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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9224030" data-attributes="member: 2067">There's kind of a weird disconnect I see in threads like this.The explicit, legally-required responsibility of any publicly-traded company, overall, is to increase profit and stock price. This is, in a very real and tangible way the reason they exist.Hasbro doesn't exist to employ people. They only do so as necessary to fulfill their true obligation, which is increasing profit and stock price. D&D exists only as long as D&D keeps the number going up enough.We have this sort of folk understanding of companies as things that hire people to make products, but that's not really true when dealing with something like Hasbro. Those companies make profits. Products are a means to an end. Whether that is Good or Evil or Neutral or whatever probably depends on your own moral code. But in terms of just practical solutions, we can decry the tragedy of losing your job all day long, and never change anything, because we aren't articulating what we want to see instead. Hasbro isn't unique in this tragedy. Good people lose good jobs every year. Do we want to live in a world where no one is ever laid off? Or maybe in a world where being laid off isn't such a dire pronouncement where one loses health care as well? Or one in which everyone lives in the more precarious indie space of "will enough people buy my pdf for me to afford rent this month?" Or something else?These are all different problems with different solutions and different ways of achieving the outcomes we want, so I think if you're feeling upset about Hasbro's actions here, what's the competing vision? What should happen instead? Cuz then we can look at what it would take to make that world a reality. By all means, Buy More Indie Stuff. But if that's all, then in 10 years MCDM or Paizo or whatever is laying off 1,000 people because of a market downturn, we'll be here again with the names changed. And I'm not sure that's what we actually want to see...is it?</blockquote>

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