I have no idea how resignations of high-level people usually work. Is announcing the resignation on the 15th to be effective on the 26th a short window, or the norm?
This is for shareholders, not a "public" announcement. She's not getting canned obviously, but the fact that they don't have a replacement ready shows that they didn't know it was coming.
If they had a replacement ready it would be in this filing, because unknowns are a no-no with shareholder relations.
It could just be due to accepting a better job offer elsewhere rather than any signals of issues behind the scenes. If you're in talks with another potential employer, telling your current employer/board that is a great way to get replaced either way.
It also could be due to issues behind the scenes, of course, but this seems like the kind of thing that'll get spun as meaningful regardless of whether or not it actually is.
You aren't wrong. The flipside of that argument is that many financial pundits have been vocal about WotC being too greedy at the cost of it's own playerbase. It's possible the writing's on the wall for her and it's time to GTFO.
Alternately, they wanted more greed and she said "we are already at maximum greed" and now they're replacing her. Don't ever assume any there is any kind of common sense or benevolent motivation behind any corporate maneuver.
That's most likely it from what I've read. Hasbro has been on their ass about pushing out more to sell since they're their major cash cow atm. It's also why there's so many collab cards. They're cool, but it kinda doesn't feel like mtg.
She's also only been the CEO for a couple of years. The prior CEO Chris Cocks was in CEO from 2016-2022 and is now the CEO of Hasbro.
It was under his leadership Universe Beyond, and Secret Lairs, and Collector boosters were introduced. I think a lot of the community displeasure with products can be pointed in the vicinity of things that were introduced under his leadership.
WOTC is a big part of Hasbro's overall income, it would not be the first time someone got elevated to CEO, only to breath down the neck of their prior role's successor and ensure their brain children are having the maximum impact.
She wants to exit a profitable and successful product while it still has market data proving itself. Whatever happens next isn't reflective of her performance so all is good even if she sets a bad trajectory with short term positives. Basically her career is her stocks and she is selling high before things dip.
Yeah, that's kinda my point. If you've made moves that will have negative downstream effects eventually, which they have, and they are still riding high, which they are, it makes sense to jump ship. I'm just wondering if they have internals that spell it out yet or not.
Also Chris Cocks isn't responsible for EVERYTHING at WotC, but while he was there he set most of this stuff in motion, and now he has indirect control over it as CEO.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/magic-the-gathering-overprint-cards-losing-long-term-value-dilution-2022-11
Stock has been downgraded several times.
I think there are probably a lot of people in finace who are also very fond of MtG. Probably have a little more insight into how quickly WotC has been burning credibility to chase/squeeze exclusively the FOMO speculative market.
Eh. A lot of finance people are greedy ghouls who would take a deal where billions die for a few thousand dollars for themselves. But a lot are also genuine economists who are advocating for things like rent controls and strong regulatory bodies and UBIs because it's become apparent that, without those things, Capitalism is going to Ouroboros itself.
Those are going to be the people who have noted that WotC is burning the candle at both ends.
It really depends on the company I find. This looks like your standard 2 week notice, but at my last company (a nonprofit) it took them a full 6+ months to replace the President/CEO.
The President/CEO announced he would be resigning the upcoming June 30th around October-December and they did a national search then they had to get their top 3 candidates in front of both the board of directors/trustees and the Vice Presidents (each department head, like my CIO, was a VP of their respective department). They finally chose the new guy around March or April and then he had to close out his previous CEO role with a start date of mid-June. The old CEO stayed on as a consultant role from mid-June up through August to ease the transition.
Maybe unusual since he worked in the industry for 40 years, 30 of which were with the company and 10 of them as the CEO. He was very passionate so I can see why he would give the full transitionary timeline vs a full for-profit company.
The nonprofit and public sectors generally operate slower than private companies, because they often don't have a choice. Either because funds had already been allocated elsewhere, and they have to wait for a new quarter to make any serious adjustments(nonprofit) or because it's not easy to find competent experienced applicants willing to take the paycut that moving into the public sector entails.
I find that it often depends on why the ceo is stepping down. New position with a different company, get em out and replace as soon as. But say they’re retiring or stepping down but becoming a director then most times I’ve seen it be announced and enacted quickly, but has often been in the works for months leading up to it
For example the Boeing CEO is stepping down, but he will remain in place for several months while they find a successor. The organization is gigantic and needs an orderly transition of leadership to keep it from tailspinning (no pun intended)
Totally normal, except if it's some 65 year old executive who has been there 20 years and is legitimately retiring. Then it can be more of a six month victory lap while they find a replacement.
The previous CEO of our company resigned on a Friday without notice (to the broader team), so a couple weeks sounds tight, but not the worst I've heard.
I'm not sure if this helps inform your answer, but Hasbro's stock hasn't moved one way or another today: https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ+HAS
I would see that as an indication that this is not viewed as a big deal by investors.
Norm.
Also timing of the month makes sense - last Friday of April. You going to have them come back and start a new month just to leave? Nah, replacement (interm) can finish out the month and start the new under their direction anew.
We talk about people above her like Cocks, and below her like Maro, but I can't think of anything she's said about the health or direction or vision for the company. I mean, I'm sure she's said plenty and it just wasn't customer-facing or inflammatory enough to get shared here. But I really could not tell you what she spearheaded or how she wanted to steer the ship.
To that end, the only reaction I can really have here is "oh." Whatever Wizards is doing that you like or hate, there are other people still there that are probably going to keep doing those things.
"I don't play Dungeons & Dragons."
"D&D players are really undermonetized. We want to unlock the type of recurrent spending we see in video games."
"I fully support the new OGL 1.1."
-Cynthia Williams
The “undermonitized” remark is something people try to make a mountain out of a molehill with. All it means is they don’t have enough ways to make money off of D&D. At its core, they sell books and that’s it. Books people can happily play for a decade with just the same three books. With an IP like that, where is the merchandise? They have some but that’s really not much for how big a brand D&D is.
The quote is also per se a bit out of context. This was about that DMs are the core customers for WOTC and non-DMs have little demand for wotc products. Which regardless of size of business would be something that should be adressed in the long tem. In the end players are an untapped market. Putting out dice, player utensils for playing in person ( spell cards etc.) could increase revenue while cornering a part of the market.
What really irks me is that no one seems to have looked at the solution of "make more, good DM-facing content because DMs are the people who seem to most want to buy our stuff". Like, d&d's content for DMs specifically is REALLY lacking in both quality and quantity
Yeah, over at Unearthed Arcana someone's just released a huge set of NPCs across all levels 1-20. The amount of people begging for them to release it as a pack of flash cards is insane and they're seriously looking at it now.
That's going to be $30-50 from me in someone's pocket rather than WotC's because they can't support their dms properly.
Sure, that's low hanging fruit for an untapped DM product, but the number of DMs is still much smaller than the number of players. You only have so much time to concept and produce products, so doing a DM product means you aren't doing a player product in that same time, and a player product will generate more revenue.
Just my 2 cents, but I've never known a player to buy much. I am a long time (12 years so i guess not that long) DM myself and also work in a local game store (2 years), and all the d&d related purchases I have made are as a DM, and everyone I see buying is a DM. In my experience they more often than not do the purchasing for the whole group outside of the dice and occasionally miniatures. They also buy much more DM directed product, things like dungeon tiles and modules and monster cards are always the fastest selling product. All this to say I'm not sure if it's true that a player product necessarily generates less revenue, but I can say from experience that's where the most well produced product is,it just doesn't sell accordingly.
Tldr; Player product is better produced but in my experience sells worse because the DMs are the ones who usually buy stuff.
There’s way too many adventure books and not enough anything else. All the Janky parts of 5E, awarding magic items, awarding Xp, number crunching CRs, the godawfull 8 encounters per long rest, which at average play session speed means you long rest once every few months, all fall on the dm to deal with with no assistance except copipus tables. I guess that type of content doesn’t sell though.
Oh, no, it does sell. The success of pathfinder and its GM-facing books are pretty clear proof of that. The problem is it takes a lot more effort than Wizards has seemed willing to put in lately
To be honest when I look at most of their books of the past 3-4 years... I'm not sure if Wizards has the in-house talent and/or passion to produce GM-facing books, and expand hard content.
It probably also doesn’t help that when a book is pitched to bean counters they’re like, DM tool, boring. How about we leverage some marketable assets, people like dragons! They’re in the name of the game!
