Hasbro is essentially upside down, with huge losses across all their brands being subsidized by enormous growth from their subsidiary Wizards of the Coast. Even with that growth, they are significantly down.
There was a big investor push recently (led by Alta Fox) to get Hasbro to spin WotC out into an independent company [0], which failed. The big concern being that forcing growth on those properties (Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons) to continue to support failed strategies with legacy properties could risk ruining those properties through mismanagement for short-term gains.
I really don't know where Hasbro goes from here. I don't think the toy market will ever recover, and the board game world has completely passed by properties like Monopoly. Chris Cocks, the CEO is the former head of WotC, so I'm hoping there is some level of understanding of stewardship of the WotC properties, but I'm really not confident. Even the recent D&D movie was disappointing from a business perspective (although surprisingly wonderful for fans). They also have a huge success in Baldur's Gate 3, although it is also disappointing from a monetization perspective. Even those recent lukewarm wins are within the WotC umbrella.
Hasbro needed to, and failed to (imo), transition into selling higher-end luxury toys for adults with nostalgia - and focus less on kids.
With the exception of DnD, everything else Hasbro-owned has failed to capture such an audience I think.
Their toys are generally priced ~$25 or less. Higher-end variants of their toys are not by Hasbro, but rather by other companies. Want a high-end nerf gun? You're going to Dart Zone, not Hasbro.
On Amazon their toys are competing on the same footing with the cheaper (often better) knock-off brands.
Their board games are dated and haven't really evolved. Monopoly is $15 while Catan is $100, /r/HotWheels collectors want old cars not the cheap new ones, etc.
By comparison, brands like Lego have evolved, are insanely expensive (>$100) and I constantly see adults with disposable income purchasing them en-mass while they're not really affordable as kids toys anymore.
Lego is a fascinating case study. They've gone entirely corporate - so many of their expensive new products are branded partnerships. I guess it had to be done. There must be an HBS case study, or several, about this.
Brick by Brick is a great book about the history of Lego and how it came back from near bankruptcy. It reads like a business case study—turns out they were saved by a McKinsey consultant.
I wouldn't be surprised if branded partnerships have minimal profit and are mostly intended to keep a premium market perception.
Lego was pretty famous for doing branded partnerships and still struggling [1]. This lead them to come up with more of their own IP like Bionicle and Ninjago.
OK, that study was published 10 years ago, but I haven't noticed any huge price hikes in the last decade for comparable sets. Yes, there are some bigger sets now than there used to be, but the small sets haven't gone away and are still there too, at what seem like reasonable (to me) prices. And while sets based on licensing deals (e.g. Marvel/Disney) are a bit more pricey than their own in-house ranges (City, Creator, Friends, Ninjago, etc...), again it doesn't seem like a huge gap?
While price per piece may have remained relatively constant, Lego has been pushing out more and more expensive sets. I remember when the most expensive set was the 400 dollar death star, and that was the only 400 dollar set. Now, there are 26 sets that are 400 dollars or more, with 7 of those sets being 600 dollars or more, and the most expensive set being 850 dollars. All of this to target more adult fans of lego.
Eons ago, when I was in TV/movies business, I spoke with a prominent Forgotten Realms book author (if not _the_ author) about a certain book series he wrote that I thought it would make a fantastic TV series (in a world before netflix had their own production) and he nodded in agreement. I said let's make it it happen, let's warm up parties on both ends (I'm on production side, he would be on property side).. basically cold shower was that, hiw he told me, they (writers) were hired to write pieces for Hasbro and Hasbro didn't want to let go of anything (as in control) nor would it do anything on their own.
So much potential, such a large world, and nothing. Blizzard spun up large business around basically 1% of what they're sitting on top off. Toys can be their sideshow. Alas..
I think it has to be. Nothing else makes sense. On the bright side, Brandon Sanderson is moving full steam ahead growing his brands into fully fledged productions. He has been a huge help in bringing Wheel of Time season 2 back in line for what fans want, and he's using that experience to begin re-writing some of his series' into TV scripts. While the franchises of our youth might be approaching the EoL, the future still looks bright for epic fantasy fans!
