somenewnoob
Well-known member
Can you use points?
BG3 CEO/DEV Hasbro laid off everyone we worked with
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Can you use points?
WOTC is not publically traded and not an independent company. It's just a portion of Hasbro. Hasbro lost money 4 quarters in a row and overall sales declined. As I mentioned earlier when there is a larger layoff even profitable divisions use the opportunity to clean house. We don't know the inner workings so there is no basis to assume the decisions were wrong.
Hasbro is a struggling company trying to become profitable. We've all seen what happens to companies that can't make a profit over an extended period. Talking about politics and greed when they are losing money is kind of humorous, but not really on point. This is a game forum - no need to drag politics into it especially when the political comments don't even make sense for the given situation of a company that hasn't made a profit in over a year.
I hope Hasbro is able to return to profitablility as it means WOTC will be more stable and they will be able to afford to invest more into WOTC initiatives.
As always I feel bad for people that lost their job - it can be stressful, but history shows those people willing to work will find new positions with pay equal or above their skill level. All the best to them in their new positions.
Lazuli
Well-known member
WOTC is Hasbro's goose that lays the golden eggs. 60% of Hasbro's profits this year have been due to WOTC. In fact, WOTC this year has had record profits. So no, the layoffs within WOTC have no more logic than wanting to expand the shareholders' wallets. WOTC is having enormous benefits, so there is no need to increase productivity there; You can actually say that WOTC team is overperforming. If there are teams that do not work, it will be in other Hasbro companies.
Let's not act as if CEOs are always right when they make their decisions and always make the best decisions for the company. We only have to look at the recent fiasco with Unity to see a case of bad decisions by an overly greedy CEO. And you don't have to look outside of WOTC to see bad decisions by the CEOs of that business, who have already made really bad decisions in the past. Thanks can be given to the fact that the company has several frankly resilient brands, because a lot could be said about their good work as CEOs in a very negative sense.
The problem is that today many CEOs do not know well the business they run. They are people who look exclusively at the profits of the shareholders, and forget to listen to the people who really know the market to which the product is directed. These CEOs know a lot about economics but very little about the environment related to their company's products. And sometimes, even if they do know the market they still only care about investors, not about leading their company to excellence. That is why in the end their decisions do not always have an impact on the long-term good of the company, but simply on the short-term profits of their shareholders.
It doesn't help that CEOs and high-ranking executives in general earn millions-dollar bonuses for achieving these short-term benefits, even if that harms the company in the long term. As I said before, we can be thankful that WOTC has very resilient brands. Because its directors have shown signs, both in the distant past and in the very recent past, of disastrous decisions designed only to increase short-term profits.
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Elminster
Sage of Shadowdale
CEO of Hasbro was also CEO of WoTC in a previous job.
Mindos
CHAOTIC EVIL
If the license changes come through again in some form, I guess we got our answer. I wonder what this means for DDO.
Elminster
Sage of Shadowdale
The only way in which SSG loses control over their license is if another company comes along and says "hey we're making DDO 2. Please give us the license and pull any other gaming company license who can be a potential compeititor to us."
And I put and in bold because sometimes that isn't part of the deal. Sometimes they want the "older version" of the game because that creates user engagement and thus ready built playerbase to siphon players from. I.E. what's probably going to happen to LoTRO and Amazon's brand new LoTR (3rd age war of the rings) MMO.
Guntango
Well-known member
It couldn’t possibly be smart culling in advance of a potential downward trend. You must be right.
Oliphant
Well-known member
Capitalism is about putting pennies on our eyes so everyone is separated from the consequences of their decisions, to the extent of not even having to look at what their decisions do to people, creatures, nature. Capital may be the pressure that pushes towards certain outcomes but shareholders really aren't in control. CEOs and their adjacent are mostly running companies with little skin in the game raiding everyone, above and below. The people at the bottom can see low low prices while all the cut corners are hidden and we all collectively consume fake garbage at a scale that is obviously pushing us into a new epoch of the planet.
HoopleHead
Well-known member
The most frequent assumption when talking about 'capitalism' is balanced association of limited Common-Sense Governmental oversight... the problem is we live in an age where ethics & idealist restraint has been utterly abandoned... virtually anything can be justified if you just argue it convincingly enough.
Hasbro lost money 4 quarters in a row.
Alot of the WOTC numbers have to do with the BG3 launch - not sure how that deal i structured but if it's based on sales that revenue stream won't be as big going forward.
Alot of misleading info in this thread to make political points. I would prefer to keep the political stuff off the forum entirely, but to the extent it's here it should at least be accurate. It's easy to criticize decisions when you have no idea what goes on behind those walls or the reason for the decisions.
Jack Jarvis Esquire
Well-known member
Yes. It absolutely rips my knitting! Here we currently have an unelected Lord (ok Lady) who lied about her involvement in procuring a path for the supply of PPE during COVID which netted her husband's firm £60 million in profit.
This may be only one case amongst many exposed so far.
That's not the fault of capitalism per se but it shows what happens when the market is left unregulated and open to corruption. In this case aided and abetted by the UKs pathetic class system.
