There's a bigger picture here, IMHO...
Sure, WOTC/HASBRO is a corporation and has to bladdy, blah blah. Look, the reason they lay off people is apparent: they want more money. Is it good business to make more money? Yes, no question. Is their decision going to make them more money? In the very short term, yes. But for who and at what cost?
The who: the top brass. Stockholders won't see more than a couple of cents per share. The result: less profit a year from now resulting in more layoffs and eventually the dissolution/sell off of a crippled company. This is not a guess. This is three years of history repeating itself over and over. The definition of insanity is 'doing something over and over again and expecting a different result each time.' Insanity is not good business.
Is keeping people on who don't produce good business? No. But why fire them and produce nothing when you can encourage them to create something new? Magic isn't an age old property, it was created when RPG's were on the downturn. Why can't these world class game designers be utilized to do something like that? Just because Skip and others have done D&D for the majority of their careers doesn't mean they're incapable of any other game design. And isn't HASBRO a company that sells 'games?' Interesting board games are very popular, and the only reason the company is losing money on them is the fact that they refuse to sell anything new, prefering to 're-envision' old concepts to death. As asked before, how many different Monopoly sets do you need? Again, repetition = insanity = bad business.
And let's look at the big picture. Laying off hundreds, and in some companies cases, thousands of employees creates a downturn in spending which prolongs recession, which creates layoffs, which creates a downturn in spending, which prolongs recession, which...
The point? The business cycle goes up and down naturally. The current business practices of major corporations throw it all out of whack. While the fed reduces interest rates to compensate for a recession, major corporations are making it worse by laying off almost everyone who actually does any work and keeping executive dead weight. All the corporations in question need to do is make a little less profit for one year by resisting massive, needless layoffs, and they can speed up economic recovery leading to more profit in the future. It's called balancing out the business cycle. But no, it's more important to make everything you can now. The long term is too far away, think quarterly, think short-term. As a result corporations are dominated by short sightedness.
It's a simple equation: people no spend, business no make money. I'm a graphic Designer, out of work for 7 months now. WOTC lays of close to the entirety of their Graphic design department. How less likely am I to get a job now? I'm not spending money on their products anymore because I have no money. Why did WOTC lay off those people? Because they're making less money. Rather circular, don't you think.
I mention all of this here because I can't stand someone feeding me a line of bullsh*t like the steaming pile of manure that is the WOTC press release. Comments like 'We're doing it for long term growth,' piss me off. As already pointed out, and as any one with a lick of common sense knows, that's complete and utter crap. And not even convincing crap. It smacks of 'talkin' to da rubes,' like we're too retarded to know the truth of the matter, to see the real world.
Fact is, these decisions are NOT good business. If they were, then HASBRO wouldn't be in the slump it's been in for the past decade. They bought WOTC to get Pokemon and Magic to improve their diminishing market share, applied the same screwed up business principles to it, and sunk it down with them. Not only are they sinking WOTC, but they, along with a lot of other corporations, are also sinking the US economy as well, in the name of personal profit. That should be the major concern for most of you, who like me, are unable to get a job, especially if we have experience and talent that make us worth more than a poverty line paycheck.
So to all of you that say, 'that's business/the real world, so live with it,' I say you are the ones needing to take the blinders off. It's not about just D&D or WOTC, it's about everything around you that's affected by the economy. An economy being run into the ground in ACTUALITY by greedy, greedy men who would watch an entire nation starve before they gave up a million dollars from their billion dollar accounts. Real men, who we see on the news all the time nowadays. who actually laugh, on camera, at the Senate when being dressed down for their highly unethical business practices. I actually saw the ex-CEO for Worldcom do this as the nation watched, as if he were laughing at all of us. Probably because he knew that he would get a light sentence in some cushy federal pen and get out in a few years with more money than 3 third world nations combined...
