WotC WotC President Cynthia Williams Resigns

Cynthia Williams, who has been president of Wizards of the Coast for the last two years, will be leaving the company at the end of the month, according to an SEC filing dated April 15th. Hasbro is already looking for somebody to step into the role.

Williams worked for Microsoft on the Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team before joining WotC two years ago, stepping into the role that then-president Chris Cocks vacated when he was promoted to CEO of Hasbro in February 2022.

Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.
On April 15, 2024, Cynthia Williams, President of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming, informed the Company of her resignation from the Company effective April 26, 2024. The Company is conducting a process to identify her successor, looking at both internal and external candidates.

According to Rascal News, WotC responded with a comment: "We’re excited for Cynthia to take the next step in her career and grateful for the contributions she has made in her more than two years at Wizards and Hasbro. We wish her the absolute best in her next endeavor. We have started the search for our next President of Wizards of the Coast and hope to have a successor in place soon."

 

[MGibster]

Y'all are killing me with referring to Williams as CEO. Cocks is the CEO of Hasbro, she was President of WotC. Difference of scale and who's your boss. Cocks was her boss. Cocks' boss is the Board of Directors.

All I have to say is that these sentences alone have messed up the algorithim and I'm getting some oddly interesting ads in my feed now.

Since when has any large corporation cared about the hobbyist perspective?

In my experience most corporations care about their bottom line which makes being concerned about what their customers think a priority. Now they might not care what you or I think, but in the aggregate what consumers think matters.

 

[Stormonu]

and Gamma World

However, please not Star Frontiers. No need to give nuTSR any fuel to claim "they won".

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Well....... I've never been involved in terminating a CEO, but I have been involved in terminating executives and at least at my company we treat them them same as working stiffs. IS turns off their network access while we're telling the executive they're being terminated and then they're escorted off the premises.

I'm assuming if she was termed, she'd be out now immediately.
April 26 sounds like 2 weeks notice. And combined with the wording from Hasbro corporate "We’re excited for Cynthia to take the next step in her career" it's pretty clear she's heading somewhere else. My guess based on her XBox/Hasbro work is she's going to end up at Netflix's game division or Epic or Sony Interactive or Disney. Although based on her work history (you can follow her on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-williams-9382845/) looks like she's been mostly in the Seattle Area. Maybe she's going to go work for Costco!?!

 

[Retreater]

However, please not Star Frontiers. No need to give nuTSR any fuel to claim "they won".

They won ... and so did we?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Anything that can be automated will be.

They should write an app that will post that comment in every thread where AI is mentioned.

 

[Oofta]

They should write an app that will post that comment in every thread where AI is mentioned.

How do we know bots aren't the ones that always flood the AI threads?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How do we know bots aren't the ones that always flood the AI threads?

Given how many posts on the internet generally are repetitive, I'd say if the bots are here, they're everywhere.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Given how many posts on the internet generally are repetitive, I'd say if the bots are here, they're everywhere.

Given how many posts on the internet generally are repetitive, I'd say if the bots are here, they're everywhere.

 

[LordBP]

I'm assuming if she was termed, she'd be out now immediately.
April 26 sounds like 2 weeks notice. And combined with the wording from Hasbro corporate "We’re excited for Cynthia to take the next step in her career" it's pretty clear she's heading somewhere else. My guess based on her XBox/Hasbro work is she's going to end up at Netflix's game division or Epic or Sony Interactive or Disney. Although based on her work history (you can follow her on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-williams-9382845/) looks like she's been mostly in the Seattle Area. Maybe she's going to go work for Costco!?!

At her level, there is no such thing as a 2 week notice. It's been planned for months.

 

[Dire Bare]

It's got to be the lowest priority on the list. It's, from their perspective, nearly meaningless. Nobody who wants that, wants it as a current customer of WOTC current products. It can already be done through the SRD, and the sub-group of "won't use the SRD anymore" and "wants CC" has nearly zero overlap with "Current WOTC customer." So why would that be even on a top 100 list of priorities for a new CEO of a company whose #1 product is Magic: The Gathering?

Yup.

I was surprised when Cocks stated that they planned on doing this . . . I got the impression he thought it would be an easy thing and didn't understand that it would take significant staff time . . . to not screw it up like they did when they released IP into the CC along with the 5E SRD.