D&D 5E Price Increase on D&D & MtG coming

[Parmandur]

Not while there’s such severe income inequality within the company. If the company can afford to give the execs multi-million dollar bonuses, it can afford to cover increasing operating costs without passing those costs onto the workforce or the consumers. If the company is making more money than it’s ever made at the current price, they don’t need to increase prices to remain profitable. Infinite growth is inherently unsustainable.

In both cases, the profits are mostly coming from other products, as both the store price of games and the D&D books are not high margin items.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It depends. A privately owned corporation can do whatever it likes, including not passing on these increases to you and making less money. A publicly traded corporation cannot do that. They have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders to maximize profits and can be sued by said stockholders if they breach that duty.

It would be extremely unusual for that to actually happen, and it again comes down to executive selfishness at the expense of workers, because executives tend to get bonuses and raises that are, by themselves, equal to or greater than the median take home pay of their employees.

 

[Charlaquin]

In both cases, the profits are mostly coming from other products, as both the store price of games and the D&D books are not high margin items.

That only makes increasing the price of those items less justifiable!

 

[Parmandur]

It would be extremely unusual for that to actually happen, and it again comes down to executive selfishness at the expense of workers, because executives tend to get bonuses and raises that are, by themselves, equal to or greater than the median take home pay of their employees.

Keep in mind that MSRP isn't just about WotC executives: FLGS need to be able to price the books to make a profit, and theor margins go down over time if the MSRP stagnated too long.

That only makes increasing the price of those items less justifiable!

Right, which is why they didn't for 7 years, rather than upping the price a little every year.

 

[Maxperson]

It would be extremely unusual for that to actually happen, and it again comes down to executive selfishness at the expense of workers, because executives tend to get bonuses and raises that are, by themselves, equal to or greater than the median take home pay of their employees.

Agreed that they are selfish and give the raise money to themselves over the bottom rung workers.

So long as they continue to increase profits and raise stock value, the stockholders aren't going to care. Were they to give themselves raises and those raises caused lower than expected profits and a stock drop, they'd be sued over it. Same if they gave the money to the workers and stocks fell over lower than expected profits.

 

[Maxperson]

Again, this is how it is; I’m arguing for how I believe it ought to be.

I'm a bit cynical. Might as well be arguing that there ought to be no crime, terrorism and the world was sunshine and rainbows. Some things aren't going to change.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm a bit cynical. Might as well be arguing that there ought to be no crime, terrorism and the world was sunshine and rainbows. Some things aren't going to change.

I mean, it isn't how the world has to be or always is, see also the 1950's or contemporaryJapan. But that's die to policy choices above the heads of even major corporations, and way out of bounds for this forum.

 

[lingual]

Of course it is absolutely a factor.

You cannot inject several trillion dollars into an economy without massively devaluing the dollars already there, especially if those dollars were not generated through creation of capital but through simply printing more of them.

Certainly you are correct that energy supply, including price of oil is also a factor.

Not only did we just inject more currency, we also locked down parts of the economy.

Inflation, trade deficit bound to go up.

 

[lingual]

Some aren't: people in certain areas are able to get raises pretty readily right now, it's an employees market.

Prices of necessary goods, like bread and milk, track to inflation closely. The video game industry particularly was unusual for freezing prices for 15 years.

Technological improvements to reduce production costs could play a big part in video game costs. For example, the marginal cost to a company is near zero when someone just buys and downloads a game.

 

[Parmandur]

Technological improvements to reduce production costs could play a big part in video game costs. For example, the marginal cost to a company is near zero when someone just buys and downloads a game.

But asset creation has gone through the roof with HD and them 4K developments.