D&D 5E Price Increase on D&D & MtG coming

[Charlaquin]

Not in line with inflation though. Costs of games development bhave massively balloned last 20 years. Cost to consumer at retail hasn't.

And yet the executives at the tops of the companies make salaries in the millions and regularly give themselves millions in bonuses, while underpaying, abusing, and regularly laying off the people who actually make the games.

The difference? What I said. Some things are resistant to inflation.

I’m not convinced inflation is relevant to the discussion when it has neither negatively impacted the company’s profits nor positively impacted it’s laborers’ wages.

 

[Zardnaar]

And yet the executives at the tops of the companies make salaries in the millions or and regularly give themselves millions in bonuses, while underpaying, abusing, and regularly laying off the people who actually make the games.

I’m not convinced inflation is relevant to the discussion when it has neither negatively impacted the company’s profits nor positively impacted it’s laborers’ wages.

Some things are a lot cheaper now than in the 90's. Electronics and games.

A tinny of pot here is same price as it was in 1996.

A few 90's things I own still has price tags. PHB was a weeks rent for a room in a shared house.

D&D is inflation resistant. It's not immune to it but 5E hasn't gone up in price really since 2014.

 

[ECMO3]

They'll raise the price of PDFs to too, because reasons

Shipping electrons is more expensive now too.

 

[Charlaquin]

Some things are a lot cheaper now than in the 90's. Electronics and games.

A tinny of pot here is same price as it was in 1996.

Good!

A few 90's things I own still has price tags. PHB was a weeks rent for a room in a shared house.

That your individual income and/or cost of living has changed doesn’t matter. In my country, minimum wage hasn’t increased to keep up with the rising cost of living, so why should the prices of goods?

D&D is inflation resistant. It's not immune to it but 5E hasn't gone up in price really since 2014.

And they don’t need to now. The company is making more money than ever at the current prices. If the increase was needed so they could pay their workers more, that would be compelling, but increasing to cover operating costs they could easily pay without putting a dent in executives’ salaries? Cry me a river.

 

[ECMO3]

Also... didn't this come hot on the heels of WotC announcing increased profits for the first two quarters?

I believe that was for D&D specifically which really makes me question this whole "shipping costs" thing.

IT sounds to me like they see an opportunity for more profit considering the market so they are taking advantage of it.

 

[Mistwell]

I have some questions, unsure if you can share more (or if they're invasive).

What is causing the price increases? Is it related to the pandemic or other issues? Are these price increases expected to become the norm or will there be decreases?

I can't speak for someone else but I can say that with my company's imports, it was pandemic related. Nothing was going out of the China port during part of one of the lock downs, and then nobody was ordering for a while due to lockdowns, and then all of a sudden everyone ordered and all the ships had to go.

Everything got clogged up. Orders were backlogged, ports were clogged, and it still hasn't caught up. The port of Los Angeles, for example, had ships waiting in a line miles long. The stevedores just couldn't keep up with the work even at 24 hours a day, the dock warehouses couldn't store enough, the trucks and trains loading from the warehouses were log jammed, the entire system slowed to a crawl.

In theory everything should eventually catch up. But we're experiencing ongoing delays, and also some parts are simply unavailable and have been all year. Some fairly ordinary aerosol canisters we use are on 7 month back order right now, for example, but I had to order some at quadruple the normal price to keep functioning. Some essential parts ran out, which caused some other combined parts to run out, which causes a cascade effect up and down the line of a whole series of products.

It has been a mess. And I've had to raise my prices, because the prices I've had to pay for everything has gone up. Which makes my customers grumpy despite us trying to absorb as much of the price increases we're experiencing ourselves.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, if the prices increased so the laborers could get paid more, that’s an increase I could get behind.

I mean, thst would require price increases. Artificially resisting inflation is part of what causes wage stagnation.

 

[Parmandur]

I don’t care what the abstract value of the currency is, it doesn’t actually “cost less” if I’m not getting paid more.

I don’t care that it is business, I don’t think it ought to be.

I mean, I'm open to a gold or silver standard argument, but what I'm talking about is the opposite of being abstract: in concrete terms, PS3 games cost over $80. The abstraction is the number that said "$60." Because a dollar 15 years ago is concretely ~$1.30 now, whether wages stagnate or not.

 

[Parmandur]

In my country, minimum wage hasn’t increased to keep up with the rising cost of living, so why should the prices of goods?

Those are linked: companies resist inflation by not raising wages.

 

[Charlaquin]

I mean, thst would require price increases.

Right, which as I said, I would be more accepting of.

Artificially resisting inflation is part of what causes wage stagnation.

So point to resisting inflation to justify static wages and point to keeping up with inflation to justify increasing prices? How convenient for the capitol-owning class.