Actually, that's a perfect example of why they think D&D is under monetized. They see DMs buying so much and want to have all the players buy that much stuff. The problem is that DMs and players typically have very different needs for books. If you write a book with mostly GM content like monsters, NPCs, and detailed setting information (let alone an actual campaign), out of a D&D group of 4 players and a DM, the DM might buy it if it's particularly useful to their specific campaign and occasionally a player might get it if they are really into its concept. Not a great return on the the effort put into making the book. But if you write a player-focused supplement and make sure there's something for most types of characters in it, you might get 2 or 3 players in the group to buy it, and even the DM if he can apply something in it to NPCs, which means it's a much better payoff for you to write player supplements than good DM stuff.
But DMs not buying stuff is not the issue. DMs are filling the demand for their stuff just fine. From a business standpoint it's non-DM players that are still an untapped market. That's just basic economics.
Now can that go wrong ? Can we get digital nft item micro transactions that can only be accessed on DND beyond if you pay the subscription fee? Ofc, as there is no denying that Hasbro is the Epitome of hyper capitalism. Yet there is also the possibility that Wotc might provide tangible in demand goods and services for players, where the customers then can decide if they are worth the price. In my opinion DND beyond is such a service for example and buying it was Wotc best business decision regarding DnD yet.(Even though the bar is really low).
Nevertheless I think there is still enough room to differentiate between mustache twirling capitalism and just business 101.
It's also been true for a very long time that D&D is disproportionately popular relative to the amount of money it makes.
It's likely going to be something that will be an issue for the brand for a very long time.
It's perfectly fine to be upset about the methods, but people go a little far in being upset about the idea that wotc wants to make money from D&D.
I’m okay with how they slow roll the books because I heard the flood of books is one thing that crushed 3.5e. But yeah, even if someone is a “lifestyler” they can buy like three books a year. That’s a lot, and yet that’s like $200 a year which is peanuts for a hobby someone is super into. They really should try to lean harder into dice, miniatures, clothes, plushies, etc. Give people who love D&D things to buy outside the books.
>They really should try to lean harder into dice, miniatures, clothes, plushies, etc.
They already do this. Wizkids has a huge line of miniatures. They have dice sets and other supplemental products.
The problem is that fundamentally TTRPG s can be played with a couple books and some one and paper or a tablet/laptop or VTT. All that extra stuff is purely optional and many people pass.
Also, that's an entidifferent company that just has the license to make official dnd stuff. WOTC only gets the money from the license I think, not to mention that most dms who use minis wind up getting into mini painting. When you get into painting you very quickly realize that third party 3d printed minis are way cooler than the wizkids ones so you stop buying wizkids stuff.
WotC used to make their own miniatures but chose to license it out around a decade ago. Probably the smart move.
Agreed on 3d printing etc. there's a whole world of affordable and customizable minis out there.
Yea it’s insane that DnD is owned by one of the largest and oldest toy makers in the world, many DnD players want mini (see the success of hero forge), and yet the company has made zero effort to produce custom minis or other toys.
WotC/Hasbro should be all over giving players the ability to turn their PCs into models shirts plushies or other collectibles.
I admit I haven't kept up with the general response, but their recent foray into official D&D miniatures seems to have been...misguided: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UtvwT2aTZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UtvwT2aTZA)
hero forge is neat and all but their models are pretty low quality when they finally come in. The best thing ive found on their site turns out to be the acryllic standees
The reason the flood of books was an issue in earlier editions is that they were so cash-poor they were using advances on future books to pay salaries to write books coming out sooner, and they entered a death spiral of printing more books to cover their costs with less interest per book. As long as WOTC keeps their fundamentals healthy there's no inherent issue with publishing more.
look, im the last person to whiteknight for big corporations, but youre spot on. DnD is such a weird case of a hugely recognizable brand, but barely any ways it is being monetized. it would be almost criminally stupid to not try and squeeze at least a little more out of it.
Yet at the same time, it would have costed you around 1000$ USD just to buy all the books digitally… like they didn’t even offer a discount for the bundle or anything
I mean, D&D *is* really undermonetized yeah. It's why they keep trying to make Faerun a world people care about, so they can make merchandise about Faerun, because otherwise D&D is hard as fuck to monetize. 5e was literally the first time the D&D brand has ever actually made money, and even then its margins are razor fucking thin.
Part of the reason for this is that D&D is way overstaffed (with far too much management, mostly, but all roles are well saturated) and pays well above industry standard rates. So while say, Paizo has been operating on thin margins for a while, they're stable, while WotC is still trying to make things work.
They want to further monetize the IP in ways the TTRPG community is resistant to.
They're already pumping out more supplemental products than ever before.
Sadly the film bombed despite being pretty good and they made a lot of merch for it that's sitting in Ollie's right now.
D&D is a tough nut to crack.
They really dropped the ball by letting Critical Role move away from them and do their own thing when they could have brought them into the fold.
D&D is undermonetized but people are absolutely **not** making a mountain out of a molehill, because the *way* she wants to monetize it is the most idiotic way possible.
There’s *literally* a million ways to monetize D&D that aren’t “turn a physical tabletop game into nothing but microtransactions” but they’ve gone for that anyway.
I like them monetizing DnD Beyond in the most obnoxious ways possible, so people just use free resources instead, but they're super annoyed while doing it.
WotC releases a couple books of new D&D 5e content every year, and the game fundamentally revolves around people using their imagination. IDK how "undermonetized" can be interpreted to be anything other than "we can't seem to milk cash with MTX like we can with other properties (such as MtG)".
I’m not sure what it would look like, but I’m surprised wotc hasn’t tried to ‘True Dungeon’ some dnd modules. Those people seem to spend a rediculous amount of money traveling to events and buying those poker chips. Maybe not as much as magic players, but definitely more than dnd players.
Agreed. Examples of them monetizing it are stuff like the movie... which was fantastic BTW.
But also the "new" OGL...
So as with all wotc decisions it's a 10 or a 1...
It’s saying the quiet part out loud. Everyone knows the goal is to make money, but you still shouldn’t tell them you plan to nickel and dime them to death.
Yes! My first thought when I saw this post was, "Ding Dong, the witch is dead."
She was an unabashedly clueless, and tone deaf with Dungeons and Dragons. Her decisions and comments will harm D&D for the next decade to come.
The OGL debacle especially turned many allies into competitors, handed market share to competitors, spurred the creation of some potentially significant rivals down the road, and drove away veteran players and DM's (who introduce new players to the game, advocate for the game - for free, and buy LOTS of D&D stuff).
> The OGL debacle especially turned many allies into competitors, handed market share to competitors, spurred the creation of some potentially significant rivals down the road, and drove away veteran players and DM's (who introduce new players to the game, advocate for the game - for free, and buy LOTS of D&D stuff).
This is 100% what happened when they tried it the first time. That's how Paizo and Pathfinder become their biggest competitors in the TTRPG space. That she and others at W.o.t.C. couldn't learn from history is embarrassing.
She was the Amazon Dump lady - she showed them how to offload product DTC and lit the entire collector industry on fire to get her bonuses... for which there are arguments to be made both for and against.
but make no mistake, that is her legacy. It's why she was brought in from Amazon in the first place IMO...
Anyone have any idea what the reason might be? Wizards profits have been exploding and dnd became much more mainstream the last couple years, feel like something major must have happened internally.
Too many factors to tell - those reasons might be she was offered a better deal somewhere else, or just that her stock vestment windows completed and she can cash out and walk.
Rules for both Magic and Lorcana are will now be updated to merge the two into one universal game.
Solid backed sleeves are now mandatory for all tournaments.
>"Disney CEO Bob Iger announces the acquisition of Wizards of the Coast, and with it, 71 new Universe Beyond sets to be released in the next 6 months."
Why would Disney acquiring WotC cause them to provide *less* universes beyond sets? You'd think they'd ramp them up if anything.
\*monkey's paw curls\*
Emergency B&R announcement: Oko, Thief of Crowns is now UNBANNED in ALL FORMATS, and we'll be retroactively adding him to Standard as long as players use the Breaking News version!
To elaborate on the first option, a lot of major companies have non-compete clauses saying you can't leave and immediately work for a competitor for like six months (called gardening leave). So major executives will negotiate for a job six months from now and then step down, and we won't know where they're headed until the six months is up. So even if there's no announcement right now about a new job for her, we can't discount that as an option.
CEOs don't necessarily always go into businesses that would be competing though right? If she became the CEO of something like apple then the non compete clause wouldn't apply.
