WotC Wizards owns SIX video game studios and other business of WotC

[Stormonu]

What's ESG?

I had to look around, apparently it is “Environmental, Social and Goverence” factors that affect consumers outlook on a company. For example, if the company is investing in Green resources/power.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Now down to FOUR studios, and they lost two of the three that were working on D&D projects?

Wizards of the Coast Reportedly Cancels Five Video Game Projects

Wizards of the Coast has reportedly cancelled a number of upcoming video game projects. Bloomberg [...]

comicbook.com

The two Studios mentioned are NOT owned by WotC, WotC still has 6 studios.


Honestly I hope the independent studios sue the crap out of WotC for this, all that cash spent for nothing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Honestly I hope the independent studios sue the crap out of WotC for this, all that cash spent for nothing.

I'm presuming that WotC doing this means WotC had some kind of contract which clearly allowed them to say "nah we done" at any point, and that WotC was funding these projects.

Because otherwise WotC would be asking for a lot of trouble!

Based on contracts I've seen (IANAL etc.) there's often but not always some kind of pay-off associated with ending a contract like this early. It can depend a lot on the relative power of the two parties involved. Hasbro/WotC is actually not that massive so hopefully they weren't able to negotiate a situation when they could just cancel and pay nothing more.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

You're probably on to something (I am a trained, although not practicing economist. That's what one of my degrees is in, anyway. Not that that makes my opinion any more relevant here than yours.) Streaming services are absolutely NOT doing well. If you were paying attention to the news coming out of Netflix and Disney, specifically about the literal billions of dollars lost on Disney+, and the stock price tanking of both companies, you'd recognize that that hasn't been true since the "halcyon" days of the lockdown. The future of the streaming market is very much in doubt. I don't think it'll go away, of course, but I think that the whole industry has to restructure itself somehow, and nobody's figured out the silver bullet that will make it work.

Actually, that's not entirely true. Maybe nobody's figured out how to make it work, but it's no secret why it's NOT working. There's tons of data suggesting that customers don't like the product that the streaming services offer—it's overly corporatized, it's made by committee, it's made by people who don't like the source material that they're adapting and who insult the fans who don't want things adapted in a way that doesn't resemble the source material, and it's ESG friendly, which makes Blackrock and Vanguard happy but makes customers very unhappy. On top of that, there's the attempt to over monetize customers, like Netflix's plan to crack down on password sharing if your kids go away to college, and stuff like that, and people are realizing that they can cut the streaming cord just as easily as they cut the cable cord a few years earlier.

But that's what NOT to do, which all of the streaming services are still doing. What exactly they SHOULD do is still TBD. But for my money, I'd guess that Zazlav and WB-Discovery are probably on their way to getting closer to that than anyone else right now.

Vanguard is no longer in the ESG game and Blackrock has offered it's investors to the option of not having their funds go to ESG funds, greatly reducing the size of the ESG funds accessible now.

Also take into account that a lot of these companies have a lot of debt whose interest rates are much higher, banks aren't pouring virtually free money into the corporate system anymore, which means the debt taken out to finance these streaming shows is that more expensive which means they need to be more success to justify that.

Also another Company that seems to be doing okay last year is Paramount, Top Gun Maverick made way more then they expected, most of their other movies did well except for Babylon, and Streaming side Strange New Worlds was the first live action star trek to be popular with fans in the current era according to rotten tomato audience scores (best first season audience score of any live action Star Trek series except the original series).

Also forgot that Paramount+ made a deal with Walmart to functionally act like Walmart's Amazon Prime Video of sorts (I don't really know enough about Walmart's subscriber plan, just that it sounds like Walmart's version of Amazon Prime).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Also another Company that seems to be doing okay last year is Paramount, Top Gun Maverick made way more then they expected, most of their other movies did well except for Babylon, and Streaming side Strange New Worlds was the first live action star trek to be popular with fans in the current era according to rotten tomato audience scores (best first season audience score of any live action Star Trek series except the original series).

SNW certainly got me to sign up to Paramount+ whilst it was on, something I absolutely would not have done otherwise. It's the best Trek since TNG/DS9, and rather shockingly, already better than the first two seasons of either. I think it's the first Trek show to escape the season 1 curse.

 

[mamba]

Honestly I hope the independent studios sue the crap out of WotC for this, all that cash spent for nothing.

I assume they were paid for their work so far, they just do not continue the work and won't be paid for doing that. Chances are WotC cancelled them according to whatever the contract terms are.

 

[Stormonu]

I assume they were paid for their work so far, they just do not continue the work and won't be paid for doing that. Chances are WotC cancelled them according to whatever the contract terms are.

After the teapot tempest with the Dragonlance authors, I’m not sure there wasn’t some rug yanking going on with these companies.

Still, shutting them down or cancelling is better for them than continue pouring money down the drain or in poorly doing projects.

 

[haakon1]

From today’s Seattle Times:
Renton-based Wizards of the Coast cancels video game projects - The Seattle Times