"For the time being, this doesn't seem to have affected Hasbro stock, which actually gained 15% as the tempest in Hasbro's teapot brewed. I suspect, however, that this is mainly because the issue has remained below most non-D&D-fanatics' radars."
Hasbro's stock price has actually been dropping in general since September, so even if there is another dip, you'd be hard-pressed to attribute it solely to the recent kerfuffle
Their recent underperformance in terms of revenue is probably what drove the company to re-evaluate things like third-party deals though
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
This is not the kind of incident or business choice that results in an overnight stock drop - this isn't some tech heavy company like Apple, hell they had to literally buy their own website from someone else that made it, they didn't even manage to make D&D beyond. Tech may be getting incorporated into this hobby with VTT's and such, but it's not a fast-paced kind of community.
It's a community based game that has had it's creator's trust fundamentally shattered and burned in the span of a week, showing them that they cannot trust WotC to hold the IP of Dungeons and Dragons fairly and equitably going forward - so they'll have to make a choice, to either stick with it and see if they can make it work, or pivot to something else.
This means that over TIME - and I mean a few months, years - we'll see D&D content dry up. You have to remember, there's D&D content that's currently in the works that likely will get put out that will slow this process down a bit. This will not be visible overnight. There will be less art, less adventures, less memes and funny videos or new campaign shows to watch. Some younger content creators will likely try and fill this void once they notice it, and if it's good enough content there's a chance that they could sustain some of the community, but it's very likely that the quality of it will not actually be that good and realistically, they'll likely stop making that content once they realize how difficult and unfair it is to monetize their efforts compared to if they'd just made it not D&D specific.
WotC will likely try and put out some content too, but between burning all their fans just now and the fact that Spelljammer was about 1/5th the actual content and had several errors in it [I mean, come on, a WILL CHECK? seriously? those don't even exist in the game! that's not even just a typo, that's the literal gaming system] I don't think their content is likely to be quality either, and since it won'tbe top notch it's not going to do much to draw people back in or incentivize the burned fans to give them a chance again.
No, this is like being stabbed through - you can take the object out if you want but you'll bleed to death way faster. Leave it in and you can just... slowly expire. We're witnessing the slow expire - but don't think that there isn't something stabbed in there, WotC made sure to impale themselves real good with this one.
This bit from the Motley Fool article was very interesting: --- It's hard to overestimate how important Wizards of the Coast is to Hasbro. According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, it accounts for just 22% of Hasbro's annual revenue -- but produces a staggering 72% of Hasbro's profit. --- That kind of revenue to profit ratio is huge. Sure seems like something that is already very well monetized.
I mean, it's generating the majority of their profits - that doesn't necessarily mean it's making as much money as it could. I actually agree that it's undermonetized, and I say that as someone who is intensely committed to companies providing a real value to their consumers. They don't put out nearly as much content as I think they could, and from what I've seen the content they do put out these days is both light in actual content [aka effort/investment] [the spelljammer book was like 60 pages and full of errors, compared to the 200 some older adventure modules were] and I think they could actually be doing a lot better in terms of merchandise - but merch is kind of my bread and butter and the majority of corporations never manage to pull this off, they're literally all leaving money on the table in this avenue.
Basically I can see lots of FAIR and equitable ways they could be making more money tbh - as an IP it does seem... Like it's audience and the demand for content is larger than what they are even attempting to fill. They've allowed 3rd party content creators to fill that void - look at the success of all the D&D game dice creators or those game table makers at Wyrmwood, those things are like 12 grand a pop! and they're making BANK! People have money to blow for D&D, I see it at every convention - the problem is that Hasbro / WotC are trying to make money for free, off of subscription models or microtransactions for access to rights that used to be normal to be free [like how I can currently have 6 free characters and the proposed new free tier only allows for 3. They'll remove things that were normal and monetize them] because they don't want to pay for anyone to make content, or merch, or distribution - they just want free money that generates itself through royalties or digital sales.
This bit from the Motley Fool article was very interesting: --- It's hard to overestimate how important Wizards of the Coast is to Hasbro. According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, it accounts for just 22% of Hasbro's annual revenue -- but produces a staggering 72% of Hasbro's profit. --- That kind of revenue to profit ratio is huge. Sure seems like something that is already very well monetized.
Yeah, I only have a few shares of Hasbro as, obviously I'm here and play D&D and like many investors, buy stocks in the things you use and should be good. It will take a while before the quarterly reports go through within Hasbro for them to pay attention to the fact the customer base for D&D is not happy and that they've killed their cash cow.
