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

 

[Mannahnin]

By tying the game to a distinct aesthetic they put an expiration date on their product without every realizing it. Granted, they had a good long run throughout the nineties.

I can't honestly say what a successful reboot would look like for the World of Darkness. Maybe they would've been better off leaning hard into nostalgia and setting it in an eternal 90s.

(Perhaps not) coincidentally, one of my old friends who I used to play Vampire with in the 90s is starting a new game... set primarily in the 90s.

 

[Dire Bare]

How much did they give to Critical Role?

Critical Role has, well, played a role in the surge of popularity D&D has enjoyed over the past few years. But that goes both ways. Critical Role's success is due, in part, of their use of D&D 5E. They get lots of traffic directed their way from WotC and from Fandom (D&D Beyond). Not to mention the Wildemount campaign book published be WotC. It's a mutually beneficial partnership.

So, does WotC "owe" Critical Role some of that billion? Nah. It's all good as it is.

 

[HammerMan]

(Perhaps not) coincidentally, one of my old friends who I used to play Vampire with in the 90s is starting a new game... set primarily in the 90s.

yeah if I was going to play Vampire again I would set it in the 80s or 90s. Mage or Werewolf I could run more modern though. In fact fluff and mechanic I think that Mage the ascension aged best of all of them (we are again playing with VR and the 'metaverse').

 

[Jer]

yeah if I was going to play Vampire again I would set it in the 80s or 90s. Mage or Werewolf I could run more modern though. In fact fluff and mechanic I think that Mage the ascension aged best of all of them (we are again playing with VR and the 'metaverse').

I thought that, and then I broke out the 20th anniversary edition of Mage that Onyx Path put out (I got it from free on DriveThru a few years back but it's been sitting mostly unread until recently).

The first half of the book or so is great! They did a great job updating the vision to the early 2010s (which is when it came out). I was very excited by all of it - and then I got to the Traditions and ooof. They tried and they did their best but they've aged poorly. The Technocracy comes out mostly okay but the Trads just... don't IMO.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Not blasting us with a firehose of product (as happened from 2e-4e) has been on the whole a positive thing for the game. Not only is 5e not suffering from bloat eight years since inception, I think each product shines the brighter in an uncrowded field. For example, I just read Hammerfast, a 30-page 4e setting book. It's actually really, really good, but I never knew it even existed until recently, because it was just one more name on a release schedule.

It's also created plenty of room for homebrew and third party products. Part of the megaglut of 3e was that for practically every product, you had your choice of official and multiple third party products. I could name half a dozen books released about dwarves, all full of different feats, prestige classes, subraces, magic items, equipment, spells, and fluff.

What I like the most about this news is the fact that lots of money is being made but WotC isn't flooding the market with crap product like a backed up toilet. Living through the heyday of 2e and 3e I saw the D&D world inundated with crap. This is not to say there weren't gems, and I could spend I hours talking about the gems. However, it was a lot of wasted effort that amounted to a decrease in overall quality while overwhelming the market with bad choices. New players would find themselves buying things that were fundamentally useless, and DMs weren't onboard with allowing every splat book in their campaigns. So I'm looking at all of this not as an investor but as a long time player and DM. Even the products that weren't great (Rime of the Frostmaiden *cough *cough) still have a lot of potential for homebrew, and definitely worth stealing. Together with the high profit tells me that things are going steady and stronk for D&D, and I like to hear it.

If TSR didn't get the internet back then, they really wouldn't have understood YouTube... Heck, companies today haven't all figured it out yet!

Also no law suits. I didn't say CR did anything warranting a lawsuit but I'm sure the original litigious TSR would have killed that golden goose under some sort of C&D non-sense.

I think that's the only way I'd want to go if I ever ran a WoD game again.

(Perhaps not) coincidentally, one of my old friends who I used to play Vampire with in the 90s is starting a new game... set primarily in the 90s.

 

[Von Ether]

You don't want to know how many insurance companies still do. Most medical record software can do a release of information in PDF form (and, jeebus, as long as inpatient admission records get with frequent vitals, notes, and access logs, you NEED it in non-paper form) yet insurance companies STILL routinely have medical records faxed to them.

It's half a dozen and six of another. There are insurance companies that would love to go full on email, but there are facilities refusing to use email and I know of one hospital that will only take a medical information consent letter by post or by HAND. No email, no fax.

 

[Kurotowa]

That is WAY more than I thought they had. I though 100-150...

That might be the size of the D&D wing, once you put together game devs and artists and marketers and all the rest. Though even then that might be lowballing it. Staffing adds up quickly once you're counting everyone instead of just core dev teams. But remember that WotC is also Magic: the Gathering, and M:tG is huge. A solid majority that headcount is going to be on the Magic side of things.

 

[Malmuria]

(Perhaps not) coincidentally, one of my old friends who I used to play Vampire with in the 90s is starting a new game... set primarily in the 90s.

Yeah White Wolf should really take advantage of 90s nostalgia. I think it's time.

 

[dave2008]

It's also created plenty of room for homebrew and third party products. Part of the megaglut of 3e was that for practically every product, you had your choice of official and multiple third party products. I could name half a dozen books released about dwarves, all full of different feats, prestige classes, subraces, magic items, equipment, spells, and fluff.

Yep, I think that is where this edition really shines.

 

[Scribe]

Yeah White Wolf should really take advantage of 90s nostalgia. I think it's time.

Absolutely it is.

 

[Von Ether]

Yep, I think that is where this edition really shines.

I am pretty sure that hindsight being 20/20 the old WotC would have invented the DMs Guild first and maybe never done the OGL. Then slow roll out books since they didn't feel the need to complete with the d20 glut. At that point, their competitor would have been OBS instead.

