WotC [Updated!] Hasbro Laying Off 1,100 Employees

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Just announced, Hasbro will be laying off an additional 1,100 employees after laying off 800 earlier this year. Some will be laid off this week, some over the coming months. People affected so far include Mike Mearls, Dan Dillon, Amy Dallen, and others.

CEO Chris Cocks commented that “headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday are likely to persist into 2024”. An email to staff, also published in the Wall Street Journal, said:

While we’re confident in the future of Hasbro, the current environment demands that we do more, even if these choices are some of the hardest we have to make.

I know this news is especially difficult during the holiday season. There is no sugar-coating how hard this is, particularly for the employees directly affected.

The issues appear to largely affect Hasbro’s extensive toy sales business. Various folk working on D&D at WotC have started making statements which indicate that layoffs are happening right now:
  • D&D designer Dan Dillon: “Well. Today was my last day at Wizards. Not sure what's next.”
  • Graphic designer Trystan Falcone: “To everyone at WotC getting cut today & especially my fellow D&D team members: May your talent & passion be recognized and rewarded by the lucky teams that snatch you up. You are irreplaceable. To other studios, we are losing incredible folks. Scoop them ASAP. It’s Hasbro's loss.
  • Dixon Dubow, creator relations: “Words cannot describe. So many talented friends and coworkers, simply gone.”
  • Art director Bree Heiss: “Much to my surprise, it is my last day at Wizards. It was an honor and a joy to work on the games I love with people who have become family. If you know anywhere that is looking for a sassy art director with some mad skills, please let me know.”
  • Senior Development Editor Eytan Bernstein: "Hi folks. I was one of the people laid of during the Hasbro layoff this week. I know of four other people on the D&D team who confirmed they were affected, but I'll leave it to them if they want to post about it. This includes folks on the art, design, editorial, and product management depts., and that's just who I've heard about. I have a giant ball of emotions right now. I haven't figured out my next steps yet. If you know of an opportunity that might be a good fit for me, please let me know. I am open for freelance (or full-time) design, editing, fiction, and inclusivity reviews. If it combines RPGs with education, accessibility, or inclusivity, that's also cool. I freely welcome positive thoughts, hugs, and "you're awesomes!" I don't feel awesome right now."
  • Amy Dallen, DnD Beyond producer/host: "I’m deeply proud of the work I got to do at D&D Beyond and Wizards. Thank you to everyone who played a role in those many good memories. I’m not sure what’s next, but I do hope you’ll continue to support the incredible colleagues who remain, who I’ll miss very much."
  • Larry Frum, senior communicatons manager: "As part of the recent Hasbro headcount reductions, I have been let go from Wizards of the Coast, effective itoday. I cannot tell you how honored it has been to work with the wonderful and talented people at WOTC. Being a part of Wizards was a dream job come true for me when I joined a little over a year ago. It is time to start a "new game" and roll for initiative on my next adventure. Please let me know if you hear of anything where I might be a good fit. Excited by what is next."
  • Mike Mearls--previously senior management on D&D but who has been on the MtG team for a few years now--is also one of the people let go, along with many other people working on the Magic: The Gathering side of WotC: "Yes, I was laid off by WotC. Yes, I am doing fine and excited by what's to come. And yes, I have a pretty amazing circle of friends. I'm going to take a nap then get back to the work of forging the future."
  • David McDarby, game designer on MtG: "Sadly, my position at Wizards of the Coast was eliminated today along with many others due to the Hasbro layoffs. I've absolutely loved working at WotC and making Magic Tabletop/MTGO/MTG Arena the best it can be these past 9 years, and I'm looking for my next opportunity!"
  • Paul Cheon, talent manager: “Unfortunately, I will no longer be working for WotC as I was one of the many that were hit by the Hasbro layoffs. It was an absolute dream to work on the game that I've loved playing for over 20 years. Future is unclear but I may fire up a stream after the New Year!”
  • Rob Sather, D&D Art Manager: “Yesterday was surprisingly my last day of work at Wizards as D&D TRPG Studio's Art Manager. My position was eliminated, nothing to do with performance. Can't even utter a snarky quip or light-hearted anecdote, just feeling gutted.”
  • Other confirmed folks include Chris Lindsay (who created DMs Guild), Liz Schuh (licensing and publishing manager), Natalie Egan, community manager Jesse J Hill, and art director Mike Vaillancourt, Vanessa Cuanan (Associate Systems Administrator), Michael Rexford (Senior Data Scientist), Ellie Lockhart (Analytics Engineer), Jana Hodgins (Technical Producer), Megan Galbraith Donahue (Director of MTG Universes Beyond Creative and Production), Deserae Dawn, (Program Manager), David Hartless (D&D Beyond director), Shay Pierce (senior software engineer).
Chris Cocks’ full email reads as follows:

Team,  

A year ago, we laid out our strategy to focus on building fewer, bigger, better brands and began the process of transforming Hasbro. Since then, we’ve had some important wins, like retooling our supply chain, improving our inventory position, lowering costs, and reinvesting over $200M back into the business while growing share across many of our categories. But the market headwinds we anticipated have proven to be stronger and more persistent than planned. While we’re confident in the future of Hasbro, the current environment demands that we do more, even if these choices are some of the hardest we have to make.

Today we’re announcing additional headcount reductions as part of our previously communicated strategic transformation, affecting approximately 1,100 colleagues globally in addition to the roughly 800 reductions already taken.

Our leadership team came to this difficult decision after much deliberation. We recognize this is heavy news that affects the livelihoods of our friends and colleagues. Our focus is communicating with each of you transparently and supporting you through this period of change. I want to start by addressing why we are doing this now, and what’s next.

Why now?

We entered 2023 expecting a year of change including significant updates to our leadership team, structure, and scope of operations. We anticipated the first three quarters to be challenging, particularly in Toys, where the market is coming off historic, pandemic-driven highs. While we have made some important progress across our organization, the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday and are likely to persist into 2024.

To position Hasbro for growth, we must first make sure our foundation is solid and profitable. To do that, we need to modernize our organization and get even leaner. While we see workforce reductions as a last resort, given the state of our business, it’s a lever we must pull to keep Hasbro healthy.

What happens next?

While we’re making changes across the entire organization, some functional areas will be affected more than others. Many of those whose roles are affected have been or will be informed in the next 24 hours, although the timings will vary by country, in line with local rules and subject to employee consultations where required. This includes team members who have raised their hands to step down from their roles at the end of the year as part of our Voluntary Early Retirement Program (VRP) in the U.S. We’re immensely grateful to these colleagues for their many years of dedication, and we wish them all the best.

The majority of the notifications will happen over the next six months, with the balance occurring over the next year as we tackle the remaining work on our organizational model. This includes standardizing processes within Finance, HR, IT and Consumer Care as part of our Global Business Enablement project, but it also means doing more work across the entire business to minimize management layers and create a nimbler organization.

What else are we doing?

I know this news is especially difficult during the holiday season. We value each of our team members – they aren’t just employees, they’re friends and colleagues. We decided to communicate now so people have time to plan and process the changes. For those employees affected we are offering comprehensive packages including job placement support to assist in their transition.

We’ve also done what we can to minimize the scale of impact, like launching the VRP and exploring options to reduce our global real estate footprint. On that note, our Providence, Rhode Island office is currently not being used to its full capacity and we’ve decided to exit the space at the end of the lease term in January 2025. Over the next year, we’ll welcome teams from our Providence office to our headquarters down the road in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It’s an opportunity to reshape how we work and ensure our workspace is vibrant and productive, while reflecting our more flexible in-person cadence since the pandemic.

Looking ahead

As Gina often says, cost-cutting is not a strategy. We know this, and that’s why we’ll continue to grow and invest in several areas in 2024.

As we uncover more cost savings, we’ll invest in new systems, insights and analytics, product development and digital – all while strengthening our leading franchises and ensuring our brands have the essential marketing they need to thrive well into the future.

We’ll also tap into unlocked potential across our business, like our new supply chain efficiency, our direct-to-consumer capabilities, and key partnerships to maximize licensing opportunities, scale entertainment, and free up our own content dollars to drive new brand development.