There's valid reasoning why a company wouldn't let another company make a movie or TV series. It cheapens the IP if the movie/series goes bad.
It's hard to describe the effect. Essentially this is what happened with LOTR.
Also take for instance the recent D&D movie which was just ok/slightly good. The movie cheapens the D&D IP, while something like Baldurs Gate builds on it.
Maybe from a business perspective it's the most profitable move but for the original subject the IP was centered around, whether it was books, games loses the charm if the movie sucks and Hollywood churns out shit movies for a quick buck really fast.
It's not always bad though. While Marvel did well, DC did not.
It's weirdly irrational but that's just how people behave.
Honor among thieves made the D&D lore appear generic. It wasn't a bad movie but it didn't utilize D&D to the extent it should have been utilized. It could have been just as good if it was a normal fantasy movie without the D&D IP. There's great depth in the D&D world and I would say much more complex and imaginative than LOTR.
Only the D&D universe allows for games like the BG series or Torment. It's all about the lore.
Let's make no mistake, D&D is all about the lore. The RPG mechanics are pretty generic. You have thousands of cookie cutter rpgs out there (especially jrpgs) with complex and interesting game play mechanics that are largely forgettable. D&D is still relevant not because of the game play mechanics, but because of the lore. And this lore was not really used very well in Honor among thieves.
Maybe you're right though. The D&D universe is specifically designed to support complex narratives and generic ones as well. Though for honor among thieves with the D&D name featured so prominently in the title I'm sure most people unfamiliar with D&D walked away thinking that D&D was some generic fantasy universe. D&D Lore is better, deeper and more complex than GOT or LOTR by a huge margin. It's barely comparable it's like comparing GOT with the Harry Potter universe.
I agree with D&D having a richer lore (and as someone who bounced off of tabletop play, though that's more likely the groups I was playing with, I love that BG3 exists and I can sink deep into it).
I think the thing I enjoyed the most about Honor Among Thieves was how the different characters were manifestations of player archetypes. You have the master planner, the strong and silent, the high-level lawful good guest player who the DM sets up an extra-hard challenge for, and so on.
You're right, and they would be right in thinking that way too. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Thing was that they weren't even thinking of that direction, at all - internal, external, partnership, nothing; Dead end, and authors were just guns for hire, zero input on that. It wasn't their property anymore. I wasn't brazen enough to offer talks towards the dark elf immediately. Idea, which to be honest lingered for maybe a month before initial contact was shot down immediately, was to start with something smaller to test the (production and market) waters first like Cleric Quintet which could work but it could also open the forgotten realms brand into the TV world. Anyways, nice remembering this past life and an anecdote.
> There's valid reasoning why a company wouldn't let another company make a movie or TV series. It cheapens the IP if the movie/series goes bad.
Season 8 of Game of Thrones.
The spin off was alright but I didn't really care enough to keep it up, and I get a lot of people didn't. LOTR comes to mind too, ditto for a lot of the "slop" that Disney has been pushing for Star Wars.
There is a lot more stuff out there, and most of it isn't great, so Ima tune it out until the test of time determines if it's worth it.
I am a MTG player. Also I used to own my own game business.
I am not sure Chris Cocks will preserve wotc.
First an interesting fact: one of the people pushing Alta Fox to meddle with Hasbro is a guy that was MTG player in the 90s.
Now about Chris Cocks: after he became CEO of WotC, the company did grow but making lots of short term focused things, like ditching the Pro scene, spamming Commander and Modern products (and I am a heavy Commander player...) spamming foils and other collectible crap, and reducing good promotional prizes.
Also they ditched some good products to offer complete crap after he became CEO, for example the holiday boxes were wildly useful and today they are crazy expensive because how useful and cool they are, if you find them. But lots and lots of stores has the Chris era gift products stuck on shelves collecting dust.
Then after he became Hasbro CEO things got somehow worse, like the OGL stupidity, 35th anniversary product that is ludicrously expensive, selling pre-sale products on Amazon official WotC store so cheap it undercut stores so badly they lost money.