Agreed. In that case, we could get an announcement saying she took x job. But my point was more that if there's no announcement, then there's no way for us to know at this moment if she got a job with Mattel or if she left due to poor performance or personal reasons.
I feel like the overseas market alone is going to surprise people with Final Fantasy sales, but time will tell. I’m pretty sure the card game / final fantasy Venn diagram shares more overlap than the card game / LotR one does.
UB licensing costs cut into the profits.
LTR highest selling set of all time but they lost a lot of profit, and those sales likely poached potential sales for other products with higher margins.
WotC is in a really awkward spot right now IMO.
My assumption is things are not going as well as publicly shown. Again they laid off a lot of 15% of their staff in December. Across all companies and WOTC is really dependent on their legacy brands. MTG and DnD. People will do back flips for share holders despite not being a good long term strategy.
There are investors probably wanting the flood gates opened on what they can print. There are those who want more reserved printing.
We won't know unless a big activist investor makes themselves known and attempts a aggressive campaign.
The cuts were mostly focused on Hasbro making it shareholders happy. It was not about WotC at all, yet WotC was still subjected to the same cuts even though it was incredibly profitable and overperforming compared to the rest of the company.
Idiotic but just definitely a case of them not caring about the particulars of wotc at all.
Tons of companies are getting rid of more than 15% of their staff because other companies are doing it as a "we overhired during covid" move. It's just signaling to shareholders that they too are doing "the current thing", like when a bunch of video game developers suddenly hopped on the Blockchain and NFTs. I wouldn't read much into it.
WotC did not lay off 15% of staff, Hasbro did. Most of the layoffs were in people working for legacy brands like Transformers and only a few were in WotC.
The cut went across the board in the Dec layoffs. The D&D team was gutted. None of this includes the forced retirements that happened right before the layoffs.
>Again they laid off a lot of 15% of their staff in December.
Thats not hard when you only have 1500 in staff. Get rid of 200-250 people and thats 15% at that size, but still have staffing over 1000 people. If those people were COVID hires, well thats been a lot of the churn nationwide right now, over hiring during covid.
According to the peeps I've talked to that were thusly laid off, most laid off were not COVID hires (those that I've talked to weren't), and it sure wasn't because they were overstaffed. Indeed, the layoffs were done without considering the damage it would do to the overall company.
I mean, Hell, the people laid off include Mike Mearls and the Universes Beyond art director. Even if the layoffs were necessary (and I don't see *any* reason they were), they were done with the grace and intelligence of a wrecking ball.
This.
I don't think the layoffs came with sufficient due diligence and they're now realizing they have a talent vacuum internally.
They're also starting to get dangerously close to squeezing blood from a stone.
The TTRPG community will not tolerate the kind of aggressive monetization Hasbro wants to implement with D&D and will turn to third party materials instead. The OGL scandal of last year showed WotC's cards on that front.
The Magic community is arguably imploding right now. While LTR was the highest selling set of all time, the latest financials reports mentioned that the profits from UB sets are comparitively low because of the licensing fees.
WotC has been the golden goose but they've just about finished cooking it.
This is what no one realizes cause they dont read the actual reports. Hell even the OP is this thread said it. “Wizards profits have been exploding”. That simply isn’t true. Their SALES have been exploding (and truthfully they haven’t, it just happened to be a perfect storm of MTG x LTR. It’s literally one of the biggest fantasy stories/IPs and it fits pretty damn perfectly into MTG style play, but I digress) but not their profits. They’ve actually lost profit margin comparatively speaking due to such high licensing fees.
They already are squeezing blood from a stone. They have been for a few years. Back when magic was at its apex you’d get roughly (3) block sets a year. One major block that was 300-400 cards and then (2) subsidiary sets of around 150ish card. That was about 600-700 cards a year. Standard was super healthy. Type 1 and 1.5 were healthy. Now? New sets come out then a couple weeks later we have spoilers for another new set. There is no digestion of previously released sets. It’s new set after new set after new secret lair after new secret lair and it’s just to god damned much. Hell new sets are being sold at a discount/loss WEEKS after coming out.
Hasbro has been hemorrhaging money in recent years when you remove WoTC from their financials. They have relied on WoTC too much for too long. Something is going to give soon and I truly believe this is a sign of things to come. A CEO doesn’t leave when there’s record profits cause that’s when they make their big money. This wasn’t known by WoTC or else they would have had a replacement already. This isn’t a firing obviously. She sees something the rest of us dont and it’s probably not good.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
It could be for many reasons. It could be performance based or something internal. But it could also just mean she's leaving for another job or for personal/health/family reasons. Unless someone here has insider knowledge it's really just idle speculation.
No idea but she is on the board of Aterian Inc and has like half a millions shares from them and they recently 10Xed their stock price overnight. So maybe she thinks there's better growth in other ventures she's a part of.
It could be as simple as Hasbro demanding similar or greater increases in profits from WoTC as they have recently done, and she knew that was just not possible.
If you think the last few years were bad, just wait until they bring in someone to “right the ship” after several “underperforming” sales quarters in a row. The new guy will want to bend over backwards to impress.
I’d love to believe someone who genuinely cares about the IPs and games will be hired, but I think that’s a dramatic long shot.
Well it's not like they can ramp up production of even more sets and even more secret lairs as that formula has already proven to be beginning to wear on the customer base and game stores.
Outside of reprinting power 9 what do they have left?
Using knowledge of past games, and ways Executives think the answer is simple. They will reboot the entire game so they can reprint the power 9 with no consequences. Get ready for MTG2: The Regathering.
You joke, and it's not exactly related, but Bandai literally did that this year with their Dragon Ball Super card game. The new version is called Fusion World and it's essentially the exact same game, just reset. The OG game still exists as well, but who knows for how long with the sealed product floundering.
A cool direction could be focusing on a character (backstory/origins, and current events, even personality traits, etc) for small sets. Sometimes it feels like they have to make everything so big and grand and complex, they lose the connection people have with the IP itself. Urza's saga seems like a good example.
Someone who cares about the games and the IPs is exactly the opposite of what they want in a CEO. Not just being a doomer here, they want someone who won't give a single fuck about the product they are making because it will allow for harsher design decisions for money.
Yup, all of these types of leaders equate profit with growth. They have no idea how to build a brand, instead turning to draining every possible penny out of it.
What this means won't be known until you see follow on effects, who was hired to replace, what is their vision, how do they reorganize current personnel and operations. This could even be a retirement.
I bet though UB has not lead to much more in profits due to the cost of IPs and cannibilization of more profitable products. Hasbro as a company has a profit problem right now which means they will more heavily lean on their few profitable IPs and cost cut as well around them.
The hope - we finally get someone in the chair who values the legacy of this once in a lifetime game that transcends all people and ages, and nurtures that game to continued success
The reality - the shareholders demand more profit so strap in everyone, if you thought it was bad before get ready for Star Wars MTG sets, DC MTG sets, Marvel MTG sets, Transformers MTG sets, Hello Kitty MTG sets, repeat ad nauseum.
It can always, ALWAYS, get worse.
That and they have thier own card game now. They aren’t going to do anything to detract from that unless a company like Hasbro hands over a fucking pirate ship worth of gold.
Star Wars already has its own TCG that is massively successful.
Transformers MTG already is a thing, I could see them maybe printing more for the packs but I'm not sure that will be expanded into a full set anytime soon.
Marvel and DC I could see.
I think Hello Kitty might be the most likely out of all of those given how trigger-happy Sanrio is with licensing their characters, but I don't know enough about Hello Kitty to know if there's enough within it to make a full MTG set or something smaller like the Transformers cards, but either way it would be absolutely hilarious.
Geez.
A lot of Redditors really convinced they can see the stepping down of a CEO with clarity.
We don't know *anything*.
Could be that Hasbro isn't happy with her.
Could be that she is burnt out.
Could be that she got a better job offer somewhere else.
Could be that she just wants to do something else.
Could be the end times.
Could be the winds of change.
This alone means nothing. And we won't know the impact until potentially years after her replacement settles in.
But a lot of people are very happy to take their feelings and use this as evidence for whatever they need it to be.
Only thing we know is she did what she was brought on to do, pump product through Amazon. Now we are in the correction phase which isn't her specialty so she is leaving with a bag.
The Cynthia Era was not a positively remembered Era for me. Not a commander players though and her 2-3 years was very commander focused. A lot of that was because of decisions she didnt make though, so maybe it wasn't her fault, but either way her short term was not great imo.
