Hasbro Hit With Layoffs, Wizards of the Coast Impacted

Hasbro has announced they had laid off "less than 100" employees, with Wizards of the Coast and the Dungeons & Dragons team impacted as a result. Hasbro announced the "operational streamlining" of their team ahead of their third quarter earnings report, along with several organizational changes impacting oversight of different business lines. as part of these business realignments, Chief Marketing Officer Jason Bunge will now oversee Wizards of the Coast and digital marketing moving forward.

EN World has learned that at least four people at Wizards of the Coast were laid off as part of these changes. One of the four is Dixon Dubow, who publicly announced that he was laid off on Twitter yesterday. Dubow was the creator relations manager for Dungeons & Dragons and was a critical part of helping to repair D&D's image after the 2023 OGL scandal. Dubow was a primary point of contact for content creators who worked with the D&D brand.

Hasbro previously laid off a number of Wizards of the Coast employees as part of a wider employee reduction line last year. Numerous employees from various Wizards teams were either laid off or retired as part of a 20% reduction in the overall Hasbro workforce.

Hasbro also announced year to date operating profits of $630 million during their quarterly earnings report, with a $98 million dividend payout to shareholders.

 

[Hussar]

You're responding to someone who is no longer on the site in case you weren't aware...

Thanks. Sorry. On phone. Had no idea.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Thanks. Sorry. On phone. Had no idea.

Geez, don't call him.

 

[michaeljpastor]

I'll share my Dixon story.

At the community summit a year and a half ago, Dixon was the guy who put a lot of it together. He was fantastic. He truly wanted to hear from the community, learn what we were thinking, and try to find a path to bring people together.

His bosses did not.

Instead, they put on presentations about the 3d VTT. They put on presentations about D&D Beyond. They talked about the core books.

At one point an audience member asked a question – I don't remember what it was – but Dan Rawson, the VP of whatever (who has now moved to a new position of whatever + digital whatever) tried to answer and it was super clear he had no idea what the person was asking.

Dixon put his hand up at the guy and took Dan's microphone from him and directly answered the question. It was such a clear sign of the giant gap existing between the people at WOTC who knew their audience and the executive team who knew, as far as I can tell, jack.

I know things shifted around in WOTC's management chain now. Kyle, the guy who went out in front of the hail of arrows during the OGL crisis, was laid off too a few months back.

This doesn't look like a great sign to me. We'll see.

I have my books. I have the 5.1 SRD. I have A5e's SRD. And WOTC says repeatedly they're going to release the 5.2 SRD. Beyond that, I don't need them to enjoy this game.

Well that at least answers Teos' eternal question: Where was the followup to the creators' summit? kibboshed

 

[Parmandur]

Well that at least answers Teos' eternal question: Where was the followup to the creators' summit? kibboshed

I mean, that really didn't go very well. I'm not sure what value there is for WotC to court online personalities. Blew up in their faces multiple times.

 

[Hussar]

I mean, that really didn't go very well. I'm not sure what value there is for WotC to court online personalities. Blew up in their faces multiple times.

cough*Zak S*cough

 

[Parmandur]

cough*Zak S*cough

Well, even he was an author and game designer, not a "content creator" making click bait YouTube videos thst thrives off controversy and anger.

 

[TheSword]

Let’s be honest, there are two types of folks in companies. Those that are actually producing the product and getting it to your door (writers, editors, artists, printers, warehouse team) and there are the those that support those people or help do it better - accounts, employee relations, PR, marketing etc.

Everyone in the first group wants better pay, tools & equipment, working environment, training and development. Every penny spent on the second group is a penny not being spent on the first. But the second group can really help the producers in the business do their jobs. The risk is the second group can turn into a huge black hole of salary and cash if left to their own devices, forgetting that they don’t actually make anything.

Now maybe a creator relations manager does make a material difference to the success of D&D. Maybe the objectives and measures they set for that role at inception were materially important and being smashed and WotC/Hasbro are fools for canning the job. Or maybe they looked at it and said content creators don’t seem to be any better disposed to us now than they were two years ago. Maybe they said, I know you told us that @SlyFlourish guy responded really well to you but he’s still online advocating that we don’t need D&D for 5e. While many more still seem to openly hate us? They looked at the material impact of the creator relationship role and decided it wasn’t achieving anything substantial beyond that which normal marketing or Public Relations could achieve.

In that circumstance are people honestly saying that Hasbro should be forced to keep funding a role that they don’t think is materially impactful even though it drains resources away from other parts of the business?

