WotC Hasbro slapped by bank of america for destroying customer goodwill

[Irlo]

Nah. Hasbro sells WotC to Mattel and we start getting Barbie, He-Man, and Hot Wheels-themed Magic: The Gathering sets and D&D crossovers.

(All of which I'm cool with.)

No, no. Magic-themed Hot Wheels. The world's premier trading car game.

 

[jgsugden]

Look at the 180 )ish) on the OGL. I think someone is going to try to come in and right the ship on M:tG and go back to a model that is driven by supportingt he brand to maximize customer pool size with reasonable profits rather than optimize profits with expectations of customer pool loss.

Regardless, I am still in a wait an see mode for my D&D spending. I want to see what the next year brings before WotC gets another dime from me ... with the possible exception of another year of D&D Beyond Game Master subscription to maintain access to what I have already paid for so my players can share it.

 

[Jer]

No, I'm speculating, but my business intuition tells me that is where Hasbro got the idea for monetarising the OGL in the first place.

I reckon Alata Fox's thought processes went like this: "look at all those people using our IP for free! If we charged them we would make a fortune!!" That's how these business sharks think. It's why he thought WotC could be making a whole lot more money.

Nah - Alta Fox's big idea was "Hasbro is at $60/share but Wizards by itself is worth that, so if we spin the company off and have a stock split we'd be back at the equivalent of the $120/share it SHOULD be at and was circa 3 years ago. And then we can finally sell these shares and make back the money we've been losing." It's basically a variation on "this one weird trick will make you a fortune."

Everything around Hasbro for the last couple of years makes perfect sense once you realize that a) their CEO that everyone trusted to know what he was doing died suddenly and did not really prepare a succession plan (despite knowing he had a terminal cancer) and b) Hasbro was once at $120/share and is at about half that now and the investors really, really, really believe that it should be over $100/share because some investors believe in magic far more than most 5 year olds do.

 

[cranberry]

b) Hasbro was once at $120/share and is at about half that now and the investors really, really, really believe that it should be over $100/share because some investors believe in magic far more than most 5 year olds do.

Yep, a stock's price should be the present value of future potential cash flows. They just can't come to terms with the fact that Hasbro's decisions reduce those potential earnings.

 

[Maxperson]

Indeed. It's easy to say you understand gaming. It's easy to think you understand gaming. But if you haven't actually been a 3PP you have no idea that they can't afford to turf over 25% of their profits.

Of course, if Alata Fox had had his way, it would have been only WotC that crashed and burned, Hasbro would have been in the clear.

It was actually much worse than that. It wasn't 25% of profits. It was 25% of gross income.

 

[Stormonu]

No, no. Magic-themed Hot Wheels. The world's premier trading car game.

You mean, like, Car Wars?

 

[Jer]

You mean, like, Car Wars?

Now I have thoughts of SJG marketing Car Wars as a collectible car game.

(Using Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars for Car Wars was fun, but man those rules. In 8th grade I thought they were awesome, but the further I get from 8th grade the harder it is to imagine that I can even understand those rules. I should break out the box again this year and see how much stupider I've gotten since the last time I read them...)

 

[fettpett]

Alta Fox was planning on doing exactly what Hasbro tried to do. Monetarise 3PP.

Oh they ripped into WotC for their handling of the OGL...it's crazy to me how much everyone BUT Hasbro/WotC knows that they are screwing themselves over and Alta Fox saw this coming and why they wanted Hasbro to spin WotC off.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Hasbro wants to be the new media empire, like Disney, but they have to know to play well their cards. And even if they were selling a right product, the consumers don't want to spend too much money for the bad economic years.

I didn't like the idea of WotC to be spun off because my suspects are then this had been acquired by other company.

 

[bedir than]

Oh they ripped into WotC for their handling of the OGL...it's crazy to me how much everyone BUT Hasbro/WotC knows that they are screwing themselves over and Alta Fox saw this coming and why they wanted Hasbro to spin WotC off.

Alta Fox's stated goals were to monetize D&D even more than Hasbro was "letting" Wizards.

They were not doing it for the benefit of the player based.