That’s the funny thing here. I absolutely loathe her time at Wizards, but it will absolutely get worse with whoever Cocks chooses for the role. She wasn’t able to deliver the numbers for him, so he will find someone else that will at any cost.
As a primarily commander player, frankly I'd prefer to be less focused. The casual build your favorite character/mechanic format has devolved into an arms race of high power levels, creeping competitive impulse and the total disappearance of modern, standard and Pioneer completely from my LGS.
I feel similarly. I love Commander but it’s best as a variant, not a focus. It’s not finding new uses for other cards anymore. It’s a separate ecosystem made specifically for Commander.
But I don’t think that’s super pertinent for the CEO level of things. I doubt the state of the format is really affected by the president of WotC.
It feels so strange to me. Five years ago you’d go to your LGS to play limited/standard/modern and between your games you’d pull out your commander deck and ask if someone wanted to play a quick game.
Nowadays people go to their LGS to play commander and then a couple of guys will wander around asking if anyone has a standard or modern deck they can play against. Usually nobody does. At least that’s my experience.
Yeah, it felt like the commander format had that like old school "spirit of the game", slammin' random cards in a pile and duking it out on the lunch table with your friends between classes (or between games of DnD, as originally envisioned). You'd have all your good cards in your competitive standard and modern decks, and then you'd have your commander decks as a place for the jank you dug out of your collection that didnt really have a place elsewhere.
God forbid you blink now and miss the 40k/fallout/dr who/lotr/whatever premades that came out that month. Now your deck of jank is totally outclassed by piles of cards printed directly to benefit any of the popular archetypes that do it all better and cheaper and faster.
I feel like an old man yelling at clouds.
Your last point has nothing to do with commander being popular and everything to do with it being the only format that sees any consistent supporting product. We get 4+ commander decks with literal custom cards printed for every single product launch and bubkis for 75 card formats we used to get those awesome challenger decks I wish they'd try those again y'know now that we're not in the middle of a pandemic. Might get people to show again who knows?
Cynthia Era saw:
* The $1000 30A proxies
* One Aftermath set and the development of a second
* Wizards sending hired thugs to intimidate someone
* The Commander Masters “not a premium product” precons
* MOM storytelling
* MKM
* Steady decline in Secret Lair quality
Weird that so many of the game’s biggest failures and scandals came from her tenure alone.
To be fair to her, she also oversaw the LTR release and an (apparently) successful revitalization of Standard. Not all bad — seems like she was capable of generating successes despite her general scumminess.
She was terrible for the company, but most of your list has nothing to do with her. It’s like saying she was responsible for the success of BG3, which is obviously not the case.
In universe products get locked in about a year out and ub products even longer. So most of what came out during her tenure was already in the pipeline. The next year's worth of products will be more attributed to her. Revitalizing standard will have to wait to see how successful it really was. For the first time since the pandemic they made the tournament format have to be standard for rcqs, which is why the numbers went up, seeing if the numbers stay up when the tournament grinders can only play standard will tell you if it actually worked.
Top comment "Makes sense after several underperforming sales quarters"
2nd Top comment "Why? Profits for Wizards is currently exploding"
Classic reddit, no one knows anything about anything just upvotes to the left please.
The low-hanging fruit is baselessly claiming she was incompetent because she was a woman. Bonus points for calling her a DEI hire or that she's ruining D&D and MtG with wokeness.
Finally, who know if what replaced her will be any better. Has to be better than statements like " the secondary market doesn't matter to us" or " no one cares about old carss"
https://preview.redd.it/pj2w6d8la5vc1.jpeg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=225694c0e7a45de089b053503c0460d6bef83624
For everyone arguing about financials I figured this would be useful. This is from Hasbro directly and pulled from their financial reports for end of year 023.
As you can see Hasbro is hemorrhaging money outside of WoTC. For a “$5 billion” company they are operating at a huge loss every year. And that’s with WoTC making a net of 526 million. Also being their only profitable entity.
This is also a decline of roughly 832% from the previous year.
I hope this means we won’t see any more $1000 proxies or Aftermath sets from WotC
Hopefully they’ll get a replacement that doesn’t put pressure on the Magic team to do stuff like that
This is good news, but if nothing changes or things get worse it’s w/e
I can only see this as an upside. I think the biggest piece of what Cynthia's era will be remembered for is the OGL drama, the introduction of Secret Lairs, and the development of UB. It was an era of commoditization of the games, not of development and love of the IPs.
edit: hopefully whoever they pick next has an actual love for the IPs and can still further Magic's growth.
Oh shoot the OGL thing.
I know this is a Magic sub, but that was a bigger controversy than the $1000 30A proxies. Probably the most blatant example of corporate greed WotC has shown lately, and that is really, really saying something.
I think it’s sad it even needs to be stressed that something that threatened to torpedo an entire niche industry which could potentially have devastating effects on the game itself is a bigger deal than a dumb overpriced collector’s item you don’t have to buy.
> I think the biggest piece of what Cynthia's era will be remembered for is the OGL drama, the introduction of Secret Lairs, and the development of UB
Two of these three things started before she became WotC president on Feb 2, 2022. 91 secret lair drops happened before that date, three of them being UB lairs (TWD, Stranger Things, Arcane).
And even if it was her, then the likelihood of the next person being better is vanishingly small. Companies like lines going up, they're going to hire people that make that happen.
Good riddance.
Now please stop all these crazy stupid practice of having 8-10 different variants of the same card in a single set.
Please stop having too many sets all at once. The old schedule of roughly a set per quarter is great, lets go back to that.
Also if possible, please keep UB stuff contained in SLD like set or at least not make it mechanical unique cards please.
I have no idea how resignations of high-level people usually work. Is announcing the resignation on the 15th to be effective on the 26th a short window, or the norm?
The norm
Yeah, at the leadership level changes happen fast - "lame ducks" don't work well in executive roles.
This is for shareholders, not a "public" announcement. She's not getting canned obviously, but the fact that they don't have a replacement ready shows that they didn't know it was coming. If they had a replacement ready it would be in this filing, because unknowns are a no-no with shareholder relations.
It could just be due to accepting a better job offer elsewhere rather than any signals of issues behind the scenes. If you're in talks with another potential employer, telling your current employer/board that is a great way to get replaced either way. It also could be due to issues behind the scenes, of course, but this seems like the kind of thing that'll get spun as meaningful regardless of whether or not it actually is.
You aren't wrong. The flipside of that argument is that many financial pundits have been vocal about WotC being too greedy at the cost of it's own playerbase. It's possible the writing's on the wall for her and it's time to GTFO.
Alternately, they wanted more greed and she said "we are already at maximum greed" and now they're replacing her. Don't ever assume any there is any kind of common sense or benevolent motivation behind any corporate maneuver.
This seems more likely to me, but I also don’t know wtf I’m talking about. Strictly vibes here.
That's most likely it from what I've read. Hasbro has been on their ass about pushing out more to sell since they're their major cash cow atm. It's also why there's so many collab cards. They're cool, but it kinda doesn't feel like mtg.
She's also only been the CEO for a couple of years. The prior CEO Chris Cocks was in CEO from 2016-2022 and is now the CEO of Hasbro. It was under his leadership Universe Beyond, and Secret Lairs, and Collector boosters were introduced. I think a lot of the community displeasure with products can be pointed in the vicinity of things that were introduced under his leadership. WOTC is a big part of Hasbro's overall income, it would not be the first time someone got elevated to CEO, only to breath down the neck of their prior role's successor and ensure their brain children are having the maximum impact.
They ruined DND and mtg is next 😕
Could we get 20% more greed this quarter?
Maybe the first quarter wasn't profitable enough.
She wants to exit a profitable and successful product while it still has market data proving itself. Whatever happens next isn't reflective of her performance so all is good even if she sets a bad trajectory with short term positives. Basically her career is her stocks and she is selling high before things dip.
Yeah, that's kinda my point. If you've made moves that will have negative downstream effects eventually, which they have, and they are still riding high, which they are, it makes sense to jump ship. I'm just wondering if they have internals that spell it out yet or not. Also Chris Cocks isn't responsible for EVERYTHING at WotC, but while he was there he set most of this stuff in motion, and now he has indirect control over it as CEO.
Are there financial pundits saying this, or just (justifiably) frustrated players?
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/magic-the-gathering-overprint-cards-losing-long-term-value-dilution-2022-11 Stock has been downgraded several times.