It should be obvious that if you want recurring, life long, loyal customers to a brand, you make a good quality product or service, with the IP in question. But of course, the people who are buying are called consumers and "obstacles to their money." Way to show unbridled corporate greed, 1 billion dollars from 2022 just wasn't enough.
The fact that Hasbro bought another company for the Beyond site shows an issue in the Tech sector where many big corporations find it easier to buy another company for the tech that's developed rather than innovate, do the R&D and create their own. There's just so much that shows that the higher up don't understand the IP or the community. The recent leaks of a $30 tier, that's more expensive than an MMO and what I'm hearing, they're trying to reinvent playing a video game.
With the 6 characters going down to 3 and the removal of several things to paywall them. That's only to cause more people to leave in the long term.
Update - With Wizards coming out to refute the $30 subscription and claim it's false, good. Don't do that. Keep the OGL in place for 1.0a. Hasbro/Wizards is going to have a long road to regaining trust.
Yep, you hit the nail on the head exactly ~ The fact that they even floated a $30 tier tells me that they are so woefully out of touch that they don't even understand basic digital value in the modern subscription age. None of the subscriptions I have are $30 a month, not even close - Netflix is like 10$, Disney ran a deal where we got like 2 years at either 5 or 8 a month I can't remember - the most expensive subscription we ever bought was for our entire household, it was a bundle of 3 subscriptions together like HBO max and Starz and some other thing, and it was $15 a month. For 3 different subscriptions put together, so you could easily argue they are $5 each.
There is no way in hell you're going to tell me that them hosting some character sheets and pdf's of books costs them more than Netflix literally churning out content by the bucketload - you can say it's not great all you want, but the reality is they are spending money to gain new content all the time. What money is WotC and Hasbro spending on D&D right now? What are they actually investing in? Because Spelljammer was rife with errors and very light on actual content from what I've heard, I was going to buy it but then I saw the reviews and I decided against it. Loved the idea/concept! Was really excited to bring it to my group! But not when they don't even have actual mechanics for basic stuff in the book or make weird arbitrary decisions on how things work that make for a sub par experience. They aren't investing enough to put out a good product, which is sort of the bare bones for a company - I'm not sure why they think they're worth $30 a month.
Hasbro's D&D division is big business, accounting for up to 72% of company profits -- and it's in trouble.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/01/17/big-change-coming-for-hasbro-should-investor-worry/
"For the time being, this doesn't seem to have affected Hasbro stock, which actually gained 15% as the tempest in Hasbro's teapot brewed. I suspect, however, that this is mainly because the issue has remained below most non-D&D-fanatics' radars."
Hasbro's stock price has actually been dropping in general since September, so even if there is another dip, you'd be hard-pressed to attribute it solely to the recent kerfuffle
Their recent underperformance in terms of revenue is probably what drove the company to re-evaluate things like third-party deals though
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
This is not the kind of incident or business choice that results in an overnight stock drop - this isn't some tech heavy company like Apple, hell they had to literally buy their own website from someone else that made it, they didn't even manage to make D&D beyond. Tech may be getting incorporated into this hobby with VTT's and such, but it's not a fast-paced kind of community.
It's a community based game that has had it's creator's trust fundamentally shattered and burned in the span of a week, showing them that they cannot trust WotC to hold the IP of Dungeons and Dragons fairly and equitably going forward - so they'll have to make a choice, to either stick with it and see if they can make it work, or pivot to something else.
This means that over TIME - and I mean a few months, years - we'll see D&D content dry up. You have to remember, there's D&D content that's currently in the works that likely will get put out that will slow this process down a bit. This will not be visible overnight. There will be less art, less adventures, less memes and funny videos or new campaign shows to watch. Some younger content creators will likely try and fill this void once they notice it, and if it's good enough content there's a chance that they could sustain some of the community, but it's very likely that the quality of it will not actually be that good and realistically, they'll likely stop making that content once they realize how difficult and unfair it is to monetize their efforts compared to if they'd just made it not D&D specific.
WotC will likely try and put out some content too, but between burning all their fans just now and the fact that Spelljammer was about 1/5th the actual content and had several errors in it [I mean, come on, a WILL CHECK? seriously? those don't even exist in the game! that's not even just a typo, that's the literal gaming system] I don't think their content is likely to be quality either, and since it won'tbe top notch it's not going to do much to draw people back in or incentivize the burned fans to give them a chance again.
