D&D 5E Are D&D sales declining? Teos Abadia takes a look.

[Parmandur]

Everyone knows that there is going to be a saturation point, when everyone who wants to play D&D is playing D&D. There is also going to invetably be drop off: some will leave for other RPGs but most will just leave the hobby altogether becasue it was a brief love affair, or something to do during the pandemic, or they outgrow it, or whatever. So WotC is forced to sell more to a higher perecentage of players. Since we (and they) know books aren't going to do that, it is pretty likely that monetization is going to come through D&DB and the VTT (along with merch and D&D branded mobile apps, video games and other sundries).

Here's the thing, as long as they don't pull licenses from other VTTs, I don't care.

That's why WotC spends so much time and energy on school outreach: they will be saturated for older demos, but people turn 12 or go to college all the time.

 

[darjr]

That's why WotC spends so much time and energy on school outreach: they will be saturated for older demos, but people turn 12 or go to college all the time.

Yea the latest push for schools is such a good idea.

 

[Parmandur]

Could be. It is arguable I think.

I’m surprised no one else has mentioned his other interning claims.

Maybe I’ll update the OP.

But I think he settles a couple debates.

Yeah, we have no way of knowing. Assuming this (very good) analysis ells the whole storr relatively speaking, still super impressive and a better place to start refreshing the product line in 2024 than a crash and burn scenario.

However, I did note that the period shift @Alphastream notes seems toncorrespond with when WotC really began going hard for Beyond. That will have at least cannibalize some significant number of Bookscan sales, even if the ratios are still accurate.

At a Bae minimum, even the latest products still selling what I would call "well", I don't see WotC pulling out of print books or anything.

 

[Parmandur]

Yea the latest push for schools is such a good idea.

Literally everyone wins. Except Jack Chick and BADD, but nothing is perfect.

 

[darjr]

Literally everyone wins. Except Jack Chick and BADD, but nothing is perfect.

That sounds perfect to me!

 

[darjr]

OK I’m going to state them. Maybe it just isn’t that big a deal to folks.

He detects that the OGL debacle didn’t hurt sales measurably and there was a bump in sales due to the movie.

 

[Parmandur]

OK I’m going to state them. Maybe it just isn’t that big a deal to folks.

He detects that the OGL debacle didn’t hurt sales measurably and there was a bump in sales due to the movie.

Oh, yes, I saw that he said that, but I thought that he established that in a prior blog post as well? The new charts are pretty good arguments that it is the case, though the sample size is admitjust one...it would have shown up rather than performing fine.

 

[LordEntrails]

Define declining. Looking at the final charts in the story, yes there are year over year decline for 2021 vs 2022. But if you look at the trend since 2015 (i.e. ignoring the pandemic) their is still an upward trend, so no decline. i.e. 2022 data is better than 2018.

So, did sales peak during the pandemic and D&D will never recover? Or did D&D peak during the pandemic and is now returning to the previous slow growth?

 

[Dausuul]

It's also possible that sales have slowed in anticipation of the 2024 edition. IIRC, there was a similar effect after the announcements of 4E and 5E.

 

[Alphastream]

I don't know that it's arguable.

DnD Beyond alone already made Hasbro the revenue from the purchase within the first year.
They have partnerships with Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds too.

That less than 10% decline is more than made up in >100 million in revenue from digital sources

I don't think we have good data on how many subscriptions are paying subscriptions vs free subscriptions. Hasbro has shared data points such as 13 million DDB users, up from 10-11 at time of purchase, but it is unclear what that really means for income. They also said at that time (2022 December investor call) that 90% of the paying customers were DMs and they wanted to change that. So far, no initiatives seem to have tried to change that. We later heard the call to monetize the game better, but again, no initiatives have done that and Hasbro seems to be stepping back from the idea of D&D becoming a $1B brand. All investor data that is digital is heavily influenced by Magic, so it hasn't so far been possible to even guess at DDB income.