WotC Hasbro selling D&D IP?

[Morrus]

That's very clear that they're not selling the IP/D&D as a whole, though it doesn't seem to rule out selling the videogame rights, something Hasbro have done before.

Licensing, not selling. If they'd sold them, they wouldn't have them any more. Words are important!

 

[Morrus]

I wasn't going to, as I try to hold off on clickbait rumours, but I guess I have to write an article.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/no-hasbro-is-not-selling-d-d.702378/

 

[Waller]

Actually, I have spoken with "topo D&D people" hundreds of times over the years. That being said, even I am in a bit of shock about this. But I have worked with Tencent in the past, and I know this industry pretty well. The whole reason I put out my initial video is that I found this possibility very real and something that would make sense for a lot of parties. Stranger things have been known to happen.

I will be talking about this more today LIVE at 3pm EDT!

Is Hasbro Selling D&D?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Licensing, not selling. If they'd sold them, they wouldn't have them any more. Words are important!

Sure, but historically it's been a bit more complex.

Specifically Hasbro have SOLD and I do mean SOLD the videogame rights to literally all their major IPs before. They did so in 2000, when the sold Hasbro Digital and Games.com to Infogrames, and part of the deal was the rights to produce videogames based on Hasbro's major game IPs. Infogrames became the owner, and ultimate licensor of D&D, Monopoly, and so on, for videogames (not for anything else). This was because Hasbro were complete numpties who couldn't see past Games.com making less money than they hoped and I guess couldn't imagine the coming century at all. They sold all this for the even-in-2000 rather pathetic figure of $50m.

Now, in 2005, Hasbro had realized their mistake, and they were very fortunate they'd sold the rights to Infogrames, who were basically incompetent, so hadn't made as much money with the rights as they hoped. Thus Hasbro were able to negotiate a deal to regain OWNERSHIP of the videogame rights to D&D, Monopoly, etc. and they were transferred back to Hasbro (so they became the ultimate licensor). However, the terms of this deal don't seem to have been great for Hasbro - they paid $65m outright (more than they'd been given for the rights originally) and on top of that, gave Infogrames the licence to make products based on all those properties, and to indeed as it were, sub-licence them out to others.

And the dreadful mistake Hasbro made there was that they gave Infogrames the D&D licence until at least 2015, with potentially 5 more years based on performance. And Infogrames sold their rights to this licence to Atari for $230m in 2008.

Now we will note that in 2015, neither Atari nor Infogrames clearly did not still have this licence! So what happened? Hasbro did some kind of lawsuit I'm having difficulty finding the details of, but it resolved in 2010 or 2011, and the licence then came back to WotC. My guess - and this is a pure guess - is that they were able to find fault with the sub-licencing to Atari by Infogrames. I can't even find out if the case was finally decided in court or settled out of it. It's pity because I last looked into this in about 2015, and it was vastly easier to find sources about this online back then. I'm sure someone somewhere has the full details, but Google is a shadow of its former self.

This is what I'm talking about re: Hasbro's poor decision-making re: D&D's videogame rights.

What I'm hoping is that they do not sell the videogame rights again, but merely licence them out for a limited period. I do suspect if someone other than Hasbro/WotC had a licence that they could sub-licence out to others, we'd get more and better D&D videogames than Hasbro/WotC have managed. Maybe even Tencent would be fine for that.

 

[SteveC]

What I'm hoping is that they do not sell the videogame rights again, but merely licence them out for a limited period. I do suspect if someone other than Hasbro/WotC had a licence that they could sub-licence out to others, we'd get more and better D&D videogames than Hasbro/WotC have managed. Maybe even Tencent would be fine for that.

This would make a lot of sense. Licensing is one thing, selling ... shudder ... you reminded me of Infogrames which I hadn't thought of in a long time. That was a horrible time. And licensing to someone who can make decent products. People want D&D video games and it seems sometimes they don't seem to care if they're any good. As someone who doesn't have a lot of time to play games anymore, I want good games.

 

[MGibster]

The same thing was said back in the 70's when it came out, it won't be as popular as it is now, meaning the 70's, and a lot of people didn't see it being as successful as the tabletop war games going on at the time. It got popular and took off. I believe they have said that about every edition that has come out to some degree.

And as the popularity of D&D has ebbed and flowed over the years such predictions aren't entirely wrong. If the popuarity of D&D had been static then we probably wouldn't have seen all those news stories about how popular the game is again. I'm not arguing that HASBRO plans on selling D&D any time soon or that the game will collapse in on itself. But I do not believe the recent popularity of the game will last.

What we have to remember is that its not just about profit its about exponential profit every quarter and the is hard to do with DnD. 4E didn't fail it simply didn't succeed to their projections as they thought they could somehow experience the same profit from it as Magic. They don't understand what this product is and don't care about long term growth. Hasbro laid off 10% of its workforce this year.

