Agreed, the appropriate solution then is to grant individual DM's finer control over what is or isn't allowed in their particular campaigns. Claiming 3rd party material is a 'nightmare scenario' for reasons that would apply to any other 1st party source is absurd.
Exactly. Plus there's only so many technical fixes to people-problems. If a DM doesn't want someone to use certain books or to ask permission for 3pp material, just tell the players that. No need for complicated extra coding and user interfaces as long as sources are shown when making choices in the character builder.
Just talk with the players. If the group can't come to an agreement, then no amount of code is going to solve that problem.
But this is admittedly getting a bit astray from the topic of the layoffs.
Agreed, the appropriate solution then is to grant individual DM's finer control over what is or isn't allowed in their particular campaigns. Claiming 3rd party material is a 'nightmare scenario' for reasons that would apply to any other 1st party source is absurd.
Exactly. Plus there's only so many technical fixes to people-problems. If a DM doesn't want someone to use certain books or to ask permission for 3pp material, just tell the players that. No need for complicated extra coding and user interfaces as long as sources are shown when making choices in the character builder.
Just talk with the players. If the group can't come to an agreement, then no amount of code is going to solve that problem.
But this is admittedly getting a bit astray from the topic of the layoffs.
It's not that easy, though. Players that I play with aren't that savvy with what content comes from what book (and I can't always remember off the top of my head. Both from a DM and a player POV, I'd much rather just have a curated list of what's allowed and say "have at it". This should really be one of the strengths of using digital media, but instead it's easier to do it with physical copies. It's really nice with spells that I don't have to look spells up and find out if the spell can be used by my class or not, unlike with cards, and a similar thing with campaign-acceptable content would be appreciated.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I'm thinking DDB/WotC is likely curating which products get put into DDB's marketplace. Tal D'L'oreal or whatever and the Ghostfire stuff make a lot of sense, as people involved in those products also have a history with DDB and/or WotC. There's some trust there that they're all playing at "the same level" and I don't think DDB/WotC wants to put on content that will be "game breaking" especially as such game breaking mechanics may not be compatible with future digital features. I think WotC/DDB will be selective about what comes online in the marketplace, favoring/trusting publishers who design material with fidelity to RAW. Ghostfire is very much up that alley, as is CR content. I don't see anything in either's catalog that breaks the game or power creeps it or whatever. Rather the Ghostfire stuff especially the sort of lair book (coming online just when MCDM's 5e Lair Book is starting to ship to backers) we're really seeing something that fills the gap for people who liked the Ravensloft book and wanted to see more of it, more tool boxes for putting gothic elements, a very broad field, into their play.
Circling back to layoffs, I've seen a few people online, most of whom had some experience doing work for hire for WotC, who see the layoffs as a harbinger of the D&D studio being more of a management system and creative work will be produced out of house after the new cores come out. As precedent they point to how the Tyranny of Dragons books, one of 5e's earliest campaigns was actually written by Kobold Press, they said "most" of the early adventures were actually written by 3rd party studios, but I only know about ToD for sure.
I think part of the issue may be mgmt and maybe the studio itself feels "stale". The revision was supposed to have more snap to it, but it seems like folks will be getting something a lot more familiar to them. There's also surveys where there's an unknown to us percentage of people who claim to use 5e and have the core but spend more money on third party products than they do official WotC D&D after the core. No one here can do more than speculate on that front, but I could see them seeing the only way to make this digital leap truly viable for D&D under WotC's stewardship is to grant 3rd party writers more license to the D&D marketplace (and from there I think we see what that NDA and wild percentage fees may have been really about).
I don't know how much I buy into the above theory. It's interesting, and I don't think it's entirely implausible that this is part of what's currently going on with D&D; but I don't think the truth is totally this or totally walled garden arguments, etc. A property that's D&D big is more complicated than those broad stroke assertions allow. But it's something to think about.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Agreed, the appropriate solution then is to grant individual DM's finer control over what is or isn't allowed in their particular campaigns. Claiming 3rd party material is a 'nightmare scenario' for reasons that would apply to any other 1st party source is absurd.
