D&D General Elon Musk Wants To Know 'How Much Is Hasbro?'

Following the richest man in the world's attack on Wizards of the Coast for two paragraphs in the 500-page celebration of D&D, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977, Elon Musk--who bought Twitter not that long ago--wants to know how much D&D's owner Hasbro would cost.

After the public sharing on Twitter of Jason Tondro's (who wrote the book’s foreword) private Facebook posts, Musk replied "How much is Hasbro?"

Hasbro's estimated capitalization is currently $8.71 billion, with $3.95 billion of debt.

It was on 21st December 2017 when Musk similarly enquired "How much is it?" before proceeding to make a bid for Twitter. He later tried to back out of the deal, but was forced to buy the platform for $44 billion in June 2022. Current estimates by investment firm Fidelity put the platform at a value 80% less than when he bought it, with a worth of only about $9.4 billion.

 

[Future_Monkey]

Maybe he will pull a Crassus.

I hope I get to help melt down the irl doge coins.

 

[geek0id]

While a magic returns apocalypse is probably one of the least bad apocalypses, it is still an apocalypse and while it appears that Ireland is about one third elf (so I would have a reasonable shot at it) I am not sure I would fancy the government returning to a form of pre–Tudor Anglo-Gaelic chieftaincies.
It did not work well for the country the last time around.

So a magic apocalypse just happens to fit stereo types?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Umm you mean more than it's already? There's a whole line called Universes beyond which is for crossovers, we're due to get either a marvel set or a spider man set next year (I forget which) including

And since we can't get enough people to agree on the problem let alone a solution all we can do is rage on the internet.

RAGE! RAGE against the Dying of the light!

Anyways it occurs to be if WotC is all Musk really wants, he could buy Hasbro, spinoff WotC as the Activist Investors wanted and sell what remains of Hasbro to whoever will buy it's carcess. WotC has everything he really wants, D&D, MtG, Video Game studios, etc..., he's not after NERF.

Who do you think will stay and who will go under an Musk Hasbro? I think Mark Rosewater will stay, maybe Gavin Verhey, but I come up empty D&D side and no clue with the video studios.

 

[Remathilis]

Consider if you will.
1. Calls are made and strings are pulled.
2. Hasbro spins off Wotc.
3. Musk picks up Wotc for a song.
4. The zombie apocalypse begins.
5. The AI uprising begins.
6. All hail the AI Zombie overlords!!!

Hasbro is not going to spin off the only division that makes consistent money and then exist with a boatload of debt and no golden goose. If Musk is going to do this, he's going to have to buy the whole cow, not just the cream.

 

[Parmandur]

RAGE! RAGE against the Dying of the light!

Anyways it occurs to be if WotC is all Musk really wants, he could buy Hasbro, spinoff WotC as the Activist Investors wanted and sell what remains of Hasbro to whoever will buy it's carcess. WotC has everything he really wants, D&D, MtG, Video Game studios, etc..., he's not after NERF.

Who do you think will stay and who will go under an Musk Hasbro? I think Mark Rosewater will stay, maybe Gavin Verhey, but I come up empty D&D side and no clue with the video studios.

Nobody stays: Musk fires everyone and hires cronies who ruin it all.

 

[wingsandsword]

Dumbass still doesn't know how market cap works.

That's because he doesn't know much about really anything.

Despite all his bluster, he is not an inventor or engineer. He's not a rocket scientist or electrical engineer.

He's an investor who got really lucky. He inherited a fortune from his father, who operated an emerald mine during apartheid-era South Africa, a mine staffed with unfree labor. He fled South Africa for Canada when he came of age, to avoid conscription into the SA Army (and could go to Canada because his mother was Canadian and thus he had birthright Canadian citizenship).

He bought his way into the US with an investor visa after being in Canada. He took the fortune he got from his father and got really lucky on some venture capital investments, like PayPal.

He didn't get his money by being a skilled businessman, or an inventor or scientist. He got to be the richest man in the world by inheriting a fortune earned through slave labor, and raw dumb luck in some venture capital investments after fleeing the draft in his home country.

Expecting him to know how a market cap works would be like expecting him to know how electric car design works. . .and the engineers who designed the Cybertruck already indicated he knows absolutely nothing about the field (but absolutely will overrule the actual engineers on design issues because he's sure he knows better than he does).

He's rich in spite of himself, not because of skill.

 

[OptionalRule]

We can look at Elon's history and know exactly what would happen. It's not good.

Like what? Without resorting to histrionic memery, What company in his history is an example of not good? At least, in comparison to every other company? He's not the world richest man by accident. he didn't stumble into it. You could easily make a very strong case that he's an unethical man-child, but what series of company failures point to evidence of you're "not good" dataset?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Nobody stays: Musk fires everyone and hires cronies who ruin it all.

I still think Rosewater stays, even at Twitter he didn't fire everyone, he kept like a third of the company.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

It does seem his sexist views lessoned over time.

 

[Future_Monkey]

Like what? Without resorting to histrionic memery, What company in his history is an example of not good? At least, in comparison to every other company? He's not the world richest man by accident. he didn't stumble into it. You could easily make a very strong case that he's an unethical man-child, but what series of company failures point to evidence of you're "not good" dataset?

Twitter is haemorrhaging users, after years of haemorrhaging advertisers.