Someone came up with an ugly theory that made very twisted sense.

Hasbro may have laid off 1.100 people right before Christmas to look good on Fourth Quarter finances to investors. Another point I’ve heard is it was done for tax purposes. I don’t know anything about corporate taxes enough to know if that’s true. The Q4 results to stockholders makes sense from a slimy corporate point of view.

Even Peter Adkison, former CEO of Wizards of the Coast, came out and said what they’re doing is deplorable and he wished they weren’t doing what he used to do. Mr. Adkison did a lot of this very sketchy holiday layoff stuff during the 3E Dungeons & Dragons years. Some of us in the TTRPG community still don’t have a lot of love for Adkison because he built WotC up and then sold it to Hasbro. At least he’s out of the industry other than owning Gen Con.

*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!

Wizards of the Coast dumped physical stock as well.

It looks as if WotC emptied out the warehouse by selling entire pallets of warehoused products onto Hasbro’s secondhand retailer, Ollie’s. I also noticed several of this year’s releases along with others for sale on Amazon at half off or less. Bigby’s Glorious Fist of the Giants for $33.33? Glad I didn’t buy that at all, let alone full price back when it came out. I’d have been pretty mad if I paid full price on any of these books only to see it coming out for pennies on the dollar now.

The massive product dump comes as no surprise to a veteran of the hobby like me. We see this sort of thing at the end of any edition for any game. Usually, I see it more that the FLGS level after the new edition drops, but in this case it’s the company dropping their entire backstock in one go. I think in this case it was a matter of Hasbro dumping inventory en masse to clear out their warehouses as part of their downsizing move.

I think Hasbro is liquidating their physical inventory as part of their move to electronic product and IP licensing. There is a slight (tinfoil hat) possibility that Hasbro is trying to generate as much revenue as possible to prepare for bankruptcy. That would be silly, right? They couldn’t possibly be declaring bankruptcy, could they? A great big company like Hasbro?

My disappointment in the company charged with caring for D&D runs high.

Wizards of the Coast has been dropping the ball left, center, and right all year. If you’ve been following the constant, almost predictable drama since the OGL Debacle in January, you know they just can’t seem to get anything right. Or could it be that they’re screwups have a purpose. Maybe not Hasbro, because clearly Chris Cocks has his head wedged firmly in his butt judging by the statements he makes. (Read his employee memo c/o Geekwire to the people on their way out the door if you want to see proof of stupid.)

Wizards of the Coast could only appear to be bumbling about like Cobra Commander and Megatron had been hatching plans together. What if they’re only planning to phase out physical books and take D&D completely digital? It’s looking more and more likely all the time.

What if the plan for D&D 2027, which we’ve heard it referred to before, is to go completely digital? What if Hasbro decides to throw us poor, old, nostalgic Grognards a bone and release a condensed ruleset in a red box with some pretty art on the cover as a collector’s item in 2027. I’m honestly surprised they haven’t done it sooner. Why fool around with the Players Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual as physical books at all?

Hasbro/D&D execs must frown when Kickstarters make more than some D&D releases.

I don’t have hard D&D sales numbers in front of me, not that I’d trust them if I did. I’m willing to bet crowdfunding projects for Shadowdark RPG, Tales of the Valiant, and MCDM RPG all made more money than Bigby’s Giant Glory or New Lost Mines of Panderdelver. (Hint, hint WotC: shorter damned titles.) Otherwise, why are we seeing $70-$90 official D&D titles being dumped at half price or less?

I officially wouldn’t piss on an official D&D release if it were burning at this point since the OGL Debacle. WotC started the year showing an absolute lack of regard for employees, fans, and Third Party Publishers. They’re ending the year much the same way. Hasbro does not care. Wizards of the Coast execs clearly do not care about anything beyond the bottom line.

That brings me to my next theory.

By the time all is said and done at Wizards of the Coast, I think there’s going to be a skeleton crew remaining. Anything/everything WotC does for D&D is going to be all digital, maybe not even PDF, and put together by a handful of contract writers. Everything and anything is going to be outsourced as cheaply as possible, probably starting in Q1 of 2024. The only crew WotC will still need for any given project are a few managing editors and an art/layout director. They don’t even need Chief Architects for that.

I also wouldn’t put it past WotC to draft cheap labor from the DMsGuild or even use AI writing to put out D&D adventures to be immediately converted to the VTT. It might even get to a point where official rules and supplements are history because they will continually update the VTT with whatever changes they want to sell. (See also Fortnite.) People might be gnashing teeth at this point with my views, but I’m calling it the way I see it.

