'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs
'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs
Suffering and success.
Suffering and success.
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laying off 1,100 employees as a way to "modernize our organization and get even leaner
Yeah because that's what we want of the ones in charge of publishing, administering and providing support for some of the most played games in the world now and historically: leanness! The fewer people to take care of important things, the better! 🤦
I know that he's talking to investors rather than players, but come on! Also, there's nothing "modern" about stupidly trying to increase profits via mass layoffs without expecting blowback and for quality to suffer. That's some 1700s bullshit right there.
Also, when your company is ailing (read: Not making more profit than last year, no matter what ocean of money your managers are swimming in), fire the good parts. That'll fix it!
Hasbro is unprofitable, but there was a memo a while back that said Wizards of the Coast was their most profitable division. Possibly their only profitable division. That covers Magic: The Gathering and D&D.
This is also why we're seeing both those properties getting the fuck monetized out of them. Big influxes of MTG sets based on other licensed properties, and attempts to undo the open licensing around One D&D.
But then it makes even less sense to lay people off from those divisions.
Edit: minor clarity and typo corrections.
God that's so corporate-coded - instead of fixing your divisions so they are all profitable, just take your two successful divisions and squeeze them like you're trying to get blood out of a stone.
The best way to save hasbro is cut back on making trash plastic toys for kids and stake the company to a well-staffed, functional WoTC who can deliver what MTG and DND fans want.
Is that in the original spirit of the company? No, but who the hell cares? Certainly not investors and certainly not consumers or they’d be buying the toys
They also said in a memo maybe 2 years ago they want WotC to be worth double their value in 5 years. That's pretty unrealistic standards for an already established company.
Imagine if we quit our jobs if we didn't get an annual raise. Maybe we could afford housing.
I've survived layoffs at companies where we were told that following the cuts, we were going to get leaner and more agile and more efficient.
I'm sure you'll be just shocked to learn that what actually happened is I ended up doing twice as much work to pick up the laid off people's slack, and at the end of the year got a smaller bonus than the previous year, along with a raise that didn't cover inflation. Overall company profits, of course, hit a record high.