I know there is no sugar-coating how hard this is, particularly for the employees directly affected. We’re grateful to them for their contributions, and we wish them all the best. In the coming weeks, let’s support each other, and lean in to drive through these necessary changes, so we can return our business to growth and carry out Hasbro’s mission.

Thanks,
Chris
 

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fair....but the ONLY thing keeping them afloat is WOTC (and DnD is not as big as Magic, but it is growing faster AND, more importantly, is a brand they are investing in because it can be other things ---- video games, VTTs, DnDBeyond, tv channels, etc).
I've been in a company that was investing massively in a new project but when the annual numbers came out the project was canned and sold for quick cash.
 

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I've been in a company that was investing massively in a new project but when the annual numbers came out the project was canned and sold for quick cash.
This isn't a new project......and quick cash isn't saving Hasbro if all they have left is Magic and a bunch of stuff that loses money (or, more likely, doesn't make enough for the market to be happy, because the market wants growth, lots of growth).
 

This isn't a new project......and quick cash isn't saving Hasbro if all they have left is Magic and a bunch of stuff that loses money (or, more likely, doesn't make enough for the market to be happy, because the market wants growth, lots of growth).
It could save the CEOs job, but only short term (which may be enough for the CEO, but I doubt it).
Anyway....I feel like I've pushed this thread too far off topic, which is the sad news of the layoffs.....and like you said, no one is changing their mind (and, to be clear, I'm in no way defending Hasbro here, but I can't post my thoughts w/o violating politics rules here).
 

This isn't a new project......and quick cash isn't saving Hasbro if all they have left is Magic and a bunch of stuff that loses money (or, more likely, doesn't make enough for the market to be happy, because the market wants growth, lots of growth).
Sorry for being unclear. I was referring to the 3D virtual tabletop. It takes lots of resources to pull that off. That is new.
 

fair....but the ONLY thing keeping them afloat is WOTC (and DnD is not as big as Magic, but it is growing faster AND, more importantly, is a brand they are investing in because it can be other things ---- video games, VTTs, DnDBeyond, tv channels, etc).
This isn't necessarily a good way to understand Hasbro, though. Ultimately, all decisions about Hasbro are made by people who have shares in Hasbro, either because they bought them, or because as high-end Hasbro employees, they've been given them.

If they spun off WotC, those people would likely make quite a lot of money individually. Now their Hasbro shares might not do as well, but why are they working at this failing Hasbro company? Oh, they're suddenly working at different companies and have sold their shares! (This is a simplification) Again, this has happened before.

Alternatively, selling off WotC, as a notable profit-making entity, you could ask several times the price you could if WotC was only doing "okay". In general you want to sell assets when they seem valuable, not when they don't. Sometimes you have to do the latter, but it is to be avoided. And selling off WotC might give them an opportunity to do a big round of dividends to the shareholders - themselves! Plus potentially bonuses and so on for such a smart and successful action! And then you can just leave, and let what's left of Hasbro try to figure it out as shareholders abandon them en masse. Again, hardly unprecedented.

I'm not saying this will happen, but I think a lot of the "It'll never happen!" arguments are fundamentally irrational.

What I think is very unlikely is piecemeal sale of IPs, particularly D&D, without selling WotC. WotC is actually kind of relevant here because they can make the argument that their IPs are more valuable together than apart - cross-brand synergy and so on. I wouldn't be entirely unsurprised if, however, if Exodus is successful, particularly critically, but doesn't make crazy money, that say Archetype Entertainment might get sold off, in a few years (Sony might well be interested, given MS is essentially "full up" for now).
 

I'm not saying this will happen, but I think a lot of the "It'll never happen!" arguments are fundamentally irrational.
The idea that scenario would lead to a healthy environment for the games, or that the result would be anything resembling fans would take over as some seem to be thinking here, is extremely optimistic.

The result would no doubt be an even more frenzied effort to monetize the fans for wall street.
 

The best time to sell an asset is when the value is at its highest. 5e sales + BG3 + D&D Movie 'submarine success' makes D&D very attractive at this juncture. The best time to sell D&D is at the end of an edition cycle. Which happens to be now. I 'sense' a major deal in a few months.