Exactly. Plus there's only so many technical fixes to people-problems. If a DM doesn't want someone to use certain books or to ask permission for 3pp material, just tell the players that. No need for complicated extra coding and user interfaces as long as sources are shown when making choices in the character builder.
Just talk with the players. If the group can't come to an agreement, then no amount of code is going to solve that problem.
But this is admittedly getting a bit astray from the topic of the layoffs.
It's not that easy, though. Players that I play with aren't that savvy with what content comes from what book (and I can't always remember off the top of my head. Both from a DM and a player POV, I'd much rather just have a curated list of what's allowed and say "have at it". This should really be one of the strengths of using digital media, but instead it's easier to do it with physical copies. It's really nice with spells that I don't have to look spells up and find out if the spell can be used by my class or not, unlike with cards, and a similar thing with campaign-acceptable content would be appreciated.
Some sort of citation/annotation in the DDB character sheet would be awesome. When you hover over a spell or item or feature for the box text explainer, the end text would have some sort of parenthetical citation. Maybe even have different tiers (official, trusted 3rd party, experimental 3rd party, homebrew) font colors or indicia. I don't know how hard that is to implement other than tediously putting in the citations to everything. Would definitely help the DM: "where did you find this" Player: "it was on the menu" discussions. Might be easier than the granular control DMs, including me, have be clamoring for.
Until a content sharing solution that the DM has control over books allowed in the campaign no mater who enables the sharing is provided on DDB, it is up to the DM and share enabler to make sure the books allowed by the DM are the only ones shared(if you are not the DM in the campaign and enable sharing you can not filter shared books, that is bad! just tested this.)
If you can't rely on the players to do their home work when building their characters, or if you can't trust the players to stick to that, that sucks, and I doubt I would play with them, I know there are instances where that is not an ideal situation, but for me it is always an acceptable option.
Even if you are the DM, have sharing enabled and filtered a player can use their own content to build a character so I doubt a better content sharing set up would stop anyone that wanted to use what they own. It would be nice for new players that have no idea and are making honest mistakes.
And the solution to that is a master tier sub and turn on sharing yourself when you create the campaign. If it will help your game it is ~$5 a month if your on the free tier, and ~$3 a month if you have the hero tier. Just depends on which is more work for you and your campaign.
Agreed, the appropriate solution then is to grant individual DM's finer control over what is or isn't allowed in their particular campaigns. Claiming 3rd party material is a 'nightmare scenario' for reasons that would apply to any other 1st party source is absurd.
Exactly. Plus there's only so many technical fixes to people-problems. If a DM doesn't want someone to use certain books or to ask permission for 3pp material, just tell the players that. No need for complicated extra coding and user interfaces as long as sources are shown when making choices in the character builder.
Just talk with the players. If the group can't come to an agreement, then no amount of code is going to solve that problem.
But this is admittedly getting a bit astray from the topic of the layoffs.
It's not that easy, though. Players that I play with aren't that savvy with what content comes from what book (and I can't always remember off the top of my head. Both from a DM and a player POV, I'd much rather just have a curated list of what's allowed and say "have at it". This should really be one of the strengths of using digital media, but instead it's easier to do it with physical copies. It's really nice with spells that I don't have to look spells up and find out if the spell can be used by my class or not, unlike with cards, and a similar thing with campaign-acceptable content would be appreciated.
Some sort of citation/annotation in the DDB character sheet would be awesome. When you hover over a spell or item or feature for the box text explainer, the end text would have some sort of parenthetical citation. Maybe even have different tiers (official, trusted 3rd party, experimental 3rd party, homebrew) font colors or indicia. I don't know how hard that is to implement other than tediously putting in the citations to everything. Would definitely help the DM: "where did you find this" Player: "it was on the menu" discussions. Might be easier than the granular control DMs, including me, have be clamoring for.
