sunshadow21
Explorer
The market drops in half and that's no big deal? People, like you, are already clamouring and starting umpteen threads about not having new supplements and how this is going to sink 5e. And you think D&D dropping out entirely won't have a massive ripple effect?
Sorry, no, I don't think so. If D&D was to close up shop today, that would drive the remaining hobby stores virtually entirely out of business (they've been dying a slow death for the last twenty years, last numbers I saw pegged the number of gaming shops at about 500 in the US, down from thousands ten years ago). Which would mean no more Adventurers League and probably no more Pathfinder Society. Which means much fewer new gamers entering the hobby. Ten years from now, natural attrition would pretty much kill the hobby.
I think it was a big deal then, to be certain, but already it's recovering just fine to a point where Hasbro shelving D&D would have nowhere near the same impact again. Paizo would continue much as they are now and everyone would basically look to Paizo as the new clear leader and adjust accordingly. Adventurers League would die, but Pathfinder Society would still do just fine. Now if Magic would take a sudden hit and the stores that support PFS would lose that critical income, than PFS would likely be in a lot of trouble, but at this point, what WotC does with D&D will have comparatively little impact on what Paizo does with Pathfinder, and the impact will only grow smaller as time goes on.