WotC WotC Makes Over $1B In 2021!

According to ICv2, D&D publisher WotC made over $1 billion in total sales in 2021, including $952M in tabletop games.

WotC is the first (and only) billion dollar publisher in tabletop RPGs, although much of this revenue will also be due to Magic the Gathering. It is responsible for a staggering 72% of Hasbro's total operating profit.

Interim CEO Rich Stoddart indicated that tabletop games grew 44% and accounted for 74% of the $1.3B sales for WotC in 2021. The division at Hasbro is 'Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming', so the remained came from the Digital Gaming side of things.

WotC Sold Over $950 Million in Tabletop Games in 2021

As Company Revenues Passed $1 Billion for the First Time

icv2.com

WotC - WotC Has A New President

With outgoing president Chris Cocks being promoted to the top job at Hasbro, WotC has a chief -- Microsoft's Cynthia Williams! Williams is joined by Tim Fields as Senior Vice President. Over at Microsoft, Williams was General Manager and Vice President, Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team and was...

www.enworld.org

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Also, my cats can sit in a cardboard box, and cannot sit in an NFT:

Merely owning said cardboard, however, is only slightly more fiscally prudent than purchasing NFTs.

The World of Darkness was absolutely infused with the late 80s/early 90s culture. I remember picking up the new edition and seeing that it didn't have (or drastically reduced) all the quotes that used to be sprayed like graffiti all across it. The game just didn't feel the same without all that. And the farther we got from the 90s, the more dated it started to feel.

I'd also add that the numerous controversies didn't help their case, either.

Personally I think that the decline of the WoD has more to do with its rise in the first place. The World of Darkness was a VERY late-80s/early 90s setting and making the transition into the 21st century was hard for it. As the vampires in pop culture shifted from "Interview with the Vampire" to "Twilight" the setting became more and more of a relic even as stories about vampires and other supernatural creatures became more and more popular. And White Wolf couldn't make that transition even with their reboot (in fact IMO their reboot took them FARTHER away from what was popular in the "supernatural romance" genre of the time as "Requiem" was more action/adventure in a lot of ways than "Masquerade" was). They had other game lines, but Vampire was their meat-and-potatoes.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Also, I shouldn't single out the creatives just because they're the most sexy. They should ALL be making more money.

Ed Greenwood works in a freaking Library, while WotC is about to turn the Forgotten Realms into a billion dollar MCU/DCU/Transformers kind of multiversal TV/Movie Franchise. So start with Ed, toss him a million dollars.

 

[Malmuria]

WotC is certainly failing at going broke.

And I was told that removing racial asi was going to fracture the fan base and lead to the decline of the game!

 

[OblivionDrive]

WotC is certainly failing at going broke.

Don’t tell the internet that! I heard from very well informed (read: loudly obnoxious) sources that WotC was on the brink of ruin and nuTSR v. 4 was going to buy them out and make everyone go back to Elf and Dwarf being a class!

 

[schneeland]

So many worshippers of Satan out there

I find the degree to which D&D dominates the market now a bit unhealthy, but clearly a lot of people are into the current edition and get exposed to RPGs as a concept, so hopefully enough fuel for other RPG companies to also keep going.

 

[Jer]

The World of Darkness was absolutely infused with the late 80s/early 90s culture. I remember picking up the new edition and seeing that it didn't have (or drastically reduced) all the quotes that used to be sprayed like graffiti all across it. The game just didn't feel the same without all that. And the farther we got from the 90s, the more dated it started to feel.

Yeah. White Wolf had a hard task - they needed to update the game to a new decade but also try to keep everyone who enjoyed the original game and didn't want to see it change. They thought they could balance that out by having a hard reboot and actual endings to the metaplots that they'd built up but it just became a jumping off point instead.

It's been interesting to watch Vampire 5e roll out and seeing that a lot of the folks involved didn't really understand why the original game fell off in the first place (combined of course with additional controversies that I'll charitiably say might have arisen from older folks not understanding the current youth culture...)

I'd also add that the numerous controversies didn't help their case, either.

Yeah there's those. And in a lot of ways White Wolf was a lot like TSR - successful despite itself for a long time until it suddenly wasn't.

 

[Scribe]

And I was told that removing racial asi was going to fracture the fan base and lead to the decline of the game!

2 years of uncertainty (to say the least) and 'retail therapy' and an ability to order anything from Amazon to get our 'fix' as a society have done wonders for Wizards bottom line without a doubt.

 

[Zardnaar]

And I was told that removing racial asi was going to fracture the fan base and lead to the decline of the game!

1. Those changes haven't been done yet.
2. It's in a splat book.

Remember Book of 9 Swords was "well recieved" but failed hard incorporated in a new edition.

I'm more proof is in the pudding. 6E will be that pudding and yeah no one can reliably predict that.

White Wolf and 4E are example of change can be bad but there's counter examples.

I would also see how the movies and shows go.

 

[darjr]

1. Those changes haven't been done yet.
2. It's in a splat book.

Remember Book of 9 Swords was "well recieved" but failed hard incorporated in a new edition.

I'm more proof is in the pudding. 6E will be that pudding and yeah no one can reliably predict that.

White Wolf and 4E are example of change can be bad but there's counter examples.

I would also see how the movies and shows go.

OK. Let’s see.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

And yet my Hasbro stock is down today. Maybe they need to shed that moldy old toy business.