I'm a D&D player, and have definitely noticed a drop in quality of 5e products to the point where I just wasn't interested in buying anything after witchlight. Being a DM, I slurped up every book to steal ideas and encounters that I could use with little effort.
My group also all had the same visceral reaction to the OGL kerfuffle early this year and moved to Pathfinder 2e. I had a lot of fun with 5e, but it had already grown stale for me before all of the madness and short sighted decisions anyway.
Hasbro deserves their fate, they sold their IP to the highest bidder and they could have made a killing off of any one of their properties if they actually tried.
Imagine if they made good games, they could have locked down the most lucrative market for a company of its size and type.
They burned a lot of goodwill WOTC had by pushing them harder and harder to carry the rest of the company. A move last year to change the terms of the OGL lead to massive community backlash. They are lucky Baldur's gate has been such a hit and GOTY material. If it wasn't for that a lot of fans would still have a bad taste in their mouth in regards to DnD.
Call it poor marketing, or a concept that just didn't resonate with cover-judgers, but a common perception of it by those who didn't watch it is that it is a cash-in kid's B-movie. Some pap you get for free on a streaming service. Disappointing that perception exists.
As someone who enjoyed board games for a little while, while playing with a group of friends on and off, I will say I was taken aback by just how separate these two categories are:
* hasbro board games
* enjoyable board games
In fact, I would say that hasbro, and especially monopoly, are responsible for a huge chunk of people thinking all board games are terrible. When I was younger, I never understood why they didn't use their large corporate resources to either purchase or create some better games.. But nowadays I realise they are more like a toy and branding company - it's just not how they work.
It's a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Hasbro's income from BG3 pales in comparison to MTG boosters from this year alone, let alone the income over time.
It's also clear from Hasbro's own statements they didn't expect it to do so well.
Maybe they thought it would have sold like a Divinity 3 and as such gave Larian a better deal on the IP licensing than they think they could have got if they'd known in advance how well it would sell.
BG3 was the first game I've paid full price for, since Doom 3. Almost any of the 'modern' game sales concepts - game passes, ridiculous DLC, loot boxes, etc - have me waiting years after release for the GOTY version at a heavy, heavy discount.
I would buy the heck out of another DnD game like BG. Shame anyone would look at that and say meh, more battlefield.
They just need to innovate to keep up with entertainment changes, and they haven’t. They’ve become crystallized in brand management and focused on very traditional and impotent MBA-lead strategies to “monetize the portfolio” and completely missed the chance at gaming innovation leadership.
They should make WotC’s management in charge of the overall company. I had a chance to work with them extensively on MTG internet properties and they are a cut above most management teams.
Chris is an interesting mix and as long as he makes long-term choices instead of them plethora of short term profit driven choices he’s been criticized for he is capable and thoughtful. I don’t think we’ve seen what he can do as he has always been beholden to the parent corporation’s culture.
I like toys and I have children, so I got some experience buying toys.
Hasbro stuff is just garbage quality. I'm sure there is a problem with my adult taste expecting more, but the plastic they use is horrible at touch.
That's about it, I just don't buy garbage stuff.
We live in a parallel toy world where every toy I had was substantially better quality then my children. Really annoying. I often have to buy model stuff to give them decent toys (and those break!).
Also people are having less kids these days -- for better or worse (I think worse) -- so people have less need for toys. Also kids love just paying video games on tablets and PCs, so also less need for physical toys.
I think MtG and D&D have a lot of potential though.
My four year old son found a "search and find" D&D book for kids at the store, and it is now one of his favorite books. He loves the kid friendly D&D products, and will presumably continue to be a fan.
Unlike other huge IP franchises that are spear headed by a single set of characters or story, D&D has an enormous world with no single focus that makes it easily adaptable to various media and spin offs.
My son is now enthralled with the various dragons, monsters, and the idea of heroes looking for treasure. I hope they continue to make toys, games, minis and media for all age groups!
Laying off the workers at the toy factory two weeks before Christmas is the thing the villain in an 80s kids movie would do.
I don't mean that to be hyperbolic - like, literally, that's the sort of thing that was culturally cast as villainous behavior a generation or two ago.