They do have this for some of the character sheet proficiencies & languages, feats and traits, spells. Weapons and items can be looked up fairly easily in the sub menus under the game rules tab on DDB. I still think all but new players should do this themselves and it should be in the character creator if you the DM can't control books shared.
Winged frogs come to mind.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Yeah, I was thinking of items when I wrote that, and I don't know if homebrew spells/etc. (all the stuff that does get cited if it's official) pops up as homebrew or not. It'd be wonderful for DDB to actually have these sorts of settings available (and the sliders in the character maker sort of make that gesture but don't go as deep as DMs and some players would want), but I think it'd be more likely to see this as something that will aid the DM in character sheet review. If more content on the site is "outsourced" to third party, it would be of great benefit to most tables to have something like being able to at least enable/disable certain publishers (which the sliders I think currently sort of do).
Back to the layoffs, next year is going to be interesting for WotC and players. It seems they have painted themselves in a corner with upcoming books, the VTT and profits for Hasbro. I hope it works out, but I will keep the popcorn close.
Those release date leaks a couple of weeks ago, and upcoming book leaks are making a little more sense after the layoffs were announced.
This has the latest I know of, some have been walked back I believe.
They released some graphics with a May 21 date on them for the core books and a vecna adventure book. They then removed the dates from the graphics about the core books, but it stayed on the vecna book. So, read into that what you will.
This has the latest I know of, some have been walked back I believe.
They released some graphics with a May 21 date on them for the core books and a vecna adventure book. They then removed the dates from the graphics about the core books, but it stayed on the vecna book. So, read into that what you will.
I would note that Hasbro spent all year trying to rebuild trust and goodwill over the debacle at the beginning of the year, and then to do this right before Christmas?
I mean, they could have waited a few weeks and kept a lot of the goodwill and trust they had gained back.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
I would note that Hasbro spent all year trying to rebuild trust and goodwill over the debacle at the beginning of the year, and then to do this right before Christmas?
I mean, they could have waited a few weeks and kept a lot of the goodwill and trust they had gained back.
I rather doubt the date truly would influence attitudes much; for better or worse, everything I’ve seen over the past year suggests few people are inclined to give them any slack and many are ready to very vocally paint everything they do in the worst possible light.
I would note that Hasbro spent all year trying to rebuild trust and goodwill over the debacle at the beginning of the year, and then to do this right before Christmas?
I mean, they could have waited a few weeks and kept a lot of the goodwill and trust they had gained back.
Hasbro likely had very little choice in the timing—the timing is decided based on various requirements for fiscal reporting and tax reporting purposes. They do not get to really choose that the tax and fiscal year are ending right around Christmas—which means that they have very limited options when it comes to how they do severance. If they delayed, they would not be able to write the severance packages off as a financial cost for 2023. That means they cannot claim those losses on their taxes for this year and cannot put it down as a failure in this already bad fiscal year.
For a company doing as badly as Hasbro, they need the extra cash on hand that deducting severance on their taxes will give them—time value of money and all that says that the money is more valuable if you get it in 2023 tax season than if you got the same numerical value in 2024 tax season. For a company that wants to show growth to survive, they want to be able to say “look, we had all sorts of problems, such as a big severance package in 2023, but we don’t have those in our 2024 reporting, so things are looking up!”
All of that is an unfortunate side effect of how reporting is done, and it isn’t really fair to blame Hasbro for how our financial system and tax code kind of force these Christmas layoffs to occur.
"Fiscal year – 12 consecutive months ending on the last day of any month except December. A 52-53-week tax year is a fiscal tax year that varies from 52 to 53 weeks but does not have to end on the last day of a month.
Changing your tax year
Once you have adopted your tax year, you may have to get IRS approval to change it. "
A company that big knows they will inevitably lay people off, choosing when based off fiscal year end is one thing, but they get to choose that fiscal year end date and can change it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I would note that Hasbro spent all year trying to rebuild trust and goodwill over the debacle at the beginning of the year, and then to do this right before Christmas?