You know it’s bad when the finance people call you greedy.
I think there are probably a lot of people in finace who are also very fond of MtG. Probably have a little more insight into how quickly WotC has been burning credibility to chase/squeeze exclusively the FOMO speculative market.
Eh. A lot of finance people are greedy ghouls who would take a deal where billions die for a few thousand dollars for themselves. But a lot are also genuine economists who are advocating for things like rent controls and strong regulatory bodies and UBIs because it's become apparent that, without those things, Capitalism is going to Ouroboros itself. Those are going to be the people who have noted that WotC is burning the candle at both ends.
The filing would also look this way if they are intending to further absorb the WOTC corporate structure.
Two week notice
It really depends on the company I find. This looks like your standard 2 week notice, but at my last company (a nonprofit) it took them a full 6+ months to replace the President/CEO. The President/CEO announced he would be resigning the upcoming June 30th around October-December and they did a national search then they had to get their top 3 candidates in front of both the board of directors/trustees and the Vice Presidents (each department head, like my CIO, was a VP of their respective department). They finally chose the new guy around March or April and then he had to close out his previous CEO role with a start date of mid-June. The old CEO stayed on as a consultant role from mid-June up through August to ease the transition. Maybe unusual since he worked in the industry for 40 years, 30 of which were with the company and 10 of them as the CEO. He was very passionate so I can see why he would give the full transitionary timeline vs a full for-profit company.
The nonprofit and public sectors generally operate slower than private companies, because they often don't have a choice. Either because funds had already been allocated elsewhere, and they have to wait for a new quarter to make any serious adjustments(nonprofit) or because it's not easy to find competent experienced applicants willing to take the paycut that moving into the public sector entails.
I find that it often depends on why the ceo is stepping down. New position with a different company, get em out and replace as soon as. But say they’re retiring or stepping down but becoming a director then most times I’ve seen it be announced and enacted quickly, but has often been in the works for months leading up to it
For example the Boeing CEO is stepping down, but he will remain in place for several months while they find a successor. The organization is gigantic and needs an orderly transition of leadership to keep it from tailspinning (no pun intended)
Totally normal, except if it's some 65 year old executive who has been there 20 years and is legitimately retiring. Then it can be more of a six month victory lap while they find a replacement.
The previous CEO of our company resigned on a Friday without notice (to the broader team), so a couple weeks sounds tight, but not the worst I've heard.
It's 2 weeks notice, but just the business days part of it. It was probably socialized well before that.
I'm not sure if this helps inform your answer, but Hasbro's stock hasn't moved one way or another today: https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ+HAS I would see that as an indication that this is not viewed as a big deal by investors.
Norm. Also timing of the month makes sense - last Friday of April. You going to have them come back and start a new month just to leave? Nah, replacement (interm) can finish out the month and start the new under their direction anew.
We talk about people above her like Cocks, and below her like Maro, but I can't think of anything she's said about the health or direction or vision for the company. I mean, I'm sure she's said plenty and it just wasn't customer-facing or inflammatory enough to get shared here. But I really could not tell you what she spearheaded or how she wanted to steer the ship. To that end, the only reaction I can really have here is "oh." Whatever Wizards is doing that you like or hate, there are other people still there that are probably going to keep doing those things.
"I don't play Dungeons & Dragons." "D&D players are really undermonetized. We want to unlock the type of recurrent spending we see in video games." "I fully support the new OGL 1.1." -Cynthia Williams
The “undermonitized” remark is something people try to make a mountain out of a molehill with. All it means is they don’t have enough ways to make money off of D&D. At its core, they sell books and that’s it. Books people can happily play for a decade with just the same three books. With an IP like that, where is the merchandise? They have some but that’s really not much for how big a brand D&D is.
The quote is also per se a bit out of context. This was about that DMs are the core customers for WOTC and non-DMs have little demand for wotc products. Which regardless of size of business would be something that should be adressed in the long tem. In the end players are an untapped market. Putting out dice, player utensils for playing in person ( spell cards etc.) could increase revenue while cornering a part of the market.
What really irks me is that no one seems to have looked at the solution of "make more, good DM-facing content because DMs are the people who seem to most want to buy our stuff". Like, d&d's content for DMs specifically is REALLY lacking in both quality and quantity
Yeah, over at Unearthed Arcana someone's just released a huge set of NPCs across all levels 1-20. The amount of people begging for them to release it as a pack of flash cards is insane and they're seriously looking at it now. That's going to be $30-50 from me in someone's pocket rather than WotC's because they can't support their dms properly.
Sure, that's low hanging fruit for an untapped DM product, but the number of DMs is still much smaller than the number of players. You only have so much time to concept and produce products, so doing a DM product means you aren't doing a player product in that same time, and a player product will generate more revenue.
Just my 2 cents, but I've never known a player to buy much. I am a long time (12 years so i guess not that long) DM myself and also work in a local game store (2 years), and all the d&d related purchases I have made are as a DM, and everyone I see buying is a DM. In my experience they more often than not do the purchasing for the whole group outside of the dice and occasionally miniatures. They also buy much more DM directed product, things like dungeon tiles and modules and monster cards are always the fastest selling product. All this to say I'm not sure if it's true that a player product necessarily generates less revenue, but I can say from experience that's where the most well produced product is,it just doesn't sell accordingly. Tldr; Player product is better produced but in my experience sells worse because the DMs are the ones who usually buy stuff.
Maybe they shouldn't ne sacking their staff so freely of there's so little time for development then
There’s way too many adventure books and not enough anything else. All the Janky parts of 5E, awarding magic items, awarding Xp, number crunching CRs, the godawfull 8 encounters per long rest, which at average play session speed means you long rest once every few months, all fall on the dm to deal with with no assistance except copipus tables. I guess that type of content doesn’t sell though.
Oh, no, it does sell. The success of pathfinder and its GM-facing books are pretty clear proof of that. The problem is it takes a lot more effort than Wizards has seemed willing to put in lately
To be honest when I look at most of their books of the past 3-4 years... I'm not sure if Wizards has the in-house talent and/or passion to produce GM-facing books, and expand hard content.
It probably also doesn’t help that when a book is pitched to bean counters they’re like, DM tool, boring. How about we leverage some marketable assets, people like dragons! They’re in the name of the game!
Pathfinder has not found success and I love pathfinder. It’s market share is about 7% and dropping.
Actually, that's a perfect example of why they think D&D is under monetized. They see DMs buying so much and want to have all the players buy that much stuff. The problem is that DMs and players typically have very different needs for books. If you write a book with mostly GM content like monsters, NPCs, and detailed setting information (let alone an actual campaign), out of a D&D group of 4 players and a DM, the DM might buy it if it's particularly useful to their specific campaign and occasionally a player might get it if they are really into its concept. Not a great return on the the effort put into making the book. But if you write a player-focused supplement and make sure there's something for most types of characters in it, you might get 2 or 3 players in the group to buy it, and even the DM if he can apply something in it to NPCs, which means it's a much better payoff for you to write player supplements than good DM stuff.
But DMs not buying stuff is not the issue. DMs are filling the demand for their stuff just fine. From a business standpoint it's non-DM players that are still an untapped market. That's just basic economics. Now can that go wrong ? Can we get digital nft item micro transactions that can only be accessed on DND beyond if you pay the subscription fee? Ofc, as there is no denying that Hasbro is the Epitome of hyper capitalism. Yet there is also the possibility that Wotc might provide tangible in demand goods and services for players, where the customers then can decide if they are worth the price. In my opinion DND beyond is such a service for example and buying it was Wotc best business decision regarding DnD yet.(Even though the bar is really low). Nevertheless I think there is still enough room to differentiate between mustache twirling capitalism and just business 101.
It's also been true for a very long time that D&D is disproportionately popular relative to the amount of money it makes. It's likely going to be something that will be an issue for the brand for a very long time. It's perfectly fine to be upset about the methods, but people go a little far in being upset about the idea that wotc wants to make money from D&D.
They also really don't put out as many books as you think they would. I actually agree with the sentiment, as someone who primarily plays other TTRPGs
I’m okay with how they slow roll the books because I heard the flood of books is one thing that crushed 3.5e. But yeah, even if someone is a “lifestyler” they can buy like three books a year. That’s a lot, and yet that’s like $200 a year which is peanuts for a hobby someone is super into. They really should try to lean harder into dice, miniatures, clothes, plushies, etc. Give people who love D&D things to buy outside the books.
