1,100 Hasbro employees including Wizards of the Coast staff fired before Christmas.


Leading toy and game manufacturer Hasbro lays off 1,100 workers just two weeks before Christmas. Word is coming in that Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons creative staff are among the unfortunate ones. No matter how much I might have issues with the leadership at Hasbro/WotC, I don’t have a problem with people just trying to earn a living the best they can. Unfortunately the people who most should go either because of their huge salaries or their big mouths are still working for WotC/D&D Studios.

*Disclaimer 1: I have lots of love and sympathy for anyone who loses their job from a big corporation, especially during the holiday season. I would not wish this turn of bad fortune on anyone.

*Disclaimer 2: This is my opinion. I have very strong feelings about large corporations, especially Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast. I’m not holding back and there will likely be some profanity in this article. I apologize in advance if I offend anyone, but this royally sucks!

Another thing I’ll say right now is because this is strictly an opinion piece coming from decades of being in the hobby and on Earth in general, please go out and look up the news pieces regarding the layoffs for yourself. Please use your own discernment as to what you think about the situation. ENWorld, Polygon, Dice Breaker and a lot of other sites all the way up to the Wall Street Journal are covering the Hasbro layoffs.

My take: they’re sacking the wrong people at Wizards of the Coast.

Still employed as of this article.

We don’t know for certain at this time whether or not any of the leadership took a pay cut. Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro raked in a little over $9 million last year. He came from WotC to run Hasbro and then brought on his team of “yes men” to head up various electronic enterprises within WotC. Cynthia Williams and Chris Cao being former Microsoft and Zynga employees IIRC.

Imagine all of this went down and Kyle Brink, Cynthia Williams, Chris Cao, and Jeremy Crawford are all still gainfully employed at WotC. The sheer gall of these executives makes me want to vomit. These are the same people that have been making bad decisions all year and they’re the ones deciding who stays and who goes at WotC. I wonder how long they’ve known they were going to do this.

It’s disgusting when the ethically, morally, and creatively bankrupt people who run the company are the last ones to go. These people are overpaid and under intelligent. Kyle Brink poses as a gamer and makes a swell scapegoat, yet he’s still there as far as we know. Same thing with Jeremy Crawford. How is this right when other people are having to go home and have that conversation with their families?

Whose fault is it when a company, or a specific division (WotC) fails?

Don’t blame the guy driving the forklift in the warehouse for making bad decisions like the D&D Open Game License scandal. He’s not the cartoonish supervillain wannabe in charge. Who got canned? The now former forklift driver.

The same geniuses that engineered the OGL Debacle of 2023 also gave us genius moves such as #Hadozee, the Pinkerton Scandal, AI art on Magic: the Gathering cards, AI art on Bigby’s Glory of the Giants, and most recently, the Deck of Many Things disaster. Let me get this straight- Hasbro is letting these stooges at WotC keep their jobs the aforementioned and countless other errors, but firing some of the creative minds behind some of their best sellers? They’re getting rid of the driving force behind D&D Adventurers Guild and an on-air personality at D&D Beyond, but good old Kyle “Can’t Leave the Hobby Fast Enough” Brink is still there? WTAF, Hasbro?

In other companies in other countries, they believe that if the employees fail it is because management failed them. You won’t find that at Hasbro/WotC. Hell, the WotC philosophy seems to be just to start canning people willy-nilly and then tell the Reptilian Overlords at Hasbro what a great job they’re doing saving all that money.

If a book has a major issue, do you know who we used to blame? It’s the editor. Good thing they changed up Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford’s titles. Chief Architects don’t have to take responsibility for massive editing failures of D&D books. But they’ll fire lower level editors and art directors all in the name of saving some money. WotC sure does like to stack the bullshit high, don’t they?

1,100 human beings just lost their primary source of income during one of the financially toughest times of the year for some. Imagine being the person that initiated the plan? Imagine being the people in charge of doing all that hard work of sacking so-called friends in the office.

“Oh, it’s just how big companies do business.”

I know someone is going to say it. To that I say, “Kindly get fucked.” There’s a good way to do business and then there’s whatever the Hell you call what Hasbro/WotC did. Did they really have to drop the bomb during the holiday season? Could they have waited until at least January 2nd?

I get Hasbro is out to make money and they’re not exactly a family company. Still, they have failed to acknowledge the people who work for them are human. It was one thing when Wizards of the Coast made it clear they had no regard for their own fan base during the OGL Debacle and afterward. We know they are literally using content creators for free promotion and advertising which we see instances of all the time on YouTube.

My point is there’s a way to treat employees and fans with understanding and respect. “Because we’re a big corporation,” is about the weakest excuse for callous treatment of others I’ve ever heard. There are still some humans left in the management at WotC, not that we can prove it. I’m still flabbergasted that all of this has basically been done in the name of the almighty bottom line. It’s disgusting. We can do better as people.

I’m going to leave it here. I’m still pretty riled up. This is actually something of a triggering event for me and I’ll discuss it further in Part 2. I really wanted to be doing lighthearted holiday stuff and/or finishing dungeons. I’ve also entered into another Itch.io game jam before all this happened. Plus I’m still working on a couple of other projects I was hoping to release before the end of the year.

Thanks for being here. More on this tomorrow. Please hug your friends and loved ones a little tighter tonight.