Folks really need to open their eyes and understand that redundancy does not equal automatically bad. As @Umbran said earlier if companies were forced to commit to permanent job roles then we certainly wouldn’t have creator relations managers and a host of other interesting positions. The value of redundancy in business is that it lets us take risks. People are also correct that the company isn’t forced to do redundancies at gun point. They’re doing them because it’s the right thing for the health of the company - which indirectly benefits all staff.

If you’re risk adverse and want a reliable job, don’t take a newly defined role in the support half of a company. Or if you do, because you’re not risk averse and it sounds like a great job, have a plan B ready.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Let’s be honest, there are two types of folks in companies. Those that are actually producing the product and getting it to your door (writers, editors, artists, printers, warehouse team) and there are the those that support those people or help do it better - accounts, employee relations, PR, marketing etc.

Everyone in the first group wants better pay, tools & equipment, working environment, training and development. Every penny spent on the second group is a penny not being spent on the first. But the second group can really help the producers in the business do their jobs. The risk is the second group can turn into a huge black hole of salary and cash if left to their own devices, forgetting that they don’t actually make anything.

Now maybe a creator relations manager does make a material difference to the success of D&D. Maybe the objectives and measures they set for that role at inception were materially important and being smashed and WotC/Hasbro are fools for canning the job. Or maybe they looked at it and said content creators don’t seem to be any better disposed to us now than they were two years ago. Maybe they said, I know you told us that @SlyFlourish guy responded really well to you but he’s still online advocating that we don’t need D&D for 5e. While many more still seem to openly hate us? They looked at the material impact of the creator relationship role and decided it wasn’t achieving anything substantial beyond that which normal marketing or Public Relations could achieve.

In that circumstance are people honestly saying that Hasbro should be forced to keep funding a role that they don’t think is materially impactful even though it drains resources away from other parts of the business?

Folks really need to open their eyes and understand that redundancy does not equal automatically bad. As @Umbran said earlier if companies were forced to commit to permanent job roles then we certainly wouldn’t have creator relations managers and a host of other interesting positions. The value of redundancy in business is that it lets us take risks. People are also correct that the company isn’t forced to do redundancies at gun point. They’re doing them because it’s the right thing for the health of the company - which indirectly benefits all staff.

If you’re risk adverse and want a reliable job, don’t take a newly defined role in the support half of a company. Or if you do, because you’re not risk averse and it sounds like a great job, have a plan B ready.

There’s a third type of folk in these companies and that’s the shareholder profit seekers — often the C Suite — who make decisions, sometimes good, sometimes terrible, that can wreck a product or brand for no good reason. This is the Chris Cocks “all my friends use AI” types who buy E-One and then sell it for pennies on the dollar and then do haircut firings regardless of performance. This is why Toys R Us is out of business. This is why you can have a brand new edition release and still have a down quarter. It’s where executives play three-card monty with their assets and licenses and job titles and acquisitions so no one can figure it out. And it affects real people and the underlying games.

It’s almost impossible to know what that group can do to the underlying game.

But it doesn’t matter. In a few months we’ll have the third of the three 2024/2025 D&D core books and they can’t take them away from us.

 

[TheSword]

There’s a third type of folk in these companies and that’s the shareholder profit seekers — often the C Suite — who make decisions, sometimes good, sometimes terrible, that can wreck a product or brand for no good reason. This is the Chris Cocks “all my friends use AI” types who buy E-One and then sell it for pennies on the dollar and then do haircut firings regardless of performance. This is why Toys R Us is out of business. This is why you can have a brand new edition release and still have a down quarter. It’s where executives play three-card monty with their assets and licenses and job titles and acquisitions so no one can figure it out. And it affects real people and the underlying games.

It’s almost impossible to know what that group can do to the underlying game.

But it doesn’t matter. In a few months we’ll have the third of the three 2024/2025 D&D core books and they can’t take them away from us.

Well I would consider them part of the second group actually. But thank you for making my point about the need for a Creator Relations Manager admirably.

Incidentally regarding shareholders - if you ask someone to give you money to expand your business then you have a ethical responsibility to treat that money with respect and spend it wisely. It’s been discussed on the boards before. Investing your spare savings or pension pot into a business you think could do well isn’t dirty or something to be ashamed of.

Regarding C-Suite - I’m sure they would feel they have a positive impact on the running of the business. Like most people in most jobs, some are better than others. You make the best decisions you can with the information you have at the time. As long as recruitment processes are competitive then anyone who thinks they can do better and has the credentials to back it up is welcome to have a go. Unfortunately it’s easy to snipe from the sidelines, risk free with no responsibility and make some cash doing it.

 

[TheSword]

Duplicate post