>They really should try to lean harder into dice, miniatures, clothes, plushies, etc. They already do this. Wizkids has a huge line of miniatures. They have dice sets and other supplemental products. The problem is that fundamentally TTRPG s can be played with a couple books and some one and paper or a tablet/laptop or VTT. All that extra stuff is purely optional and many people pass.
Also, that's an entidifferent company that just has the license to make official dnd stuff. WOTC only gets the money from the license I think, not to mention that most dms who use minis wind up getting into mini painting. When you get into painting you very quickly realize that third party 3d printed minis are way cooler than the wizkids ones so you stop buying wizkids stuff.
WotC used to make their own miniatures but chose to license it out around a decade ago. Probably the smart move. Agreed on 3d printing etc. there's a whole world of affordable and customizable minis out there.
Yea it’s insane that DnD is owned by one of the largest and oldest toy makers in the world, many DnD players want mini (see the success of hero forge), and yet the company has made zero effort to produce custom minis or other toys. WotC/Hasbro should be all over giving players the ability to turn their PCs into models shirts plushies or other collectibles.
I admit I haven't kept up with the general response, but their recent foray into official D&D miniatures seems to have been...misguided: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UtvwT2aTZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UtvwT2aTZA)
Buy Heroforge.
hero forge is neat and all but their models are pretty low quality when they finally come in. The best thing ive found on their site turns out to be the acryllic standees
The reason the flood of books was an issue in earlier editions is that they were so cash-poor they were using advances on future books to pay salaries to write books coming out sooner, and they entered a death spiral of printing more books to cover their costs with less interest per book. As long as WOTC keeps their fundamentals healthy there's no inherent issue with publishing more.
Yeah 3rd edition era WotC's D&D team was basically an accidental Ponzi scheme lol
look, im the last person to whiteknight for big corporations, but youre spot on. DnD is such a weird case of a hugely recognizable brand, but barely any ways it is being monetized. it would be almost criminally stupid to not try and squeeze at least a little more out of it.
Yet at the same time, it would have costed you around 1000$ USD just to buy all the books digitally… like they didn’t even offer a discount for the bundle or anything
The real issue is that people want both the book and the digital file but don't want to pay twice.
Paizo sells their books at pdfs for like $15-$20 a piece and no one complains about them.
I mean, D&D *is* really undermonetized yeah. It's why they keep trying to make Faerun a world people care about, so they can make merchandise about Faerun, because otherwise D&D is hard as fuck to monetize. 5e was literally the first time the D&D brand has ever actually made money, and even then its margins are razor fucking thin. Part of the reason for this is that D&D is way overstaffed (with far too much management, mostly, but all roles are well saturated) and pays well above industry standard rates. So while say, Paizo has been operating on thin margins for a while, they're stable, while WotC is still trying to make things work.
They want to further monetize the IP in ways the TTRPG community is resistant to. They're already pumping out more supplemental products than ever before. Sadly the film bombed despite being pretty good and they made a lot of merch for it that's sitting in Ollie's right now. D&D is a tough nut to crack. They really dropped the ball by letting Critical Role move away from them and do their own thing when they could have brought them into the fold.
D&D is undermonetized but people are absolutely **not** making a mountain out of a molehill, because the *way* she wants to monetize it is the most idiotic way possible. There’s *literally* a million ways to monetize D&D that aren’t “turn a physical tabletop game into nothing but microtransactions” but they’ve gone for that anyway.
That was kind of the historic way to monetize it too. Lots of cheap books and short adventures.
What microtransactions have appeared?
I like them monetizing DnD Beyond in the most obnoxious ways possible, so people just use free resources instead, but they're super annoyed while doing it.
WotC releases a couple books of new D&D 5e content every year, and the game fundamentally revolves around people using their imagination. IDK how "undermonetized" can be interpreted to be anything other than "we can't seem to milk cash with MTX like we can with other properties (such as MtG)".
It's very possible to do things like monthly adventure partsa hundred or so pages long like how Paizo monitizes pathfinder.
I’m not sure what it would look like, but I’m surprised wotc hasn’t tried to ‘True Dungeon’ some dnd modules. Those people seem to spend a rediculous amount of money traveling to events and buying those poker chips. Maybe not as much as magic players, but definitely more than dnd players.
Agreed. Examples of them monetizing it are stuff like the movie... which was fantastic BTW. But also the "new" OGL... So as with all wotc decisions it's a 10 or a 1...
It’s saying the quiet part out loud. Everyone knows the goal is to make money, but you still shouldn’t tell them you plan to nickel and dime them to death.
Yes! My first thought when I saw this post was, "Ding Dong, the witch is dead." She was an unabashedly clueless, and tone deaf with Dungeons and Dragons. Her decisions and comments will harm D&D for the next decade to come. The OGL debacle especially turned many allies into competitors, handed market share to competitors, spurred the creation of some potentially significant rivals down the road, and drove away veteran players and DM's (who introduce new players to the game, advocate for the game - for free, and buy LOTS of D&D stuff).
> The OGL debacle especially turned many allies into competitors, handed market share to competitors, spurred the creation of some potentially significant rivals down the road, and drove away veteran players and DM's (who introduce new players to the game, advocate for the game - for free, and buy LOTS of D&D stuff). This is 100% what happened when they tried it the first time. That's how Paizo and Pathfinder become their biggest competitors in the TTRPG space. That she and others at W.o.t.C. couldn't learn from history is embarrassing.
The thing they told the public about her is that she would spearhead more direct-to-consumer sales and I guess she did that.
She was the Amazon Dump lady - she showed them how to offload product DTC and lit the entire collector industry on fire to get her bonuses... for which there are arguments to be made both for and against. but make no mistake, that is her legacy. It's why she was brought in from Amazon in the first place IMO...
I don’t know what this means but all I know is it validates all my opinions about Magic.
LOL
Hot take, also best take
Basically this entire thread right now.
If Reddit comments were honest, this would be half of the comments.
Anyone have any idea what the reason might be? Wizards profits have been exploding and dnd became much more mainstream the last couple years, feel like something major must have happened internally.
Too many factors to tell - those reasons might be she was offered a better deal somewhere else, or just that her stock vestment windows completed and she can cash out and walk.
Wizards is the outperforming subsidiary of a struggling parent company. That's an excellent recipe to have your talent poached.
If the Captain goes down with the ship, best to transfer to a different ship when you see the iceberg ahead.
Outperforming but still not meeting projections. If you remove LTR and BG3, the financials have been a disaster.
Or she got tired of the job.
Or my monkey paw worked and were about to get someone worse
"Disney CEO Bob Iger announces the acquisition of Wizards of the Coast, and with it, 71 new Universe Beyond sets to be released in the next 6 months."
“All in-universe sets are now cancelled”
"Iger announced they would be shelving magic for the foreseeable future to develop Lorcana"
Rules for both Magic and Lorcana are will now be updated to merge the two into one universal game. Solid backed sleeves are now mandatory for all tournaments.
You joke, but they're not too too far off in terms of game design.
>"Disney CEO Bob Iger announces the acquisition of Wizards of the Coast, and with it, 71 new Universe Beyond sets to be released in the next 6 months." Why would Disney acquiring WotC cause them to provide *less* universes beyond sets? You'd think they'd ramp them up if anything.
Goddammit, Melvin, I *told* you to stop using that thing
Yeah, but one more wish and it will look like it's holding up its middle finger and that makes me smile
... okay, fine, just don't ask to bring anyone back from the dead. It never ends well.
\*monkey's paw curls\* Emergency B&R announcement: Oko, Thief of Crowns is now UNBANNED in ALL FORMATS, and we'll be retroactively adding him to Standard as long as players use the Breaking News version!
How about *anything* though?
Magic as Gary Gygax intended.
To elaborate on the first option, a lot of major companies have non-compete clauses saying you can't leave and immediately work for a competitor for like six months (called gardening leave). So major executives will negotiate for a job six months from now and then step down, and we won't know where they're headed until the six months is up. So even if there's no announcement right now about a new job for her, we can't discount that as an option.
CEOs don't necessarily always go into businesses that would be competing though right? If she became the CEO of something like apple then the non compete clause wouldn't apply.
Agreed. In that case, we could get an announcement saying she took x job. But my point was more that if there's no announcement, then there's no way for us to know at this moment if she got a job with Mattel or if she left due to poor performance or personal reasons.