Sure, WOTC/HASBRO is a corporation and has to bladdy, blah blah. Look, the reason they lay off people is apparent: they want more money. Is it good business to make more money? Yes, no question. Is their decision going to make them more money? In the very short term, yes. But for who and at what cost?
The who: the top brass. Stockholders won't see more than a couple of cents per share. The result: less profit a year from now resulting in more layoffs and eventually the dissolution/sell off of a crippled company. This is not a guess. This is three years of history repeating itself over and over. The definition of insanity is 'doing something over and over again and expecting a different result each time.' Insanity is not good business.
Is keeping people on who don't produce good business? No. But why fire them and produce nothing when you can encourage them to create something new? Magic isn't an age old property, it was created when RPG's were on the downturn. Why can't these world class game designers be utilized to do something like that? Just because Skip and others have done D&D for the majority of their careers doesn't mean they're incapable of any other game design. And isn't HASBRO a company that sells 'games?' Interesting board games are very popular, and the only reason the company is losing money on them is the fact that they refuse to sell anything new, prefering to 're-envision' old concepts to death. As asked before, how many different Monopoly sets do you need? Again, repetition = insanity = bad business.
And let's look at the big picture. Laying off hundreds, and in some companies cases, thousands of employees creates a downturn in spending which prolongs recession, which creates layoffs, which creates a downturn in spending, which prolongs recession, which...
The point? The business cycle goes up and down naturally. The current business practices of major corporations throw it all out of whack. While the fed reduces interest rates to compensate for a recession, major corporations are making it worse by laying off almost everyone who actually does any work and keeping executive dead weight. All the corporations in question need to do is make a little less profit for one year by resisting massive, needless layoffs, and they can speed up economic recovery leading to more profit in the future. It's called balancing out the business cycle. But no, it's more important to make everything you can now. The long term is too far away, think quarterly, think short-term. As a result corporations are dominated by short sightedness.
It's a simple equation: people no spend, business no make money. I'm a graphic Designer, out of work for 7 months now. WOTC lays of close to the entirety of their Graphic design department. How less likely am I to get a job now? I'm not spending money on their products anymore because I have no money. Why did WOTC lay off those people? Because they're making less money. Rather circular, don't you think.
I mention all of this here because I can't stand someone feeding me a line of bullsh*t like the steaming pile of manure that is the WOTC press release. Comments like 'We're doing it for long term growth,' piss me off. As already pointed out, and as any one with a lick of common sense knows, that's complete and utter crap. And not even convincing crap. It smacks of 'talkin' to da rubes,' like we're too retarded to know the truth of the matter, to see the real world.
Fact is, these decisions are NOT good business. If they were, then HASBRO wouldn't be in the slump it's been in for the past decade. They bought WOTC to get Pokemon and Magic to improve their diminishing market share, applied the same screwed up business principles to it, and sunk it down with them. Not only are they sinking WOTC, but they, along with a lot of other corporations, are also sinking the US economy as well, in the name of personal profit. That should be the major concern for most of you, who like me, are unable to get a job, especially if we have experience and talent that make us worth more than a poverty line paycheck.
So to all of you that say, 'that's business/the real world, so live with it,' I say you are the ones needing to take the blinders off. It's not about just D&D or WOTC, it's about everything around you that's affected by the economy. An economy being run into the ground in ACTUALITY by greedy, greedy men who would watch an entire nation starve before they gave up a million dollars from their billion dollar accounts. Real men, who we see on the news all the time nowadays. who actually laugh, on camera, at the Senate when being dressed down for their highly unethical business practices. I actually saw the ex-CEO for Worldcom do this as the nation watched, as if he were laughing at all of us. Probably because he knew that he would get a light sentence in some cushy federal pen and get out in a few years with more money than 3 third world nations combined...
I doubt it. Look up the statistics. The number of people on the net that actually go out and buy a product is relatively small. It factors very little into a company's overall sales.
We all know the saying about opinions on the internet after all... 