I have no words to express just how disgusting it is for folks to profiteer from the public during times of national crisis. Particularly those who hold public office.
Hopefully justice will be served.
This may be only one case amongst many exposed so far.
That's not the fault of capitalism per se but it shows what happens when the market is left unregulated and open to corruption. In this case aided and abetted by the UKs pathetic class system.
I have no words to express just how disgusting it is for folks to profiteer from the public during times of national crisis. Particularly those who hold public office.
Hopefully justice will be served.
Oliphant
Well-known member
Bing GPT certainly not gospel but here's what I got from it. This reads to me as reduction in profits, not losses.
Prompt: has Hasboro lost money four quarters in a row? i'm tyring to contextualize their recent lay offs that were recently highlighted in a tweet by the lead developer of BG3
Answer:
Yes, Hasbro has been facing financial challenges. According to their financial reports, Hasbro’s revenue declined by 10% in the third quarter of 20231, and by 14% in the first quarter of 20232. This decline in revenue has led to significant losses in operating profit12.
In terms of layoffs, Hasbro has indeed made significant cuts to its workforce. The company laid off 1,100 employees globally as part of its “strategic transformation,” and hinted at more job cuts to come in the next six months3. This included layoffs at Wizards of the Coast, which manages the Dungeons and Dragons brand45.
The lead developer of Baldur’s Gate 3, Swen Vincke, acknowledged these layoffs in a tweet. He revealed that almost all the people who were in the original meeting when Baldur’s Gate 3 was approved are no longer working at Wizards of the Coast67. This suggests that the layoffs have had a significant impact on the team behind this popular game.
These financial struggles and layoffs could be part of the reason why Hasbro is facing criticism and scrutiny. It’s always unfortunate when layoffs occur, especially in creative industries where teams often work closely together to create products enjoyed by many.
Prompt: has Hasboro lost money four quarters in a row? i'm tyring to contextualize their recent lay offs that were recently highlighted in a tweet by the lead developer of BG3
Answer:
Yes, Hasbro has been facing financial challenges. According to their financial reports, Hasbro’s revenue declined by 10% in the third quarter of 20231, and by 14% in the first quarter of 20232. This decline in revenue has led to significant losses in operating profit12.
In terms of layoffs, Hasbro has indeed made significant cuts to its workforce. The company laid off 1,100 employees globally as part of its “strategic transformation,” and hinted at more job cuts to come in the next six months3. This included layoffs at Wizards of the Coast, which manages the Dungeons and Dragons brand45.
The lead developer of Baldur’s Gate 3, Swen Vincke, acknowledged these layoffs in a tweet. He revealed that almost all the people who were in the original meeting when Baldur’s Gate 3 was approved are no longer working at Wizards of the Coast67. This suggests that the layoffs have had a significant impact on the team behind this popular game.
These financial struggles and layoffs could be part of the reason why Hasbro is facing criticism and scrutiny. It’s always unfortunate when layoffs occur, especially in creative industries where teams often work closely together to create products enjoyed by many.
If you parse it more carefully, you see digital is up quite a bit mostly due to BG3 but the products divisions are down 18%
That's interesting. I would believe that.
I think they kind of shot themselves in the foot with the Open License fiasco. Now you have major brands like Pathfinder that were supporting their ecosystem, and thus boosting sales indirectly, stepping away to their own thing.
They have also overly saturated the MTG market, and rely more and more on oddball mechanics that are hard for new players to grasp as time goes on. When I introduce someone the the game, it's using cards from the early 90s, not the insane stuff they are putting out now.
CEO's of publicly traded companies are there for quarterly/yearly profits, all else be danged. As others have stated, they frequently know nothing about the product of the businesses they are running. They're number crunches, bean counters. They do not see people beneath them, they see numbers on a spreadsheet. This is the nature of capitalism when you make it to the big leagues.
Small teams, passion projects, mom and pop operations... studios like Larion and SSG are where real value comes from. They do the best they can in a dog eat dog economy. It's a shame companies like Hasbro buy up the IP with the most potential and milk it for every penny as fast as they can, rather than looking at 20, 10, heck even 5 years down the line.
Maybe if companies looked at employees as family rather than assets and liabilities, capitalism wouldn't be so harsh. One can dream, but reality dictates greed from those at the top.
Money is not the root of all evil... the love of it is.
Small teams, passion projects, mom and pop operations... studios like Larion and SSG are where real value comes from. They do the best they can in a dog eat dog economy. It's a shame companies like Hasbro buy up the IP with the most potential and milk it for every penny as fast as they can, rather than looking at 20, 10, heck even 5 years down the line.
Maybe if companies looked at employees as family rather than assets and liabilities, capitalism wouldn't be so harsh. One can dream, but reality dictates greed from those at the top.
Money is not the root of all evil... the love of it is.
Oliphant
Well-known member
Publicly traded companies tend to degenerate into short term number crunching (the crunching in the minds of CEOs about their personal plans to get the bag and run) but the smart money will setup a publicly traded company at the start with rules to avoid that irrationality (the CEO capture and the short term myopia capture).
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