-D&D owner TSR in 1997, it did so for $25M. Hasbro later purchased WotC for $325M.

D&D Beyond was created in 2017 by Curse LLC, a company owned by Twitch. Fandom purchased Curse in 2018. WotC will be the third owner of the platform.

In other news, back in November WotC applied for a trademark for 'Atomic Arcade' for a variety of electronic gaming applications, and earlier in the year, rumours spread regarding WotC’s plans for its own virtual tabletop platform (VTT) following a survey in which they gauged opinions and allegedly showed off graphically rich 3D screenshots.

Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS) today announced that it is acquiring D&D Beyond, the leading digital toolset and game companion for the Company’s groundbreaking fantasy franchise, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, from Fandom. Fandom, the world’s largest fan platform, has owned and operated D&D Beyond since 2019 and has grown the direct-to-consumer business to be the leading role-playing game (RPG) digital toolset on the market with close to 10 million registered users. This strategic acquisition, for $146.3 million in cash, will further strengthen Hasbro’s capabilities in the fast-growing digital tabletop category while also adding veteran talents to the Wizards of the Coast team and accelerating efforts to deliver exceptional experiences for fans across all platforms.

Since 2017, D&D Beyond has helped to power DUNGEONS & DRAGONS tabletop play and deliver the brand's eighth consecutive year of growth in 2021. Over the last three years, the royalty paid to Hasbro by D&D Beyond has represented a significant contribution to the fastest growing source of revenue for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. The strategic acquisition of D&D Beyond will deliver a direct relationship with fans, providing valuable, data-driven insights to unlock opportunities for growth in new product development, live services and tools, and regional expansions. As part of Wizards, the brand’s leadership will soon be able to drive a unified, player-centric vision of the world’s greatest role-playing game on all platforms.

“The acquisition of D&D Beyond will accelerate our progress in both gaming and direct to consumer, two priority areas of growth for Hasbro, providing immediate access to a loyal, growing player base,” said Chris Cocks, Hasbro Chief Executive Officer. “Hasbro’s gaming portfolio is among the largest and most profitable in the industry, and we continue to make strategic investments to grow our brands, including in digital.”

“This is the perfect next step for the talented D&D Beyond team, who built a transformative digital product that engaged and delighted millions of D&D fans around the world,” said Perkins Miller, CEO of Fandom. “We can't wait to see what this team will do next as an integral part of the D&D franchise, and I look forward to investing in more brands and products to super serve Fandom’s 300 million+ global fans.”

“D&D Beyond has been one of our most valuable partners in the digital space for the past six years and we’re excited to bring their best-in-class talent onto our team,” said Cynthia Williams, President of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming. “The team at D&D Beyond has built an incredible digital platform, and together we will deliver the best-possible DUNGEONS & DRAGONS experience for players around the world.”

Hasbro’s continued investment in Wizards of the Coast’s digital growth for its two iconic franchises, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS and MAGIC: THE GATHERING, is representative of the significant opportunity in PC and mobile gaming, an industry that represented over 3 billion players globally and $129 billion in revenue in 20211. With the launch of Magic: The Gathering Arena on PC in 2019 and on mobile in 2021, Wizards has built a unique ecosystem of best-in-class tabletop and digital play to create deeper player engagement and satisfaction and grow revenue across all expressions and regions. Similarly, with more than 80% of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS fans having already played the game virtually in 2021, aided by online digital platforms such as D&D Beyond, this acquisition accelerates the game’s ability to penetrate new markets, gather valuable consumer insights and provide players with the best DUNGEONS & DRAGONS experience on all platforms.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and the receipt of certain regulatory approvals, and is expected to close during the second or third quarter of 2022. The transaction will be funded out of cash on hand and is expected to be immaterial to revenue and earnings per share in 2022 and accretive to earnings per share in fiscal year 2023 and beyond. The transaction has been approved by both Hasbro’s and Fandom’s Boards of Directors.

