WotC D&D Hiring New Game Designer Months After Firing Many

The job pays from $86-145k and is for an experienced game designer—presumably much like one of those they let go a few months ago!

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Notably, one of those let go in December in Hasbro’s company-wide cost-cutting cull of over 1,000 jobs was D&D designer Dan Dillon. Dillon posted on Twitter—“Well. There it is. D&D is hiring a game designer, 8 months later. Was it worth it, you soulless f*****g cowards? Did you save enough money?”

 

[mamba]

I don't know - you and me (among others) seem to bounce back-and-forth between defending them and trashing them, depending on what the thread is about.

fair, but there are some who always end up on the same side of this every time.

 

[mamba]

WotC is not independent, WotC IS Hasbro. WotC will never be independent again.

and yet we can speculate

 

[mamba]

Yeah, I think I agree with @Sorcerers Apprentice above - I'm not sure WotC ever benefited from being part of Hasbro - the former owners of WotC benefitted, in that they got paid for selling it

the purchase itself certainly was not in order to benefit the WotC employees, that does not mean it might not have done so anyway at that time.

Don’t really know much about the state of WotC at the time, they could have gotten some benefits, better management, more structured salaries, economics of scale, their foot in doors they did not have one in before, … these days however, I am not seeing anything

 

[TiQuinn]

and yet we can speculate

I can see a day that WotC divests itself of Hasbro, and effectively becomes the parent company, while the rest of Hasbro is sold off to private equity.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Not to be "that guy" but, isn't this pretty standard in the RPG industry? Revolving doors and all that?

I don’t know about the RPG industry specifically but I would say it is true of large corporations in general. Periods of boom and then bust. Look at all the large tech companies that have laid off staff in the past 12 months. Almost all of them. These are the same companies that were hoarding talent two years ago.

 

[Dire Bare]

fair, but there are some who always end up on the same side of this every time.

Not really.

The most recent WotC layoffs, followed months later by rehiring the same positions . . . is definitely yet another example of toxic corporate behavior that has become emblematic of Hasbro/WotC. If WotC's many stumbles over the past few years has left you cold towards supporting their products . . . I get it. I'm pretty tired of WotC's corporate shenanigans myself.

But few on these forums "defend" WotC when they step wrong. A few in this thread seem to be shrugging off this current situation as corporations-gonna-corp, but no one is defending the company's actions.

We do have folks on these forums, and within the larger fandom, who have an axe to grind with WotC that goes beyond just being unhappy with the company's decisions and actions. If you've been around long enough, it was the same with TSR . . . an independent company that was much worse in how it treated it's workers and customers. Nobody defended TSR, but some had big axes to grind.

The pushback you are commenting on isn't anyone defending WotC, its those of us who are TIRED of the constant negativity, the sometimes fair but also often misplaced negativity. Those who see malice in everything WotC does. It rises to conspiracy-theory level thinking and infects almost every conversation on these boards about D&D.

It's tiresome.

WotC, and TSR back in the day, makes lots of stumbles. Especially of late. But WotC is not a person, WotC is a company made of many individuals, a company whose leadership is constantly in flux. A company that makes bad decisions, and a company that makes good decisions. A company that puts out products you don't like, and a company that puts out products you probably would if you'd give it a chance.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Access to Hasbro's distribution chain and other connections wasn't a benefit? Access to a large company's infrastructure and knowledge of how to work in the world of larger corporations wasn't a benefit? Not picking up what you're laying down here, at all.

I don't know. I'd have to see their books to see if they benefitted from those things. Access to something only gives you potential benefits not automatic ones it's possible, maybe even likely, that they saw benefit from those things, but I'm not so sure it was enough to mitigate the cost.

Corporations can often (far too often these days) act more like a leech or a parasite to their purchases, rather than a protective parent.

You're probably right that Hasbro helped to get D&D into the big box stores, though. I'm not sure if WotC was making inroads there with Magic before that.

 

[mamba]

few on these forums "defend" WotC when they step wrong. A few in this thread seem to be shrugging off this current situation as corporations-gonna-corp, but no one is defending the company's actions.

‘corp gonna corp’ is something I consider a defense, it’s not that far from saying ‘they are absolutely justified in this, what else would anyone do’, and I frequently see variations of that in their defense too

We do have folks on these forums, and within the larger fandom, who have an axe to grind with WotC that goes beyond just being unhappy with the company's decisions and actions.

sure, and we have people defending any action WotC takes, downplaying it and saying that as a publicly traded company they basically have no other choice is a defense too

If you defend their attempt to revoke the OGL, the Pinkertons and the WotC firings, I am not sure what it takes for you to not side with WotC on something. Apparently they at a minimum haven’t done anything yet that would cause you to.
I landed on different sides for some of these, but if the OGL does not get you on the anti-WotC side I am genuinely not sure what would, short of Cocks becoming a Bond villain with Hasbro as his Evil Corp

The pushback you are commenting on isn't anyone defending WotC, its those of us who are TIRED of the constant negativity

eh, there certainly is pushback too (and imo it can be justified), but that doesn’t mean that no one is defending WotC

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'd say that it's more telling of WotC that posting about their hiring leads to all this vitriol in these forums.

I think that it's more telling about internet discussions in general thar everything "sounds" like vitriol. I doubt that very many people are all that worked up about any of it. It's more likely to be snark than really vitriol, most of the time.

 

[bedir than]

Especially of late.

Wizards under Peter has stories that rival Blizzards, but it was an era where that didn't quite make headlines. Nothing Hasbro has done rivals this level of abuse.

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