I mean, they could have waited a few weeks and kept a lot of the goodwill and trust they had gained back.
Hasbro likely had very little choice in the timing—the timing is decided based on various requirements for fiscal reporting and tax reporting purposes. They do not get to really choose that the tax and fiscal year are ending right around Christmas—which means that they have very limited options when it comes to how they do severance. If they delayed, they would not be able to write the severance packages off as a financial cost for 2023. That means they cannot claim those losses on their taxes for this year and cannot put it down as a failure in this already bad fiscal year.
For a company doing as badly as Hasbro, they need the extra cash on hand that deducting severance on their taxes will give them—time value of money and all that says that the money is more valuable if you get it in 2023 tax season than if you got the same numerical value in 2024 tax season. For a company that wants to show growth to survive, they want to be able to say “look, we had all sorts of problems, such as a big severance package in 2023, but we don’t have those in our 2024 reporting, so things are looking up!”
All of that is an unfortunate side effect of how reporting is done, and it isn’t really fair to blame Hasbro for how our financial system and tax code kind of force these Christmas layoffs to occur.
"Fiscal year – 12 consecutive months ending on the last day of any month except December. A 52-53-week tax year is a fiscal tax year that varies from 52 to 53 weeks but does not have to end on the last day of a month.
Changing your tax year
Once you have adopted your tax year, you may have to get IRS approval to change it. "
A company that big knows they will inevitably lay people off, choosing when based off fiscal year end is one thing, but they get to choose that fiscal year end date and can change it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I rather doubt the date truly would influence attitudes much; for better or worse, everything I’ve seen over the past year suggests few people are inclined to give them any slack and many are ready to very vocally paint everything they do in the worst possible light.
I agree. I also find it interesting that no one has mentioned any of this year's PR mishaps at my two tables, nor in the Discords of a couple of Twitch streams I follow. It would seem that many of us are just happily playing the game. A game that remains enjoyable despite its rich history of controversies. I'm no WotC or Hasbro apologist, but I am for D&D.
I also find it hilarious that the D&D-specific subReddits are infested with alternative TTRPG cultists who, on an almost daily basis, clutch their pearls, blast WotC, and attempt to lure converts. No thanks. I'm happy where I'm at.
I would note that Hasbro spent all year trying to rebuild trust and goodwill over the debacle at the beginning of the year, and then to do this right before Christmas?
I mean, they could have waited a few weeks and kept a lot of the goodwill and trust they had gained back.
Hasbro likely had very little choice in the timing—the timing is decided based on various requirements for fiscal reporting and tax reporting purposes. They do not get to really choose that the tax and fiscal year are ending right around Christmas—which means that they have very limited options when it comes to how they do severance. If they delayed, they would not be able to write the severance packages off as a financial cost for 2023. That means they cannot claim those losses on their taxes for this year and cannot put it down as a failure in this already bad fiscal year.
For a company doing as badly as Hasbro, they need the extra cash on hand that deducting severance on their taxes will give them—time value of money and all that says that the money is more valuable if you get it in 2023 tax season than if you got the same numerical value in 2024 tax season. For a company that wants to show growth to survive, they want to be able to say “look, we had all sorts of problems, such as a big severance package in 2023, but we don’t have those in our 2024 reporting, so things are looking up!”
All of that is an unfortunate side effect of how reporting is done, and it isn’t really fair to blame Hasbro for how our financial system and tax code kind of force these Christmas layoffs to occur.
"Fiscal year – 12 consecutive months ending on the last day of any month except December. A 52-53-week tax year is a fiscal tax year that varies from 52 to 53 weeks but does not have to end on the last day of a month.
Changing your tax year
Once you have adopted your tax year, you may have to get IRS approval to change it. "
A company that big knows they will inevitably lay people off, choosing when based off fiscal year end is one thing, but they get to choose that fiscal year end date and can change it.