Hasbro bought WotC way back in 1999 and other than 4th edition they seem to do a pretty good job with D&D. Hasbro laid off so many people for reasons that had nothing to do with D&D.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Hasbro bought WotC way back in 1999 and other than 4th edition they seem to do a pretty good job with D&D. Hasbro laid off so many people for reasons that had nothing to do with D&D.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but I feel like you're removing a lot of nuance and detail re: Hasbro and WotC's relationship to simplify it to a "pretty good job", and I don't think that's really right. Benign neglect is not "a pretty good job".

Hasbro, when the bought WotC, don't seem to have considered D&D a particularly valuable IP/product, certainly absolutely paling next to the juggernaut which was 1999 Magic The Gathering.

It's notable that Hasbro sold off the digital rights to most of their major IPs with the deal I discussed in 2000, it DID NOT include the Magic The Gathering digital rights. Clearly Hasbro saw those as significantly more valuable than the D&D IP (they licenced them separately but retained ownership).

With most of 3.XE, I think D&D basically got the benign neglect treatment from Hasbro. It made okay money and Hasbro didn't want to get in and micromanage it. But by 2007, that had changed. Specifically Hasbro had a demand to WotC that, unless D&D made $50m per year (which it was nowhere near doing), they were going to either mothball or sell off the IP. 4E and the DDI were the specific response to that. They were WotC's plan to make D&D able to to make $50m/year. They were directly caused by Hasbro's threat. A series of disasters unfolded. Most of them not connected to 4E's rules, but rather insane decisions like the unintentionally Simpsons-bit-esque marketing campaign, getting rid of the OGL in favour of a much worse licence, getting a tiny in-house team to work on the DDI and then having the bad luck to have the team leader be a murderer, and so on. All of this combined to prevent 4E from being really successful with the DDI, and also prevented it from making $50/year. Hasbro didn't act on their threat - presumably ideas had changed - and WotC employees managed to convince Hasbro that they could make a quietly profitable success out of D&D with a new edition and a very limited approach to putting out product. That's what lead to 5E - Hasbro had essentially once more entered the "benign neglect" approach to D&D - they didn't expect it to do much more than turn an okay profit and keep the IP relevant. Of course, 5E went insanely huge, again not so much to do with the rules (though accessibility definitely helped!), but to do with complex cultural factors and third parties like Critical Role. And once more, Hasbro wants D&D to make them big money. Thus they've essentially gone back to the DDI project, which was always intended to be a 3D VTT which you subscribed to, and based on 2023 information from Cynthia Williams, have a very large team working on that (a big change from the tiny team of the original DDI), several times larger than the one employed on D&D itself (or even MtG, I think, though god knows how many artists contract for MtG). Again we have bigger expectations from Hasbro about D&D's success - luckily these seem to be focused more on the 3D VTT this time, so if that's a flop, Hasbro may simply return to benign neglect.

But again, let's not confuse benign neglect and "a pretty good job". I think a "pretty good job" with D&D would have involved handling it and particularly the digital rights a lot better over the last 25 years. I think a different, more proactive approach could have got a lot D&D decent D&D-IP videogames made, got more D&D-associated TV and movies made, and generally marketed the D&D as a product better. Hell, I don't think 4E's failure was a foregone conclusion. Better marketing, not trying to kill the OGL, and just investing more in the DDI could have made it much more successful (I suspect 5E would still have happened, and at around the same time, and with many of the same ideas about simplification, liking making Feats optional and class progressions largely fixed, but with more 4E-style combat rules).

 

[mamba]

I do not believe the recent popularity of the game will last.

is there a timeframe attached to this, otherwise that just is an obvious truism

 

[MGibster]

Hasbro, when the bought WotC, don't seem to have considered D&D a particularly valuable IP/product, certainly absolutely paling next to the juggernaut which was 1999 Magic The Gathering.

In 1999, I think everyone understood Hasbro purchased WotC because of Magic the Gathering. I'm pretty sure when WotC purchased TSR it wasn't because they saw D&D as a valuable product but rather their nostalgic love of the game. i.e. AD&D was just a sideline to their main business of producing MtG.

But again, let's not confuse benign neglect and "a pretty good job". I think a "pretty good job" with D&D would have involved handling it and particularly the digital rights a lot better over the last 25 years. I think a different, more proactive approach could have got a lot D&D decent D&D-IP videogames made, got more D&D-associated TV and movies made, and generally marketed the D&D as a product better.

Movies are expensive and I don't remember anyone saying good things about the first D&D motion picture. While I enjoyed Honor Among Thieves, apparently even that movie wasn't all that successful depending on sources. Gygax tried to to break into Hollywood in the 80s and met with limited success. We got the D&D cartoon out of it I guess. I don't know if Hasbro would have been better served pouring resources into trying to make D&D successful on television and movies. They tried it with GI Joe and met with limited success.

 

[MGibster]

Hell, I don't think 4E's failure was a foregone conclusion. Better marketing, not trying to kill the OGL, and just investing more in the DDI could have made it much more successful (I suspect 5E would still have happened, and at around the same time, and with many of the same ideas about simplification, liking making Feats optional and class progressions largely fixed, but with more 4E-style combat rules).

I don't think it was a forgone conclusion either. But ultimately it was a bad product that was rejected by a significant portion of WotC's customers.