Hasbro did promise more “headcount reduction” (hear me gag?) in 2024. I think a lot of articles on the Internet interpreted that to mean part of the 1,100 current layoffs. (I don’t know why they call them “layoffs” when it’s clear no one is coming back. They just fired. Period.) I think the attrition will continue across Hasbro in all departments, all areas, until all that remain are outsourced staff and subcontractors using licensed IP. It wouldn’t be the first time a Fortune 500 company pulled that crap.

It’s going to be okay for WotC creative staff.

I think Mike Mearls and Dan Dillon will be just fine. The same goes for most of the other “big name” staff that have been sacked so far. I think the likes of Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins will be just fine if/when they get canned. They can get hired by any other number of game companies and probably already have multiple people asking them to join up.

I saw on Friday that people were suggesting a strike at WotC/Hasbro. I contend it would do no good whatsoever and play right into the hands of the executives. It doesn’t do a bit of good to go on strike if the suits were planning to fire everyone anyway. Hasbro/WotC do not give a shit about anything.

The 2024 books are likely already a done deal.

Hasbro/WotC do not care one iota about the D&D game itself. They are mostly concerned with milking the IP and the electronic end of the franchise for as much money as possible. We should be happy to get any physical books as collector’s items in 2024.

The D&D PHB, DMG, and Monster Manual are likely most of the way through production and layout. (*I know, I can already hear people screaming at me that I’m wrong.) I don’t care what Unearthed Arcana surveys or what WotC/D&D Studios say they’re doing with our feedback. It’s all just to placate the masses. Those surveys are a pacifier at best.

How do I know? During the AI art debacle with Bigby Presents a Giant Glory (or whatever) a WotC rep said it takes approximately 2 years to do layout and editing for these books. Remember, Ilya Shipkin supposedly submitted AI art before there was ever any uproar in the industry. If it takes two years, Crawford and company would have had to start working on the new books at about the time they were announced in 2022.

Changes? Pfft. Like they care what we think. I think they’ve had the same plan from day one and haven’t deviated one bit.

What does 2024 hold for D&D? (My predictions.)

I think Hasbro is going to be desperate to start off Q1 and Q2. We could see Hasbro dissolve Wizards of the Coast entirely and take over the Magic, Pokémon TCG, and D&D IPs completely. They could pump out the digital core books tomorrow if they really wanted to. Electronic products are easy to change. IFF the VTT isn’t completely ready to roll out, that might slow things down slightly. Then again, Darth Vader style motivation could be applied to the VTT creators, too.

I predict more mass firings in the future for Hasbro and WotC. They’re going to use the WotC YouTube shills and Internet hype team to pump up whatever dumb stuff they do next. Likely we’re going to see continued OGL fuckery of some kind. The last thing WotC wants are Third Party Publishers horning in on their beloved D&D profits.

I think the TTRPG hobby is going to split or even fracture into multiple camps in 2024. The masses who blindly love D&D and remain completely oblivious to the slimy corporate machinations and behind-the-scenes bullshit will buy into the VTT. That crowd is utterly lost to us.

The next camp will be those of us who don’t want anything to do with the new-not-new D&D. I think the 3PP market will continue to keep people in 5E product steadily for a few more years. If history has taught us anything, 5E purists will eventually fall off and either join the new edition camp or become disinterested in the hobby altogether.

Last are all of us informed old people who have been watching WotC/Hasbro with a skeptical eye for decades now. The only way D&D Studios would get me to even read a new official D&D release would be to send it to me for free. (That would require them to acknowledge my existence.) The older, wiser gaming community as a whole keeps their D&D (or adjacent clones) characters on paper and use physical books. (Someone at WotC just fainted at the sound of the word, “books.”) The TTRPG hobby will split further between the VTT/video game crowd and us old farts who still do stuff with physical products.

Additionally, there is going to be an upcoming massive glut of talent available to the TTRPG Industry. I predict writing jobs are going to become scarce and the competition will be stiffer than ever. Likewise there will be a massive blast of new products in 2024 for any open licensed third party products from D&D on down. The nepotism amongst older companies hiring for any TTRPG jobs is going to become rotten stinking obvious.

I’ll discuss my personal takes on the Hasbro layoffs in a future article, likely on the 19th. Once upon a time in 2021 I worked for a Fortune 500 company and watched them pull much of the same bullshit Hasbro is doing to their people now.

Thanks for staying with me if you made it this far. I appreciate you. More on this story as it develops, because it ain’t over yet.