Tax law is complicated, so no need to feel bad that you’re “fact checking” and citation are not the most helpful and miss a number of important realities. I’ve done my fair share of tax law over the course of my legal practice, and I hate it every time I have to deal with it.
The citation you provide is talking about two different accounting methods you can use—fiscal year or calendar year accounting. Hasbro has locked themselves into a tax period that ends on December 31st—that is why they are currently in their Q4 period of the year.
Changing that is possible, but it is really, really hard to do—much harder to do than the little “may have to get IRS approval” bit on the IRS website you cited makes it seem. The IRS is not really fond of “hey, we’re a multi billion dollar company, can you please let us mess with our tax season to better facilitate layoffs so we can pay the government less?” as a reason for changing.
And, even if you do get permission to change, it is a logistical nightmare to get things switched over—suddenly all your books, all your quarters, all your old financial reporting is out of whack not only with your own company’s history, but with the expectations of anyone expecting your fiscal quarters to match the standard Q1-Q4 tracking the calendar year. Suddenly you have issues where your corporate tax period is different from your employees’ salary tax years (not an insurmountable problem, but it is an inconvenience when trying to calculate things like bonuses). And plenty of other issues that come up both from changing your status quo and suddenly being on your own, unique, non-industry-standard schedule.
Exactly. Plus there's only so many technical fixes to people-problems. If a DM doesn't want someone to use certain books or to ask permission for 3pp material, just tell the players that. No need for complicated extra coding and user interfaces as long as sources are shown when making choices in the character builder.
Just talk with the players. If the group can't come to an agreement, then no amount of code is going to solve that problem.
But this is admittedly getting a bit astray from the topic of the layoffs.
It's not that easy, though. Players that I play with aren't that savvy with what content comes from what book (and I can't always remember off the top of my head. Both from a DM and a player POV, I'd much rather just have a curated list of what's allowed and say "have at it". This should really be one of the strengths of using digital media, but instead it's easier to do it with physical copies. It's really nice with spells that I don't have to look spells up and find out if the spell can be used by my class or not, unlike with cards, and a similar thing with campaign-acceptable content would be appreciated.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Couple of things on the third party tangent.
I'm thinking DDB/WotC is likely curating which products get put into DDB's marketplace. Tal D'L'oreal or whatever and the Ghostfire stuff make a lot of sense, as people involved in those products also have a history with DDB and/or WotC. There's some trust there that they're all playing at "the same level" and I don't think DDB/WotC wants to put on content that will be "game breaking" especially as such game breaking mechanics may not be compatible with future digital features. I think WotC/DDB will be selective about what comes online in the marketplace, favoring/trusting publishers who design material with fidelity to RAW. Ghostfire is very much up that alley, as is CR content. I don't see anything in either's catalog that breaks the game or power creeps it or whatever. Rather the Ghostfire stuff especially the sort of lair book (coming online just when MCDM's 5e Lair Book is starting to ship to backers) we're really seeing something that fills the gap for people who liked the Ravensloft book and wanted to see more of it, more tool boxes for putting gothic elements, a very broad field, into their play.
Circling back to layoffs, I've seen a few people online, most of whom had some experience doing work for hire for WotC, who see the layoffs as a harbinger of the D&D studio being more of a management system and creative work will be produced out of house after the new cores come out. As precedent they point to how the Tyranny of Dragons books, one of 5e's earliest campaigns was actually written by Kobold Press, they said "most" of the early adventures were actually written by 3rd party studios, but I only know about ToD for sure.
I think part of the issue may be mgmt and maybe the studio itself feels "stale". The revision was supposed to have more snap to it, but it seems like folks will be getting something a lot more familiar to them. There's also surveys where there's an unknown to us percentage of people who claim to use 5e and have the core but spend more money on third party products than they do official WotC D&D after the core. No one here can do more than speculate on that front, but I could see them seeing the only way to make this digital leap truly viable for D&D under WotC's stewardship is to grant 3rd party writers more license to the D&D marketplace (and from there I think we see what that NDA and wild percentage fees may have been really about).