Then again, I do admit the technology would have been more of hurdle then, but at least it wouldn't be the gamble that Gleemax was.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

$1B hobby games for 1 company. Wonder how much the rest of the hobby games market makes up?

 

[Scott Christian]

checking here: link
it does appear that for the 2021 fiscal year, The "WoTC and Digital Gaming" segment made operating profits of 547M as compared to total company profit of 763M, which is about 72%.

But, there's no breakdown of MTG versus other WoTC product lines, nor is there a breakout of WoTC versus whatever else is lumped into "Digital Gaming". I imagine it's reasonable to conclude that MTG is a profitable line, but certainly not all 72% on its own.

Thank you for the clarification.

 

[Scott Christian]

yes I was useing round numbers and pulling them from my but

edit: lets say they have 10,000... lets say that 1 billion split 10,000 ways that is 100,000 per person... some WotC employees make half that and as much as I understand they have more then 200... I doubt they are close to 10,000.

But WotC only made 250 million in net profits. That, I believe, is prior to paying dividends to shareholders (which comes from Hasbro's net profits). I am not sure what is left after that, but it certainly isn't just dividing a billion dollars up.

 

[AtomicPope]

Not blasting us with a firehose of product (as happened from 2e-4e) has been on the whole a positive thing for the game. Not only is 5e not suffering from bloat eight years since inception, I think each product shines the brighter in an uncrowded field. For example, I just read Hammerfast, a 30-page 4e setting book. It's actually really, really good, but I never knew it even existed until recently, because it was just one more name on a release schedule.

I saw Hammerfast on shelves years ago but never picked it up. I've just read a review and I'm hooked! What a dense product too! Unlike a kitschy super-dungeon, Hammerfast seems more like the mini-campaign world setting you'd find in an AD&D module. Another tragedy of great content lost in the swamp of flooded market.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention *nods

 

[JEB]

Not blasting us with a firehose of product (as happened from 2e-4e) has been on the whole a positive thing for the game. Not only is 5e not suffering from bloat eight years since inception, I think each product shines the brighter in an uncrowded field.

Yeah, I was initially kind of frustrated with the slow production schedule for 5E, but in retrospect it was the right move. In addition to what you said, I suspect it might have also boosted sales of each individual book, since they were no longer competing with one another for attention. Speaking for myself, up until last year, I bought nearly single book they released...

Of course, now they seem to be slowly reversing course, with five releases last year and six going forward, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

 

[JEB]

I am pretty sure that hindsight being 20/20 the old WotC would have invented the DMs Guild first and maybe never done the OGL.

I don't know if Wizards circa 2000 would have done that, but I do wonder how 2022 Wizards is viewing the decision to release 5E under the OGL. Doesn't seem like a move they'd make now, with the brand becoming so much more prominent in the eyes of its parent companies. Fortunately for us, what's done is done.

 

[Morrus]

I don't know if Wizards circa 2000 would have done that, but I do wonder how 2022 Wizards is viewing the decision to release 5E under the OGL. Doesn't seem like a move they'd make now, with the brand becoming so much more prominent in the eyes of its parent companies. Fortunately for us, what's done is done.

I don’t think it matters that much. The 3E ruleset is OGL and most of the terms you’d wish to use (hit points, armor class, most of the monster and spell names, etc) are in there. There might be a few terms unique to 5E but as all the 1e and 2e retroclones have shown, once you have a substantial version of D&D as open gaming content there’s not much barrier to making content for (or even cloning) any version. I suspect that even if 5e hadn’t been released as OGC, you’d still see OGL-based 5E products.

 

[JEB]

I suspect that even if 5e hadn’t been released as OGC, you’d still see OGL-based 5E products.

Unquestionably true. As is, some of the earliest third-party 5E releases - such as Goodman Games' Fifth Edition Fantasy series - were originally relying on the 3E SRD, before anyone knew there would even be a 5E SRD. They just used wording workarounds when needed for 5E-specific terminology like advantage/disadvantage.

However, the 5E SRD obviously makes it much easier to be 5E-compatible, so it's certainly good that we got it!

 

[Jer]

I don't know if Wizards circa 2000 would have done that, but I do wonder how 2022 Wizards is viewing the decision to release 5E under the OGL. Doesn't seem like a move they'd make now, with the brand becoming so much more prominent in the eyes of its parent companies. Fortunately for us, what's done is done.

Wizards ca 2022 has the lessons of Wizards ca 2015 to fall back on. Trying to untangle 4e from the OGL and coming up with a new more restrictive license to release things under was a terrible idea in retrospect (it was a terrible idea IMO even at the time, but it became obvious to even the most blind brand manager in retrospect how bad it was).

The dirty secret of D&D is that the brand matters far more than the rules and the community of players matters more than either of them (and in fact is why the brand is so important). Rules are already of questionable copyrightability in many ways (you can't copyright a rule, you can copyright an expression of a rule, but if I can express that rule with different language there are no copyright issues).

There is no OGL game that is competition for D&D. The only time one has ever managed it is Pathfinder - which basically slid into the D&D area of the ecosystem with both players and publishers largely because IMO of Wizards decision to not OGL 4e and all of the related corporate culture around Wizards at the time that surrounded that really lousy decision (that decision didn't come in a vacuum - you need a culture to make a choice like that - they also pushed 4e out before it was fully baked and that decision was part of the same culture issue).

A shift in culture could lead them to try to make that same kind of dumb decision again. Likely it would backfire on them again. Even with DM's Guild there as an outlet.