Welcome to the Party, D&D Beyond | Dungeons & Dragons

We are excited to welcome everyone at D&D Beyond, bringing together two teams dedicated to making Dungeons & Dragons easy to run and accessible to all!

dnd.wizards.com

 

[bedir than]

You're assuming WotC won't still make your purchases unusable once the new edition comes out in 2024.

Their official statements about backwards compatibility make the recurring statements from fans about a new edition being incompatible kinda silly

 

[darjr]

 

[FrogReaver]

They're moving to a vertically integrated business model, thus controlling their product in all aspects from creation to the sales to consumers. This is looking more and more like they're going to freeze out third-party content creators unless those creators have a signed business arrangement with WotC.

Yep. I’d say roll 20’s days are numbered. At least with respect to d&d.

I’d also suggest some history about what happened to 4e online tools. That or something similar could very well happen to 5e dndbeyond support at edition change.

 

[Retreater]

Yep. I’d say roll 20’s days are numbered. At least with respect to d&d.

Maybe Wizards buys them next?

 

[FrogReaver]

Their official statements about backwards compatibility make the recurring statements from fans about a new edition being incompatible kinda silly

It will look something like, “We’ve evaluated that only X% of our user base is using 5e products, therefore we are ending our support of these products to focus all our resources on the latest edition!!!”

 

[FrogReaver]

Maybe Wizards buys them next?

Doesn’t make sense.

 

[Oofta]

Beyond isn't a VTT and doesn't have a VTT presence so I doubt it.

It does suggest that what they might do for their VTT plans is partner with someone with a plan to acquire them if they like what they see through the partnership. Watch for more announcements of "D&D Beyond Integration" in existing VTTs to suss out who Wizards is looking to purchase. (Or they could license Beyond integration to all of the VTTs and let them pay Wizards for the privilege - as long as there are multiple competing VTTs it may not make sense for them to actually own one and spend their own money on it, depending on how profitable they are).

I could see WOTC buying out a VTT and then doing a closer integration between it and DndBeyond. With Roll20 for example, I can use Beyond20 to integrate the two. WOTC owning both could just set up an internal API to make it smoother. Or they could open up and license the API of course.

Hard to say what will happen, I'm just glad we have some decent tools that look like they will continue to be supported even if they aren't perfect.

 

[Zaukrie]

I think this is good. No more worries that somehow the license will be lost.

I have no idea what this means for an API, which has supposedly been coming for some time. Nor what it means for Beyond20.

I do think it means this is the engine for the VTT ...

 

[Mark Craddock]

This is what I wanted, as I had feared Wizards starting their own platform and eventually making my Beyond purchases unusable.

Our group shared the same fear. We are all in on the DnD Beyond and that was a fair amount of gold.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

Whilst I broadly agree as a general principle, they've given every impression that the developers are, in fact, involved in these decisions, and that separation between management and development at Beyond is not as clean as you're suggesting. Specifically the devs have actively defended a number of business decisions on technical grounds. In some cases at great length.

I'm curious what you would expect an employee of a company to say publicly about decisions being made by the company...? In any case, the developers now are not the developers that stood up the platform years ago, and in many of the recent developer videos they've put up, the developers have been pretty vocal—albeit in the kindest way possible—about how the original architecture was simply not cutting it and what they had to do to overcome that.

As someone who works with a lot of third-party software and talks to a lot of developers, I know it's not as simple as you're suggesting, sorry. There's no universal setup where the devs are always at the mercy of terrible and evil capital-M Management.

As someone with an almost 25-year career as a software engineer working in various sizes of companies in many different industries, I can say that it is almost always that. This isn't to say that there's no such thing as an incompetent developer making poor decisions, of course, but that in the overwhelming majority of companies, developers are not going to have any iota of say as to what the company builds or doesn't build. You'll definitely see it more in the startup arena where often times there are developers in the founder's circle.