No, this is like being stabbed through - you can take the object out if you want but you'll bleed to death way faster. Leave it in and you can just... slowly expire. We're witnessing the slow expire - but don't think that there isn't something stabbed in there, WotC made sure to impale themselves real good with this one.
This bit from the Motley Fool article was very interesting:
---
It's hard to overestimate how important Wizards of the Coast is to Hasbro. According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, it accounts for just 22% of Hasbro's annual revenue -- but produces a staggering 72% of Hasbro's profit.
---
That kind of revenue to profit ratio is huge. Sure seems like something that is already very well monetized.
I mean, it's generating the majority of their profits - that doesn't necessarily mean it's making as much money as it could. I actually agree that it's undermonetized, and I say that as someone who is intensely committed to companies providing a real value to their consumers. They don't put out nearly as much content as I think they could, and from what I've seen the content they do put out these days is both light in actual content [aka effort/investment] [the spelljammer book was like 60 pages and full of errors, compared to the 200 some older adventure modules were] and I think they could actually be doing a lot better in terms of merchandise - but merch is kind of my bread and butter and the majority of corporations never manage to pull this off, they're literally all leaving money on the table in this avenue.
Basically I can see lots of FAIR and equitable ways they could be making more money tbh - as an IP it does seem... Like it's audience and the demand for content is larger than what they are even attempting to fill. They've allowed 3rd party content creators to fill that void - look at the success of all the D&D game dice creators or those game table makers at Wyrmwood, those things are like 12 grand a pop! and they're making BANK! People have money to blow for D&D, I see it at every convention - the problem is that Hasbro / WotC are trying to make money for free, off of subscription models or microtransactions for access to rights that used to be normal to be free [like how I can currently have 6 free characters and the proposed new free tier only allows for 3. They'll remove things that were normal and monetize them] because they don't want to pay for anyone to make content, or merch, or distribution - they just want free money that generates itself through royalties or digital sales.
70-80% of that is MtG
Yeah, I only have a few shares of Hasbro as, obviously I'm here and play D&D and like many investors, buy stocks in the things you use and should be good. It will take a while before the quarterly reports go through within Hasbro for them to pay attention to the fact the customer base for D&D is not happy and that they've killed their cash cow.
It should be obvious that if you want recurring, life long, loyal customers to a brand, you make a good quality product or service, with the IP in question. But of course, the people who are buying are called consumers and "obstacles to their money." Way to show unbridled corporate greed, 1 billion dollars from 2022 just wasn't enough.
The fact that Hasbro bought another company for the Beyond site shows an issue in the Tech sector where many big corporations find it easier to buy another company for the tech that's developed rather than innovate, do the R&D and create their own. There's just so much that shows that the higher up don't understand the IP or the community. The recent leaks of a $30 tier, that's more expensive than an MMO and what I'm hearing, they're trying to reinvent playing a video game.
With the 6 characters going down to 3 and the removal of several things to paywall them. That's only to cause more people to leave in the long term.
Update - With Wizards coming out to refute the $30 subscription and claim it's false, good. Don't do that. Keep the OGL in place for 1.0a. Hasbro/Wizards is going to have a long road to regaining trust.
Long time player and DM since 1992. I have played and run various, numerous games, many of them Table Top over the years.
Yep, you hit the nail on the head exactly ~ The fact that they even floated a $30 tier tells me that they are so woefully out of touch that they don't even understand basic digital value in the modern subscription age. None of the subscriptions I have are $30 a month, not even close - Netflix is like 10$, Disney ran a deal where we got like 2 years at either 5 or 8 a month I can't remember - the most expensive subscription we ever bought was for our entire household, it was a bundle of 3 subscriptions together like HBO max and Starz and some other thing, and it was $15 a month. For 3 different subscriptions put together, so you could easily argue they are $5 each.
There is no way in hell you're going to tell me that them hosting some character sheets and pdf's of books costs them more than Netflix literally churning out content by the bucketload - you can say it's not great all you want, but the reality is they are spending money to gain new content all the time. What money is WotC and Hasbro spending on D&D right now? What are they actually investing in? Because Spelljammer was rife with errors and very light on actual content from what I've heard, I was going to buy it but then I saw the reviews and I decided against it. Loved the idea/concept! Was really excited to bring it to my group! But not when they don't even have actual mechanics for basic stuff in the book or make weird arbitrary decisions on how things work that make for a sub par experience. They aren't investing enough to put out a good product, which is sort of the bare bones for a company - I'm not sure why they think they're worth $30 a month.