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.

 

[trappedslider]

Spider-Man, which is supposed to be the first full MtG/Marvel crossover set. And calling it "first" of course implies that there will be more to come – I'm guessing at least one each for Avengers and Mutants, and maybe getting cosmic/space as well and maybe Fantastic Four.

They did a limited Secret Lair release only recently of five 5-6 card sets with one Marvel hero each (Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Wolverine, and Storm) alongside four old cards with new art and occasionally a new name (changing "Manamorphosis" to "Ororo Borealis" for the Storm cards was inspired) plus sometimes a token the hero makes use of.

Yeah, MTG has been cross overs for the past few years (TWD, Stranger things, Final fantasy, D&D, Assassin's creed etc), however I'm guessing that the person I quoted wasn't aware of that.

 

[Staffan]

He took the fortune he got from his father and got really lucky on some venture capital investments, like PayPal.

He didn't even really invest in Paypal either. He co-founded X.com, which was originally a competitor of PayPal's. PayPal's owner Confinity bought X.com (as you do with startup competitors) and merged the companies. Musk then scored big when PayPal was bought by eBay.

 

[Future_Monkey]

He didn't even really invest in Paypal either. He co-founded X.com, which was originally a competitor of PayPal's. PayPal's owner Confinity bought X.com (as you do with startup competitors) and merged the companies. Musk then scored big when PayPal was bought by eBay.

Describing how he got lucky in a different kind of way than the one originally described is not as strong a point as you perhaps meant it to be.

EDIT: No wait, you were saying the opposite of what I thought, I just can't read...

 

[Zardnaar]

Burying your head in the sand and pretending they don't exist doesn't make them go away.

I just laughed and ignored him when he 'joked' about buying Twitter. Now here we are a year later, and Xitter has been transformed into a far-right cesspit where sexist, racist, and anti LGBT content thrives.

1. You can't do anything about it.

2. Drawing attention to it is what they wat.

3. Even worse engaging with them fuels them.

If you ignore it they're just an echo chamber playing with themselves. It would be about as relevant as the old Stormfront or whatever

 

[Zardnaar]

This is assuming that Musk makes a successful Perception check and checks out the forums on EN World to notice the threads that are talking about him.

It's on reddit, youtube etc.

 

[mamba]

None, their is a big difference between people loudly complaining here and the actual market, during the OGL scandal D^D Beyond kept growing and barely even felt the boycott.

and yet Free League and Paizo sold out of a year’s worth of stock in a month or so

 

[Clint_L]

None, their is a big difference between people loudly complaining here and the actual market, during the OGL scandal D^D Beyond kept growing and barely even felt the boycott.

I can guarantee you that there is a huge difference between the OGL fiasco and Elon Musk, one of the richest, most famous, and most controversial people in the world, purchasing Hasbro.

My students, who mostly didn't know or care about the OGL, would damn sure have OPINIONS about Elon Musk and D&D. Overwhelmingly negative opinions; he is an extremely unpopular figure with the youth demographic. Which is also D&D's player base.

And from a personal level, I would not give a cent to a corporation owned by Elon Musk. And "D&D/Roleplaying Games Club" would become "Roleplaying Games Club" and probably focus on Pathfinder.

I suspect that Paizo does very well in this scenario. Or maybe we'd do Daggerheart. I sure wouldn't have anything to do with a Musk-owned D&D.

 

[mamba]

That is, of course, assuming Musk would not survive to remove D&D from the CC and then go after 3pp that tried to use those rules. Musk has infinite money to wage lawfare that I don't know if Paizo or KP could afford to fight.

it won’t be KP and Paizo only if he goes after CC…

 

[M_Natas]

1. You can't do anyth8ng about it.

Not so fast - let's go back to my idea to buy hasbro.
I will open a go fund me and if every D&D fan gives their yearly d&d spending into the go fund me (roughly 500$ each if we have 10 million fans) I could get the 5 billion dollars needed to buy a majority of hasbro shares and stop any takeover from happening (or at least In would make it very expensive).

2. Drawing attention to it I'd what they wat.

3. Even worse engaging with them fuels them.

If you ignore it they're just an echo chamber playing with themselves. It would be about as relevant as the old Stormfront or whatever

 

[mamba]

Cocks said it several times in investor calls, and the numbers of users for Beyond seem to have kept climbing.

users <> subscribers

The Creatice Commons release seems to have taken the wind out of any boycott sails longterm.

yes, once it got into CC