But is this what's actually happening? The IGN article [1] and the WSJ article [2] about this claim the layoffs will be done in 18-24 months.
Since this is like the 4th toplevel comment with this point and each one generates huge threads of people pretty much saying the same thing over and over again, I'm curious whether anyone has actually read any other information about this or if everyone is just reacting to the Polygon article by making the same comment.
But the country in the 80s didn't have a generation of brainwashing by Billionaires, Millionaires, and Temporarily-Displaced-Millionaires parroting the myth that the executive board of a publicly-traded company has a "fiduciary duty" to make as much money as possible.
I think they were circling a real idea but poorly worded: if you were a kid in the 80s, that stuff was surprising and parodied in many cases even if it ultimately won out. Now when people see the backdrop for some of the movies which came out around then, it doesn’t seem like a parody as much as a pretty linear projection. Gordon Gecko was the villain but you can find a lot of people and especially many politicians who now unironically support his beliefs.
So, yes, those positions existed back then but they weren’t culturally ascendent the way they were by the turn of the century.
I did not live through the 80's (not the whole decade at least), but I have seen Robocop which I thought was supposed to be a parody. Obviously Alec Baldwin's speech from "Glengarry Glen Ross" is iconic as well.
Even a recent re-watch of "Tommy Boy" really drove home how much of a toll Reagonomics took on the industrial midwest. I never really understood why the man was so revered, but I guess he put on a good act that people bought into.
I have a hunch a lot of companies that layoff in December are also motivated by the bonus structure. Many companies structure their bonus pay around the new year in line with their fiscal calendar, either paying at the beginning of the year or entitling them to the bonus paid out later in the year.
I guess I didn't get dicked too hard in my mid December layoff (a couple years back); they gave me a pro-rated yearly bonus so I only lost like 2 weeks of it. The severance wasn't too bad either so all in all I took my money and shut up like they wanted me to. As I say in all these comments, I just wish that healthcare access wasn't tied to an employer - that seems like the cruelest aspect of modern America. Get too sick to work (and I have a condition that I live with), and you can't get healthcare any more.
Basically a ton of arrows point towards EOY as a good time to do this. January has the most layoffs, December second most. In industries with seasonal hires, you get rid of them after the rush. Additionally, company budgets tend to be yearly, so you adjust to the new fiscal year's budget at this time too.
I wonder what kind of social change would occur if each company was randomly assigned a quarter in which their taxes were due instead of everyone defaulting to the same exact time.
The older I get the more I hate publicly traded stock. Early on it seems like it had a positive advantage for companies, but here in the fully matured market we find that it just screws up all the incentives. Every company imaginable stops being what they are: A computer company, a cookie company, a toy company, an internet provider, a movie studio, etc. They all just turn into a single, stupid thing: A stockholder appeasement company.
Their singular goal becomes making stockholders (more accurately market analysts) look favorably at them. I hate it so much.
So what is the alternative? You can have a fully private company.. but most of those focus on squeezing cash out. A few are more "benefit the world" style which is great, but I don't think its the popular thing.
The biggest drawback is stock investors are too short sighted, and value things that are good for 1 quarter and bad for 10 years.
Not saying the pay isn't outrageous, but most of the executive pay is in equity, which probably cost Hasbro next to nothing. They can't pay those laid off workers, probably making little more than minimum wage, with that.
No - it's $37M - it should be less than 20% for sure. They HAD 5500 employees. After the layoffs, it could be close to ~30% - which is INSANE - but not as absolutely crazy as 50% would be.
Is there a worse time of year to do layoffs than just before the holidays? Do they do it because their fiscal calendar is aligned to the … whatever you call the normal calendar? My company has its fiscal calendar about 5 months off from the normal calendar and while we have had layoffs, they have never happened at the holiday time.
Thing is, laying people off in January would be even worse, for pretty much the same reason. As much as getting laid off during the holidays is a gut punch, it's probably ultimately better to go on the job market right before the January hiring season than to get laid off right after it wraps up.
"Competition" assumes that the market is the same. It is not.
A good example would be cable TV, and the introduction of videogames and streaming services. While the latter both are technically competing with cable TV, prices didn't change for the better.
