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?”

 

[Scribe]

Would they offer more if game designers didn't settle or demanded more. Simply because they are paying the most doesn't mean they are paying what people are worth when their work impacts a whole industry.

No, they wouldnt. They can hire people off social media at the drop of a hat, and for less.

If they couldnt, why the hell is anyone working at Paizo for what seems like half the pay?

I'm no fan of Wizards, but they seemingly are paying WAY over the going rate.

 

[Scribe]

In Canada, for example, some of the absolute largest companies are ones that own farms and produce food at a rate that would have been absolutely unheard of 100 years ago. Your electricity is provided by massive companies for a rate that is affordable by nearly everyone in your country. Water utilities are bit of a mixed bag, but, again, by and large, the preponderance of people in the world do have access to clean drinking water provided by massive companies.

I mean, in comparison to the disparity of life pre-1900, where you had widespread starvation and virtually zero access to clean drinking water, I'd say that the large corporations have done pretty well. I went to Costco, in Japan, yesterday, and bought more food than a Japanese family in the 1800's would have seen in a year for a very small fraction of my monthly budget and I'm not exactly rolling in cash here. I turn on the tap and there's clean drinking water that is actually cleaner than most bottled waters - Kitakyushu has fantastic water.

All provided by massive corporations.

Much of that should be public services. Power, Water, Public Transport, Hospitals...all that kind of stuff should NOT be private, for profit, corporations. Corporate Farms, that buy up all the land and make it so the family farm cannot compete? Thats not a bonus either, my Grandfather ended up having to sell his land and THEN work it for the last few seasons before he retired.

Sure, 'progress' has happened in many areas, the mass corporatization of what should be public services and individual assets isnt one of them.

 

[Zardnaar]

DONT ENCOURAGE US!

Look, you whippersnapper with your attack cantrips and your healing hit dice and your feats. Back in the day, I used to walk 10 miles in a snowstorm, uphill, just so that I could play a first level Magic User with 2 hit points. And you know what? I'd get there, and cast my single light spell, and right after that I was killed, KILLED by a kobold with a dull butter knife. And you know what I did then? I'd walk 10 miles back, ALSO UPHILL, in that same snowstorm. That's how I PLAYED REAL D&D, AND I LOVED IT!

Actually it was 11 miles.

 

[Mistwell]

In terms of a holistic discussion of business practices, sure. But there are specific aspects of that discussion that are germane to WotC.

For instance, I've seen repeated posts expressing exasperation that the OGL scandal is still being held against WotC. But I think it's entirely legitimate to continue to bring that up, for one simple reason: the continuing harm that their attempt to maximize profit caused to the gaming community outweighs, in my opinion, their attempts to repair that harm.

At what point do you take your complaint with WOTC directly to WOTC and stop posting it in response to so many different threads derailing those reads so you can bludgeon your peers who are just trying to have fun talking about their hobby with your corporate complaints?

Serious question - how long are we all supposed to tolerate these rants. It's been quite a while now. If you don't get your way by doing this (and you won't - WOTC isn't hearing you complaints posted here because this isn't one of their primary outlets to hear customer service issues) will you eventually stop posting them here? Or do we all have to collectively stick you, and the others who keep posting about this same thing in every thread they think they can get away with it, on ignore?

If there is an end to it on the horizon, I am willing to be very tolerant and wait because I like a lot of the other stuff you have to say. I like a lot of what the others who do it have to say as well. I don't like putting people on ignore, and use it as only a last resort.

But if this is just going to go on indefinitely, if you're planning to just keep finding any justification to bring it up again and again for the foreseeable future, I think it would be polite for you and others to just let people know that here, so they can make an informed decision if they want to deal with this further.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

But if this is just going to go on indefinitely, if you're planning to just keep finding any justification to bring it up again and again for the foreseeable future, I think it would be polite for you and others to just let people know that here, so they can make an informed decision if they want to deal with this further.

Yeah it's going to go on indefinitely, unless WotC loses enough market share to make another game become the top dog in the industry. Then people will complain about that one and ignore WotC

 

[Vaalingrade]

Granted, we spent 5000 years with slavery, torture and zero worker rights. But, sure, things are just so much worse now.

Let's go back to the days when an overseer beats a worker to death, and... nothing happens.

Is there a drydock where these terrible takes are constructed?

It was worse once upon a time, so it's okay for things to be bad now.

 

[Staffan]

We don't know why the people were laid off,

Sure we do. It was rather widely publicized at the time. Hasbro had a bad year, mostly because of poor investments in trying to become a movie studio. To show stockholders they were serious about cutting costs, they laid off people all over the company – notably, not the execs responsible for the poor decision, but regular workers.

LOL. Pretty much every company maximizes profit. They'd be stupid not to. People can love what they do and attempt to make the best product they can while still maximizing profit, it's not an inherently bad thing.

These guys seem to be doing fine.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

If consumers were to refuse to purchase from unethical companies, then ethical companies would get all the business and pretty soon maximizing ethics would be the only way to maximize profits. But as long as we'd rather buy the shiniest new toy than a slightly duller one from an ethical supplier, the current state of affairs will continue.

 

[Hussar]

Sure we do. It was rather widely publicized at the time. Hasbro had a bad year, mostly because of poor investments in trying to become a movie studio. To show stockholders they were serious about cutting costs, they laid off people all over the company – notably, not the execs responsible for the poor decision, but regular workers.

These guys seem to be doing fine.

That's a very simplistic version. Let's not forget the global downturn in toy sales that have cratered many of Hasbro's toy lines.

But, sure, it's only the movie studio stuff.

This is exactly what flies up my nose. This tendency to look for really simple answers in very complex issues. Hasbro is 100% bad for letting go someone because they had a bad year but, it's all about the movie studios and nothing to do with anything else.

 

[Dire Bare]

How is WotC hiring a new designer a bad thing thing? Because they laid one off eight months ago? How on earth do folks know it isn’t because a different one has left or is approaching retirement, or is intended to work on a completely different project.

Nobody who gets made redundant expects the company never to recruit another person.

It's not so much the hiring of a new designer that is crappy, but the initital layoffs were a sad example of toxic corporate behavior. Hasbro, the parent company, wasn't doing well, but WotC was . . . so why layoff WotC employees? To balance out the ledger sheets and maximize profit for the shareholders. A lot of Americans have trouble with the profit-first mentality of corporations.

The hiring of a new designer less than a year after laying off designers . . . we don't know the specific reason why they are hiring a new designer, but it's salt in the wound for folks laid off. And fans tired of WotC's seemingly constant missteps that hurt workers and hurt fans.

WotC seems to step wrong an awful lot these days, but (IMO) the negativity towards WotC gets a bit much on these forums, but in this instance, I'm on board.