I don't know how much I buy into the above theory. It's interesting, and I don't think it's entirely implausible that this is part of what's currently going on with D&D; but I don't think the truth is totally this or totally walled garden arguments, etc. A property that's D&D big is more complicated than those broad stroke assertions allow. But it's something to think about.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Some sort of citation/annotation in the DDB character sheet would be awesome. When you hover over a spell or item or feature for the box text explainer, the end text would have some sort of parenthetical citation. Maybe even have different tiers (official, trusted 3rd party, experimental 3rd party, homebrew) font colors or indicia. I don't know how hard that is to implement other than tediously putting in the citations to everything. Would definitely help the DM: "where did you find this" Player: "it was on the menu" discussions. Might be easier than the granular control DMs, including me, have be clamoring for.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Until a content sharing solution that the DM has control over books allowed in the campaign no mater who enables the sharing is provided on DDB,
it is up to the DM and share enabler to make sure the books allowed by the DM are the only ones shared(if you are not the DM in the campaign and enable sharing you can not filter shared books, that is bad! just tested this.)If you can't rely on the players to do their home work when building their characters, or if you can't trust the players to stick to that, that sucks, and I doubt I would play with them, I know there are instances where that is not an ideal situation, but for me it is always an acceptable option.
Even if you are the DM, have sharing enabled and filtered a player can use their own content to build a character so I doubt a better content sharing set up would stop anyone that wanted to use what they own. It would be nice for new players that have no idea and are making honest mistakes.
And the solution to that is a master tier sub and turn on sharing yourself when you create the campaign. If it will help your game it is ~$5 a month if your on the free tier, and ~$3 a month if you have the hero tier. Just depends on which is more work for you and your campaign.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
They do have this for some of the character sheet proficiencies & languages, feats and traits, spells. Weapons and items can be looked up fairly easily in the sub menus under the game rules tab on DDB. I still think all but new players should do this themselves and it should be in the character creator if you the DM can't control books shared.
Winged frogs come to mind.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Yeah, I was thinking of items when I wrote that, and I don't know if homebrew spells/etc. (all the stuff that does get cited if it's official) pops up as homebrew or not. It'd be wonderful for DDB to actually have these sorts of settings available (and the sliders in the character maker sort of make that gesture but don't go as deep as DMs and some players would want), but I think it'd be more likely to see this as something that will aid the DM in character sheet review. If more content on the site is "outsourced" to third party, it would be of great benefit to most tables to have something like being able to at least enable/disable certain publishers (which the sliders I think currently sort of do).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Back to the layoffs, next year is going to be interesting for WotC and players. It seems they have painted themselves in a corner with upcoming books, the VTT and profits for Hasbro. I hope it works out, but I will keep the popcorn close.
Those release date leaks a couple of weeks ago, and upcoming book leaks are making a little more sense after the layoffs were announced.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I’ve been a little out of the loop. Can anyone tell me when we’re expecting the 2024 revisions to release?
Terra Lubridia archive:
The Bloody Barnacle | The Gut | The Athene Crusader | The Jewel of Atlantis
2024-5-5e-release-date-announced
This has the latest I know of, some have been walked back I believe.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
They released some graphics with a May 21 date on them for the core books and a vecna adventure book. They then removed the dates from the graphics about the core books, but it stayed on the vecna book. So, read into that what you will.
Thanks to both of you.
Terra Lubridia archive:
The Bloody Barnacle | The Gut | The Athene Crusader | The Jewel of Atlantis
I would note that Hasbro spent all year trying to rebuild trust and goodwill over the debacle at the beginning of the year, and then to do this right before Christmas?
I mean, they could have waited a few weeks and kept a lot of the goodwill and trust they had gained back.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
I rather doubt the date truly would influence attitudes much; for better or worse, everything I’ve seen over the past year suggests few people are inclined to give them any slack and many are ready to very vocally paint everything they do in the worst possible light.