It is the same market. The entertainment market. People don't buy toys, games, cable, streaming, or movies. They buy something fun to do with their time. All these things are competing in the same market.
Cable TV didn't come down in price or go up in quality, and so it is losing subscribers in droves.
> It is the same market. The entertainment market.
That's a bit like saying that dildos aren't so popular because people chose to watch porn online.
The "entertainment market", expressed as "anything to do in your free time", is unquantifiable, because it would include anything, from drinking alcohol to traveling to the Philippines, to driving around in circles. And if you cannot define its boundaries, the movement of goods and services cannot be calculated either.
In this case, physical toys aren't that popular anymore, because a change in societal preferences in a certain age range. People "in the market" for physical toys are "less". Hasbro wouldn't be competing with videogames, because people buying videogames would have no interest at all in physical toys.
Competition to Hasbro toy products is coming mostly from generic manufacturers. Go to a Target store, and take a look at how many parents choose random crap, instead of branded toys.
I wouldn't feel good about giving money to Hasbro right now.
With young kids' toys given as gifts, you're a little stuck, if they really want, say, specific Transformers.
But for entertainment that teens and adults buy for ourselves, there's more choice...
I can see how MtG lifestyle players who use genuine cards might be locked into continuing to give money to a Hasbro brand.
But maybe not for some of the other brands. For example, (speaking as a former DM who wrote some modules), do D&D players really need much more than d20 dice, graph paper, and an imagination?
Getting laid off in December is tough. But it's better than getting laid off in January after coming back to work from holidays, with plans for the year ahead. At least this way, folks can recuperate with their family, and then hit the job market in January.
It's easy to view it this way when you're a highly paid software worker, but the average worker in a plastic toy or board game factory is unlikely to have much runway so pretty much needs to start searching immediately with news like that.
Factory workers also are not going to be getting the kind of severance packages software devs get.
The WARN act (US federal law) requires that any company with over 100 employees gives 60 days notice. If they don't provide 60 days notice, they are required to give 60 days pay.
> The WARN act (US federal law) requires that any company with over 100 employees gives 60 days notice. If they don't provide 60 days notice, they are required to give 60 days pay.
Pay and compensation for the value of employee-provided benefits to which they would have been entitled had they been employed, if the layoff meets the size, etc., requirement for WARN Act coverage.
(a) A fixed 60 days pay is less than the 2 months per year with the company that has been the case in the last few tech layoffs I've observed in companies I've worked at
(b) Even for the <1 year employed, 60 days of factory pay (or instruction manual writer pay, or box artist pay, etc.) is less than 2 months of tech worker pay.
You know how it’s like impossible to get anything done in companies from about Dec 1 through Jan 15th? Because everyone’s taking time off, winding things down before taking time off, or ramping back up after coming back?
Yeah, leaving aside any "ruining the holidays" angle, it basically means you're adding an additional month before there's a point in doing much about even starting to look for a job.
You’re not really helping the argument for not firing people in the middle of December. During this end of the year period, a lot of companies are basically paying people for doing little to nothing at all. I’ve closed maybe two tickets.
edit: nooo don’t downvote me I wasn’t saying to fire them
You are missing the point of the parents post. It’s more nefarious to fire people at the holidays because it’s harder for them to get a new job as the people at the new place are only closing 2 tickets.
I disagree. I was laid off at holiday time decades ago. That year we had nothing for the kids for Christmas and the holidays were incredibly stressful. I can’t think of a worse time for layoffs.
Hard disagree. I’d imagine the average worker affected here doesn’t get to 'recuperate with their family' but rather have to look for a job over the holidays while trying to keep up a facade for kids & family.
And it’s not like finding a job while everyone else is off is easy either.
Sometimes. So Dec is the worst case, especially if you have a longish period. You end up paying top rates on this year, then suddenly have no income come January.
Of course details vary country to country.
One fairly common thing is you can opt to take it as an lump sum now, or take it as a monthly salary - but with the proviso that if you take a new job you stop getting it. This is often the way benefit extensions work also. Sometimes the monthly option is larger.
So financially you are often better off with the lump sum, but it can be a tax hit.
