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Hasbro selling D&D IP?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9255144" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Sure, but historically it's been a bit more complex.</p><p></p><p>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, <em>for videogames</em> (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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>This is what I'm talking about re: Hasbro's poor decision-making re: D&D's videogame rights.</p><p></p><p>What I'm hoping is that they do not <em>sell</em> the videogame rights again, but merely <em>licence</em> 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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9255144, member: 18"] 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, [I]for videogames[/I] (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 [I]sell[/I] the videogame rights again, but merely [I]licence[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]
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