D&D General WotC Founder Peter Adkison On Hasbro's Layoffs

Peter Adkison, who owned Wizards of the Coast until it was sold to Hasbro in 1999, oversaw the relaunch of Dungeons & Dragons with D&D 3rd Edition. Today, he commented on this week's round of Hasbro layoffs, which have ripped through WotC. Adkison left WotC in 2000 and currently runs a production company called Hostile Work Environment.

Like many of you, I'm saddened to learn about the layoffs at Hasbro.

Caveat: I have no idea of what’s happening behind the scenes at WotC. If you’re asking who’s at fault, or to what extent it was or was not justified, that’s outside the scope of my knowledge. This post is about my own reflections.

When I read about the layoffs at Hasbro my immediate feeling was shame. Shame for when I did the same thing, at the same company (WotC, before we sold it to Hasbro).

I have made lots of mistakes, tons of them, more than I can even remember. And while I regret those mistakes, and I’m sad for those hurt, I realize it’s part of learning and it’s part of being human.

But layoffs, when handed poorly, or when they are unnecessary, aren’t just mistakes. They are failings of character. Those times when I had a failure of character, those are the moments that haunt me.

 

[Parmandur]

but back then they weren't trying to game the non existant stockmarket to boost prices that quarter so they could sell thier stock for a 40% premium . though thier were historical analogies like the great tulip Bubble from 1636 to 1637.

And there are nations where that still doesn't happen...almost as of regulations and laws make a difference...

 

[nevin]

yeah but nothing stops the rich people from playing in the countries where it can happen. And international treaties have made some international companies more powerful than some 1st world countries. But the Wheel spins as the wheel wills and we've done this cycle before just a bit differently. Bet Roman Companies got all kinds of sweet deals back in the day...

 

[occam]

No I get it. the idea of a group of people who have a vested interest in the company being able to all sit down and approve reasonable actions and changes seems so simple. And I'm sure it seemed the "owners" of the stock would have the biggest interest in making things reasonable. Maybe it even worked that way back in the 50's but now with the tax rules that allow stock owners to avoid taxes till they cash in the stocks the stock market is an independent money making machine that is partially disconnected from the idea that companies actually make things and provide services. For example When viacom spun off blockbuster the cost to escape the overlord was more than the company was worth. All the major voting share holders got more money than their stock was worth, blockbuster bought it's freedom for value of the company +20%. And everyone that voted to pay that bill was a stockholder that was getting a check.

Stockholder's for the most part in today's reality don't care a damn about the company. This unfortunately includes the executives running the company these days. Public companies these days are just ATM machines for rich people.

Yeah, in short: centuries of accumulated unintended consequences. (Well, unintended by certain elements of society, maybe less so others.)

 

[nevin]

Yeah, in short: centuries of accumulated unintended consequences. (Well, unintended by certain elements of society, maybe less so others.)

not centuries. We passes a lot of good laws after the great depression to reel in the Robber Barons. Most of our current problems at least in America and Europe are because we let the new Robber Barrons repeal all the teeth in those laws.

 

[Parmandur]

not centuries. We passes a lot of good laws after the great depression to reel in the Robber Barons. Most of our current problems at least in America and Europe are because we let the new Robber Barrons repeal all the teeth in those laws.

I am not disagreeing significant look at Japanese and EU laws but that is outside the balliwick of these boards a bit.

 

[mamba]

Oh my god, you have never ever run an IT project of any size.

I would not be so sure about that…

You on the other hand seem to think they did not pay for the userbase / marketshare with that price, which is very naive at best

We could build it ourselves" -- are you a professional software development firm with a recent, proven and repeated history of developing projects of similar scope and size all the way to completion (done done, not done) with correctly predicted budgets from day 1?

and yet they are building a VTT themselves…

 

[Parmandur]

I would not be so sure about that…

You on the other hand seem to think they did not pay for the userbase / marketshare with that price, which is very naive at best


and yet they are building a VTT themselves…

They definitely paid for the usernase, markets hare, etc.

But they also paid for a profitable wnterprise: and with 13 million users, if they get like $0.50 a month on averahe...that adds up pretty fast, and Chris Cocks already indicated that Beyond is on track to fully pay for the acquisition ifself.

 

[mamba]

They definitely paid for the usernase, markets hare, etc.

But they also paid for a profitable wnterprise: and with 13 million users, if they get like $0.50 a month on averahe...that adds up pretty fast, and Chris Cocks already indicated that Beyond is on track to fully pay for the acquisition ifself.

sure, which still means they paid way less than 150M for the actual software, and there is a reason for that…

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I'm sure WotC could have hired engineers to code up a decent alternative to D&D Beyond from scratch for far less than 150m dollars. But getting users would be more challenging.

A lot of the D&D players who are interested in an online character generator and rules database are already invested in D&D beyond, that's where they have their characters, and they may have paid for subscriptions or other content. So they'd have little incentive to switch to a new WotC service, even if it was better.

WotC could try to entice people to switch by cancelling Beyond's license, but that would make a lot of Beyond users unhappy and even angry. They'd not be very keen to pay more money to the company they blame for enshittifying the service they liked, and might even abandon D&D alltogether.

 

[NotAYakk]

and yet they are building a VTT themselves…

I'm sorry, in response to "actually succeeding is hard", you cite ... trying? Trying to launch an IT project is easy, it just takes money, a match and a willingness to combine the two. They can try to create any IT project they want.

But, success? I give them a well under 50% chance of successfully launching a VTT that isn't a complete mess. Which is an easy thing to bet, because their current record is currently 0%, and they have tried at least once and failed, the effort almost collapsing WotC.

If they do launch a VTT, regardless of it being a complete mess or not, I'll bet dollars to donuts that it's initial budget was blown by at least a factor of 2. (This is usually hard to find out, because companies don't like advertising how they failed).

The thing about computers is trying to do something or planning to do something is easy. It is hard to make even a bad car, but easy to make a bad software program. But making a good car or a good program is extremely hard. So you get a lot of software that sort of barely works, and way more that don't even pass that bar.