With any luck a pair of rose colored glasses will be part of the severance package.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Hasbro likely had very little choice in the timing—the timing is decided based on various requirements for fiscal reporting and tax reporting purposes. They do not get to really choose that the tax and fiscal year are ending right around Christmas—which means that they have very limited options when it comes to how they do severance. If they delayed, they would not be able to write the severance packages off as a financial cost for 2023. That means they cannot claim those losses on their taxes for this year and cannot put it down as a failure in this already bad fiscal year.
For a company doing as badly as Hasbro, they need the extra cash on hand that deducting severance on their taxes will give them—time value of money and all that says that the money is more valuable if you get it in 2023 tax season than if you got the same numerical value in 2024 tax season. For a company that wants to show growth to survive, they want to be able to say “look, we had all sorts of problems, such as a big severance package in 2023, but we don’t have those in our 2024 reporting, so things are looking up!”
All of that is an unfortunate side effect of how reporting is done, and it isn’t really fair to blame Hasbro for how our financial system and tax code kind of force these Christmas layoffs to occur.
From the IRS
"Fiscal year – 12 consecutive months ending on the last day of any month except December. A 52-53-week tax year is a fiscal tax year that varies from 52 to 53 weeks but does not have to end on the last day of a month.
Changing your tax year
Once you have adopted your tax year, you may have to get IRS approval to change it. "
A company that big knows they will inevitably lay people off, choosing when based off fiscal year end is one thing, but they get to choose that fiscal year end date and can change it.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Fact check:
From the IRS
"Fiscal year – 12 consecutive months ending on the last day of any month except December. A 52-53-week tax year is a fiscal tax year that varies from 52 to 53 weeks but does not have to end on the last day of a month.
Changing your tax year
Once you have adopted your tax year, you may have to get IRS approval to change it. "
A company that big knows they will inevitably lay people off, choosing when based off fiscal year end is one thing, but they get to choose that fiscal year end date and can change it.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I agree. I also find it interesting that no one has mentioned any of this year's PR mishaps at my two tables, nor in the Discords of a couple of Twitch streams I follow. It would seem that many of us are just happily playing the game. A game that remains enjoyable despite its rich history of controversies. I'm no WotC or Hasbro apologist, but I am for D&D.
I also find it hilarious that the D&D-specific subReddits are infested with alternative TTRPG cultists who, on an almost daily basis, clutch their pearls, blast WotC, and attempt to lure converts. No thanks. I'm happy where I'm at.
Neutral Good
Characters in active campaigns:
Rowan Wood elf, 10 Circle of Stars Druid
Wyll Forest Gnome, 4 Divination Wizard
Tax law is complicated, so no need to feel bad that you’re “fact checking” and citation are not the most helpful and miss a number of important realities. I’ve done my fair share of tax law over the course of my legal practice, and I hate it every time I have to deal with it.
The citation you provide is talking about two different accounting methods you can use—fiscal year or calendar year accounting. Hasbro has locked themselves into a tax period that ends on December 31st—that is why they are currently in their Q4 period of the year.
Changing that is possible, but it is really, really hard to do—much harder to do than the little “may have to get IRS approval” bit on the IRS website you cited makes it seem. The IRS is not really fond of “hey, we’re a multi billion dollar company, can you please let us mess with our tax season to better facilitate layoffs so we can pay the government less?” as a reason for changing.
And, even if you do get permission to change, it is a logistical nightmare to get things switched over—suddenly all your books, all your quarters, all your old financial reporting is out of whack not only with your own company’s history, but with the expectations of anyone expecting your fiscal quarters to match the standard Q1-Q4 tracking the calendar year. Suddenly you have issues where your corporate tax period is different from your employees’ salary tax years (not an insurmountable problem, but it is an inconvenience when trying to calculate things like bonuses). And plenty of other issues that come up both from changing your status quo and suddenly being on your own, unique, non-industry-standard schedule.