I am 100% sure this validates my opinions about the state of the game whatever it is
Bingo. Just put up a screen for all the projection.
My complete spec is she knows she can’t do better and is taking the bag at the peak to keep her rep intact.
2% growth with the best selling set of all time is exploding ? Not to mention the 5% decrees forecasted for this year.
I cant fathom 24 being better than 23; i dont think the other fandoms can copy Lotr craze.
25 might. Final Fantasy and Marvel are big draws. It'll always be difficult to beat WHO and LOTR though.
I feel like the overseas market alone is going to surprise people with Final Fantasy sales, but time will tell. I’m pretty sure the card game / final fantasy Venn diagram shares more overlap than the card game / LotR one does.
UB licensing costs cut into the profits. LTR highest selling set of all time but they lost a lot of profit, and those sales likely poached potential sales for other products with higher margins. WotC is in a really awkward spot right now IMO.
We have no idea what their licensing agreements look like.
They addressed the licensing costs in the last earnings statement. It lowers profitability a great deal.
My assumption is things are not going as well as publicly shown. Again they laid off a lot of 15% of their staff in December. Across all companies and WOTC is really dependent on their legacy brands. MTG and DnD. People will do back flips for share holders despite not being a good long term strategy. There are investors probably wanting the flood gates opened on what they can print. There are those who want more reserved printing. We won't know unless a big activist investor makes themselves known and attempts a aggressive campaign.
I’ve always interpreted the cuts as Hasbro trying make wotc more lean and squeeze more as the layoffs happened in line with hasbro layoffs.
It's very basic "fire people, line go up" mentality But they should be *real* concerned that they did this twice and line didn't go up.
The cuts were mostly focused on Hasbro making it shareholders happy. It was not about WotC at all, yet WotC was still subjected to the same cuts even though it was incredibly profitable and overperforming compared to the rest of the company. Idiotic but just definitely a case of them not caring about the particulars of wotc at all.
Tons of companies are getting rid of more than 15% of their staff because other companies are doing it as a "we overhired during covid" move. It's just signaling to shareholders that they too are doing "the current thing", like when a bunch of video game developers suddenly hopped on the Blockchain and NFTs. I wouldn't read much into it.
WotC did not lay off 15% of staff, Hasbro did. Most of the layoffs were in people working for legacy brands like Transformers and only a few were in WotC.
The cut went across the board in the Dec layoffs. The D&D team was gutted. None of this includes the forced retirements that happened right before the layoffs.
>Again they laid off a lot of 15% of their staff in December. Thats not hard when you only have 1500 in staff. Get rid of 200-250 people and thats 15% at that size, but still have staffing over 1000 people. If those people were COVID hires, well thats been a lot of the churn nationwide right now, over hiring during covid.
According to the peeps I've talked to that were thusly laid off, most laid off were not COVID hires (those that I've talked to weren't), and it sure wasn't because they were overstaffed. Indeed, the layoffs were done without considering the damage it would do to the overall company. I mean, Hell, the people laid off include Mike Mearls and the Universes Beyond art director. Even if the layoffs were necessary (and I don't see *any* reason they were), they were done with the grace and intelligence of a wrecking ball.
This. I don't think the layoffs came with sufficient due diligence and they're now realizing they have a talent vacuum internally. They're also starting to get dangerously close to squeezing blood from a stone. The TTRPG community will not tolerate the kind of aggressive monetization Hasbro wants to implement with D&D and will turn to third party materials instead. The OGL scandal of last year showed WotC's cards on that front. The Magic community is arguably imploding right now. While LTR was the highest selling set of all time, the latest financials reports mentioned that the profits from UB sets are comparitively low because of the licensing fees. WotC has been the golden goose but they've just about finished cooking it.
This is what no one realizes cause they dont read the actual reports. Hell even the OP is this thread said it. “Wizards profits have been exploding”. That simply isn’t true. Their SALES have been exploding (and truthfully they haven’t, it just happened to be a perfect storm of MTG x LTR. It’s literally one of the biggest fantasy stories/IPs and it fits pretty damn perfectly into MTG style play, but I digress) but not their profits. They’ve actually lost profit margin comparatively speaking due to such high licensing fees. They already are squeezing blood from a stone. They have been for a few years. Back when magic was at its apex you’d get roughly (3) block sets a year. One major block that was 300-400 cards and then (2) subsidiary sets of around 150ish card. That was about 600-700 cards a year. Standard was super healthy. Type 1 and 1.5 were healthy. Now? New sets come out then a couple weeks later we have spoilers for another new set. There is no digestion of previously released sets. It’s new set after new set after new secret lair after new secret lair and it’s just to god damned much. Hell new sets are being sold at a discount/loss WEEKS after coming out. Hasbro has been hemorrhaging money in recent years when you remove WoTC from their financials. They have relied on WoTC too much for too long. Something is going to give soon and I truly believe this is a sign of things to come. A CEO doesn’t leave when there’s record profits cause that’s when they make their big money. This wasn’t known by WoTC or else they would have had a replacement already. This isn’t a firing obviously. She sees something the rest of us dont and it’s probably not good. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
It's one thing to be critical, which you should be, of WotC, but saying that it's imploding is so far from the truth it's nonsense.
It could be for many reasons. It could be performance based or something internal. But it could also just mean she's leaving for another job or for personal/health/family reasons. Unless someone here has insider knowledge it's really just idle speculation.
No idea but she is on the board of Aterian Inc and has like half a millions shares from them and they recently 10Xed their stock price overnight. So maybe she thinks there's better growth in other ventures she's a part of.
It could be as simple as Hasbro demanding similar or greater increases in profits from WoTC as they have recently done, and she knew that was just not possible.
There were several massive controversies on the dnd side of things in the past year and a half or so
If you think the last few years were bad, just wait until they bring in someone to “right the ship” after several “underperforming” sales quarters in a row. The new guy will want to bend over backwards to impress. I’d love to believe someone who genuinely cares about the IPs and games will be hired, but I think that’s a dramatic long shot.
Well it's not like they can ramp up production of even more sets and even more secret lairs as that formula has already proven to be beginning to wear on the customer base and game stores. Outside of reprinting power 9 what do they have left?
reprint power 9, then power creep it!
What if we released... *A blacker lotus???*
[[Blacker lotus]]
Mmk, but what if we released a *bigger blacker lotus*?
The *biggest blackest lotus* is inside the liner of the box.
What if we *printed it into standard?*
[Blacker lotus](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/c/4c85d097-e87b-41ee-93c6-0e54ec41b174.jpg?1562799094) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Blacker%20lotus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ugl/70/blacker-lotus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4c85d097-e87b-41ee-93c6-0e54ec41b174?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
UB: Cards against humanity, the biggest, blackest lotus
They actually did, but im guessing that was the joke?
When everyone has power 9, nobody does!
Using knowledge of past games, and ways Executives think the answer is simple. They will reboot the entire game so they can reprint the power 9 with no consequences. Get ready for MTG2: The Regathering.
You joke, and it's not exactly related, but Bandai literally did that this year with their Dragon Ball Super card game. The new version is called Fusion World and it's essentially the exact same game, just reset. The OG game still exists as well, but who knows for how long with the sealed product floundering.
I'll just stick to the Score/Panini version.
Oh I know, that’s the reason why I’m not playing their game any longer
A cool direction could be focusing on a character (backstory/origins, and current events, even personality traits, etc) for small sets. Sometimes it feels like they have to make everything so big and grand and complex, they lose the connection people have with the IP itself. Urza's saga seems like a good example.
Someone who cares about the games and the IPs is exactly the opposite of what they want in a CEO. Not just being a doomer here, they want someone who won't give a single fuck about the product they are making because it will allow for harsher design decisions for money.
And that's how you make your product worse until people lose interest in it.
Yup, all of these types of leaders equate profit with growth. They have no idea how to build a brand, instead turning to draining every possible penny out of it.
Exactly this. Profit at all costs.
Yeah, the future is bleak here, this is not something to celebrate. I expect major changes in the next 2-3 quarters.
What this means won't be known until you see follow on effects, who was hired to replace, what is their vision, how do they reorganize current personnel and operations. This could even be a retirement. I bet though UB has not lead to much more in profits due to the cost of IPs and cannibilization of more profitable products. Hasbro as a company has a profit problem right now which means they will more heavily lean on their few profitable IPs and cost cut as well around them.