I've been known 'to be wrong, from time to time'.
This is contrary though how Hasbro operates. Its possible they changed philosophy, but nobody wants to be the Exec there that sells something that makes MORE money than Hasbro Ever did with the property.

Likely with all of these layoffs, and loss of instututional knowledge I see Hasbro treating the BRAND like Monopoly. Its kind of already out there. Lots of Board Games are released with D&D TM on them.

I think Hasbro will keep this. At worst they will shelve it and let OGL angst die down. But I think we are going to see D&D stripped of its game identity and applied to many different products.
 

The idea that scenario would lead to a healthy environment for the games, or that the result would be anything resembling fans would take over as some seem to be thinking here, is extremely optimistic.

The result would no doubt be an even more frenzied effort to monetize the fans for wall street.
I don't know about more frenzied, maybe, but yeah I'm not suggesting it would be a good thing. Once a property is in the hands a big corporation, the odds of anything good for people like that property in anything but the most mindless consumerist brand-based way are fairly low. Honestly we got lucky because 4E's DDI was attempt to monetize the hell of D&D that failed, causing D&D to get ignored for a while, but then when D&D was successful again, the Eye of Sauron fell upon it once again, and $$$ got invested in the 3D VTT and D&D Beyond, both as different, kind of competing (it seems) ways to monetize the hell out of the future of D&D.

"The fans will take over!" is always an extremely funny idea. That only happens if a company collapses completely and sells stuff off, and even then it tends to be pretty temporary.
 

nobody wants to be the Exec there that sells something that makes MORE money than Hasbro Ever did with the property
Oh buddy.

Sure they do.

They just don't keep staying there, they want to make whatever profit they can from that and then leave. It's not like the next business they work for is going to see them as having made a "mistake". At worst they'll be regarded as having convinced some naïfs to make them a short-term profit, and of course the company hiring them isn't naïve, so they'll do good work for them, not do the same thing to them!

Seriously though, that's a very 1970s idea of how senior execs at corporations think
But I think we are going to see D&D stripped of its game identity and applied to many different products.
That's been in the works for a long time - since 4E at least. It slowed, kind of even stopped in 5E solely because the D&D brand wasn't seen as particularly valuable/worth investing in. As the brand's perceived worth has picked up, they've made more attempts, albeit with varying levels of success (c.f. Ollies). I don't think it'll have a huge impact on the actual D&D game though - they'll keep publishing books for the foreseeable future, they'll just likely trend towards being expensive and collectible if in physical format (rather than well-priced and usable), with digital increasingly seen as the place to get them at saner prices for people who actually want to play the game - and they're not doubt already looking at trying to move us to subscription models there, whether it's to Beyond, the 3D VTT, or both - they hired Dan Rawson specifically for a reason.
 

In the past Hasbro is more likely to shelve a brand (as opposed to a company) than to sell it. They then can resurrect it years later under a re-imagined premise, as well as occasionally also resurrecting it for nostalgia sales.

However, currently the situation is unprecedented. I feel (personal opinion) that one reason why MtG and WotC in general have been such strong legs recently is partly due to how Toy Sales have fallen off a cliff over the past two decades.

Some of it I can understand, but some of it I can't. We still have kids, we still have children, so why are kids no longer playing with toys as much. Blame has been put on computers, tablets, phones, and more, but that can't be the ONLY thing kids are playing with these days (or can it be??).

As sales of Kid's physical products fall a greater reliance has to be on other areas such as niche gaming and electronic frontiers.

Even with the niche gaming arenas, the writing may be on the wall which is why there is a focus to go electronic. They have seen what happened with the toy lines and the assumed ideas that a LOT of it is because kids spend their times with electronic handheld devices these days rather than the physical toylines and other physical items. The idea probably is to beat society to the punch, get into the electronic arena with D&D and MtG in a very strong manner before society migrates to these and leaves physical products behind.

It's an adapt or die type situation I suppose. Will that leave them to spin off or sale different brands and such? I don't know. I know there are those on the board who are pushing for this exact idea, but I don't know if they will gain more traction over time or what will happen in this regard. It's a wild time at the Grand Corral.
 

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