WotC WotC President Cynthia Williams Resigns

Cynthia Williams, who has been president of Wizards of the Coast for the last two years, will be leaving the company at the end of the month, according to an SEC filing dated April 15th. Hasbro is already looking for somebody to step into the role.

Williams worked for Microsoft on the Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team before joining WotC two years ago, stepping into the role that then-president Chris Cocks vacated when he was promoted to CEO of Hasbro in February 2022.

Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.
On April 15, 2024, Cynthia Williams, President of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming, informed the Company of her resignation from the Company effective April 26, 2024. The Company is conducting a process to identify her successor, looking at both internal and external candidates.

According to Rascal News, WotC responded with a comment: "We’re excited for Cynthia to take the next step in her career and grateful for the contributions she has made in her more than two years at Wizards and Hasbro. We wish her the absolute best in her next endeavor. We have started the search for our next President of Wizards of the Coast and hope to have a successor in place soon."

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

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[Ruin Explorer]

Hopefully the new boss, whomever they are, will actually allow the older edition SRDs to go into Creative Commons.

Much more likely that we see the exact opposite, because most new bosses in corporate environments do not feel remotely bound any of the things their predecessors said they do, and indeed it's very common for them to aggressively strike out in a different direction, to the point of intentionally dumping stuff their predecessor had approved. Sometimes it's even a good idea to do that - though often not.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Re: Cynthia Willam's departure, I always wondered whether she wrote that infamous line:

I guess we'll never know.

I absolutely stone-cold guarantee that the CEO of WotC has never, ever, written a snarky anonymous line in a press release, dude. If you think they have, you are not at all being realistic corporate environments or CEOs.

Lines like that are usually written by butt-hurt upper-middle managers, who had a pet project which they thought was going to get them promoted, by just ended up smashed into a wall. It's the sort of thing that irritable, nasty little people write - the sort of people who rarely become CEOs (Musk being one of the few examples).

So we do know. The idea that any CEO of WotC would write that is laughable fantasy.

At her level, there is no such thing as a 2 week notice. It's been planned for months.

Yeah this needs to stressed. She may have exited, but this won't be sudden to WotC's upper management unless she's going directly into hospital to deal with something extremely severe.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Much more likely that we see the exact opposite, because most new bosses in corporate environments do not feel remotely bound any of the things their predecessors said they do, and indeed it's very common for them to aggressively strike out in a different direction, to the point of intentionally dumping stuff their predecessor had approved. Sometimes it's even a good idea to do that - though often not.

Looking forward to the 2024 core books having art 100% drawn from previously published MTG cards as a cost-cutting measure.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I don't think anyone should be basing decisions on what nuTSR might or might not do or think.

Wise advice, given that nuTSR's decisions appear to be mostly generated randomly from charts drawn up by a hostile DM.

"Let's see, that's an eleven so we go and make a second roll on the 'Make fools of yourselves on social media' sub-chart. And then a fourteen - ooh, 'Put up post full of casual racism' again. That's a time-saver, we can copy-paste some of the older ones and tweak it a bit so it looks like new material. That always workz."

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Looking forward to the 2024 core books having art 100% drawn from previously published MTG cards as a cost-cutting measure.

Nah, Spellfire cards. Gotta work that TSR nostalgia angle.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Looking forward to the 2024 core books having art 100% drawn from previously published MTG cards as a cost-cutting measure.

Argh no!

Luckily we're probably too late for that - most or all of the art for the 2024 books would be done by now, but christ, I do worry about what 2025 will look like.

On a more positive note - maybe this new CEO will kill off what was clearly a project Williams was keen on - the 3D VTT. And it's even possible that's why she's going, because based on the figures she gave (250 employees working on it), it has to be the single greatest capital expenditure at WotC, and it currently has zero return, and has no possibility of making any return any time soon, given it's far from even making beta.

 

[Dire Bare]

It wouldn't take significant staff time. It would barely take any.

I don't know why people keep parroting that line about "we have to carefully review the old SRDs before releasing them into the Creative Commons in order to make sure that there's no accidental release of our IP in them, the way there was in the 5E SRD was released." We know what's in those old SRDs; we've known for decades. Those documents are already 100% Open Game Content; any IP in them would have been noted ages ago and made use of accordingly.

Disagree. They already screwed up releasing the 5E SRD into the Creative Commons, and (wisely) would like to avoid making similar errors again.

The 3E SRD already exists, but might need to be modified before being released into the CC. They might be able to use the 4E SRD as well. But no other editions have such a document. If you are going to release something like this into the Creative Commons . . . where there are no take-backs . . . you would be wise to take the time to cross all of your "i's" and dot all of your "t's".

I mean, it shouldn't take years of time, but . . . it takes staff time, which likely is at a premium right now. And again . . . low priority.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And again . . . low priority.

Yup.

Ironically the thing most likely to make this a higher priority is WotC screwing up once more and creating significant bad press for itself, because managing to create CCBY "SRDs" for 1/2/3/4E (and maybe even RC/BECMI etc.) would be seen as significant good press. If it was prioritized, the whole thing could easily get done in a few weeks, even assuming slow approvals, by a handful of people, so probably in time for a bit of ass-saving.

So people who want old edition SRDs really strongly, I guess you should be praying for WotC to absolutely go full foot-in-mouth again!

 

[GMMichael]

Effective April 26, would be interested to know what caused this

I heard she rolled a 1 on her latest Profession (CEO) check. We all know how swingy those checks can be.