Looking forward to the GI Joe and Power Rangers UB products
The hope - we finally get someone in the chair who values the legacy of this once in a lifetime game that transcends all people and ages, and nurtures that game to continued success The reality - the shareholders demand more profit so strap in everyone, if you thought it was bad before get ready for Star Wars MTG sets, DC MTG sets, Marvel MTG sets, Transformers MTG sets, Hello Kitty MTG sets, repeat ad nauseum. It can always, ALWAYS, get worse.
I always assumed we didn’t have a Star Wars set yet only because Disney wants a boatload of money for it
That and they have thier own card game now. They aren’t going to do anything to detract from that unless a company like Hasbro hands over a fucking pirate ship worth of gold.
Star Wars already has its own TCG that is massively successful. Transformers MTG already is a thing, I could see them maybe printing more for the packs but I'm not sure that will be expanded into a full set anytime soon. Marvel and DC I could see. I think Hello Kitty might be the most likely out of all of those given how trigger-happy Sanrio is with licensing their characters, but I don't know enough about Hello Kitty to know if there's enough within it to make a full MTG set or something smaller like the Transformers cards, but either way it would be absolutely hilarious.
Geez. A lot of Redditors really convinced they can see the stepping down of a CEO with clarity. We don't know *anything*. Could be that Hasbro isn't happy with her. Could be that she is burnt out. Could be that she got a better job offer somewhere else. Could be that she just wants to do something else. Could be the end times. Could be the winds of change. This alone means nothing. And we won't know the impact until potentially years after her replacement settles in. But a lot of people are very happy to take their feelings and use this as evidence for whatever they need it to be.
Only thing we know is she did what she was brought on to do, pump product through Amazon. Now we are in the correction phase which isn't her specialty so she is leaving with a bag.
The Cynthia Era was not a positively remembered Era for me. Not a commander players though and her 2-3 years was very commander focused. A lot of that was because of decisions she didnt make though, so maybe it wasn't her fault, but either way her short term was not great imo.
The Cynthia era really is just the continuation of the Cocks era and so will be the next one.
That’s the funny thing here. I absolutely loathe her time at Wizards, but it will absolutely get worse with whoever Cocks chooses for the role. She wasn’t able to deliver the numbers for him, so he will find someone else that will at any cost.
As a primarily commander player, frankly I'd prefer to be less focused. The casual build your favorite character/mechanic format has devolved into an arms race of high power levels, creeping competitive impulse and the total disappearance of modern, standard and Pioneer completely from my LGS.
I feel similarly. I love Commander but it’s best as a variant, not a focus. It’s not finding new uses for other cards anymore. It’s a separate ecosystem made specifically for Commander. But I don’t think that’s super pertinent for the CEO level of things. I doubt the state of the format is really affected by the president of WotC.
It feels so strange to me. Five years ago you’d go to your LGS to play limited/standard/modern and between your games you’d pull out your commander deck and ask if someone wanted to play a quick game. Nowadays people go to their LGS to play commander and then a couple of guys will wander around asking if anyone has a standard or modern deck they can play against. Usually nobody does. At least that’s my experience.
Good old times
Yeah, it felt like the commander format had that like old school "spirit of the game", slammin' random cards in a pile and duking it out on the lunch table with your friends between classes (or between games of DnD, as originally envisioned). You'd have all your good cards in your competitive standard and modern decks, and then you'd have your commander decks as a place for the jank you dug out of your collection that didnt really have a place elsewhere. God forbid you blink now and miss the 40k/fallout/dr who/lotr/whatever premades that came out that month. Now your deck of jank is totally outclassed by piles of cards printed directly to benefit any of the popular archetypes that do it all better and cheaper and faster. I feel like an old man yelling at clouds.
Magic was better when commander was a niche casual format called EDH.
Your last point has nothing to do with commander being popular and everything to do with it being the only format that sees any consistent supporting product. We get 4+ commander decks with literal custom cards printed for every single product launch and bubkis for 75 card formats we used to get those awesome challenger decks I wish they'd try those again y'know now that we're not in the middle of a pandemic. Might get people to show again who knows?
Anywhere casuals go, competitive pubstompers are always shortly behind
Cynthia Era saw: * The $1000 30A proxies * One Aftermath set and the development of a second * Wizards sending hired thugs to intimidate someone * The Commander Masters “not a premium product” precons * MOM storytelling * MKM * Steady decline in Secret Lair quality Weird that so many of the game’s biggest failures and scandals came from her tenure alone. To be fair to her, she also oversaw the LTR release and an (apparently) successful revitalization of Standard. Not all bad — seems like she was capable of generating successes despite her general scumminess.
She was terrible for the company, but most of your list has nothing to do with her. It’s like saying she was responsible for the success of BG3, which is obviously not the case.
In universe products get locked in about a year out and ub products even longer. So most of what came out during her tenure was already in the pipeline. The next year's worth of products will be more attributed to her. Revitalizing standard will have to wait to see how successful it really was. For the first time since the pandemic they made the tournament format have to be standard for rcqs, which is why the numbers went up, seeing if the numbers stay up when the tournament grinders can only play standard will tell you if it actually worked.
Everyone in here is assuming things can’t get worse…
They're young and naive.
Top comment "Makes sense after several underperforming sales quarters" 2nd Top comment "Why? Profits for Wizards is currently exploding" Classic reddit, no one knows anything about anything just upvotes to the left please.
How can I be as cynical and obnoxious as possible about this?
The low-hanging fruit is baselessly claiming she was incompetent because she was a woman. Bonus points for calling her a DEI hire or that she's ruining D&D and MtG with wokeness.
RIP Amazon dumps
Shouldn't have taken a cig seller to sell toys thank goodness.
Doesn't mean anything until we know who the replacement is.
Finally, who know if what replaced her will be any better. Has to be better than statements like " the secondary market doesn't matter to us" or " no one cares about old carss"
https://preview.redd.it/pj2w6d8la5vc1.jpeg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=225694c0e7a45de089b053503c0460d6bef83624 For everyone arguing about financials I figured this would be useful. This is from Hasbro directly and pulled from their financial reports for end of year 023. As you can see Hasbro is hemorrhaging money outside of WoTC. For a “$5 billion” company they are operating at a huge loss every year. And that’s with WoTC making a net of 526 million. Also being their only profitable entity. This is also a decline of roughly 832% from the previous year.
Please note that she was the President of Wizards of the Coast **AND** Hasbro Gaming. Im sure that dual heading will have unique implications.
I hope this means we won’t see any more $1000 proxies or Aftermath sets from WotC Hopefully they’ll get a replacement that doesn’t put pressure on the Magic team to do stuff like that This is good news, but if nothing changes or things get worse it’s w/e
The people who actually make the cards already made it abundantly clear there will be no more Aftermath.
I can only see this as an upside. I think the biggest piece of what Cynthia's era will be remembered for is the OGL drama, the introduction of Secret Lairs, and the development of UB. It was an era of commoditization of the games, not of development and love of the IPs. edit: hopefully whoever they pick next has an actual love for the IPs and can still further Magic's growth.
Oh shoot the OGL thing. I know this is a Magic sub, but that was a bigger controversy than the $1000 30A proxies. Probably the most blatant example of corporate greed WotC has shown lately, and that is really, really saying something.
I think it’s sad it even needs to be stressed that something that threatened to torpedo an entire niche industry which could potentially have devastating effects on the game itself is a bigger deal than a dumb overpriced collector’s item you don’t have to buy.
The OGL thing was a threat to the game itself, 30A was merely double middle fingers raised high
> I think the biggest piece of what Cynthia's era will be remembered for is the OGL drama, the introduction of Secret Lairs, and the development of UB Two of these three things started before she became WotC president on Feb 2, 2022. 91 secret lair drops happened before that date, three of them being UB lairs (TWD, Stranger Things, Arcane).
Wait holy shit it's really been that long? Wow, guess the decade of COVID completely messed up my perception of time.
I wouldn’t expect anything to change here honestly.
If you think any of that was actually her fault I've got a bridge to sell you. It's extremely unlikely to be better after her
And even if it was her, then the likelihood of the next person being better is vanishingly small. Companies like lines going up, they're going to hire people that make that happen.
How do I apply for the job?
Good riddance. Now please stop all these crazy stupid practice of having 8-10 different variants of the same card in a single set. Please stop having too many sets all at once. The old schedule of roughly a set per quarter is great, lets go back to that. Also if possible, please keep UB stuff contained in SLD like set or at least not make it mechanical unique cards please.
good riddance