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.