If this was in Ireland, the workers wouldn't be laid off as of today - they'd at least have the option of a "consultation period". While that might be just a formality in terms of retaining their jobs, it would give anyone who wanted the option to get their severance payment in January instead.
It's easier to get hired quickly in January. A lot of publicly traded companies that have their fiscal years aligned to calendar years institute hiring freezes in Q4 in order to make their annual financial statements look better. Plus a lot of the key internal recruiters and hiring managers take PTO in December so interviews and decisions get delayed. Activity tends to pick up again in January.
The way I see it, if you're gonna have to tighten your belt during the holidays, it's probably best to know about it sooner rather than later. By early December, people have likely already made plans for the holidays, which can easily include things that can't easily be changed (like expensive travel to go see family). Of course, that argument still applies if you're having layoffs in mid-January (right after people have done their holiday spending).
But I think it makes more sense if you look at it like this: some people feel like the holidays are already stressful enough, others feel like it's a time to be able to relax and refocus away from work. Having layoffs right at this point in time makes things even more stressful for the first group, and ruins the holiday for the second group. And in both cases, if you have layoffs in January, those affected can hit the ground running immediately rather than waiting for the New Year.
Higher level, this is why I support employees unionizing. Yes, it is not lolipops and rainbows. Yes, there is a change in dynamic. But if we're going to accept corporations are okay to act as psychopaths, then labor should organize to be the lawnmower the same way tech folks joke about Oracle. The knife should cut both ways.
Otherwise, management and shareholders are just going to keep operating in this manner and treating workers poorly and nothing will change.
> "As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's very hard to get used to that idea. It's like, 'surely this is more complicated!' but it's like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity -- that's it! ...Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah... you talk to Oracle, it's like, 'no, we don't fucking make dreams happen -- we make money!' ...You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle."
Labor should try being the lawnmower instead of the lawn; "the beatings will continue until morale improves."
A union wouldn't push to move layoffs to January, they would push to prevent layoffs at all. Which is maybe what you're advocating, but not what the parent post was saying.
If you give me two shitty options, I will propose an option not presented. Perhaps layoffs are inevitable (unsustainable business, for example, no way you can outrun negative cashflow sometimes), in which case very reasonable packages could be provided. There is no obligation today for that action. You overleveraged the business? You're getting fired, shares are going to zero, but the people who work for you aren't going to sitting at home crying through the holidays waiting for the job market to spin up in January. We might even claw some comp back if at all possible. Leaders eat last.
Note that GM cried in public they could not afford the UAW's demands, and once they agreed to said demands, they still did a $10B share buyback. Boo hoo. I'm simply tired of psychopaths in positions of power in the labor market.
I agree with you generally but I’m not sure the share buyback disproves the claim about labor affordability specifically. In fact I’m having a hard time imagining how it does.
Depends on the severance. It's rough because you're starting the application process now, and not many companies are going to start the hiring process with someone a few days before a Christmas break.
That means you can essentially only start the process in early January, so you're already a few weeks/a month into your severance
Getting laid off shortly after Christmas is worse than getting laid off before Christmas for many people, yes. If you know you're being laid off before Christmas, you can pare back on Christmas spending. If you're laid off after it, then you can't.
Instead of enjoying the holidays, you will be mentally devastated and worrying about securing an interview.
The worst time to be laid off is in December(stuck home in winter) and the best time is May(enjoy the summer).
I don't have kids, but I can imagine watching them open their presents on Christmas morning with doubt about what the next year of birthdays and Christmas will be like must be gut-wrenching.
Wild revenue swings, declining profit, high leverage of 70% (although that's in line with competitors Funko and Jakks who are at 62% and 73%). And through it all, they're paying a 5.7% dividend yield. They simply don't have the business to support that. [https://valustox.com/HAS, https://valustox.com/FNKO, https://valustox.com/JAKK]
Even Mattel is barely breaking even on a wild upward swing in revenue [https://valustox.com/MAT]
My heart goes out to those affected. Thats very rough.
I know this isn't directly related to the article at hand or anything either, but I feel like I'm seeing a real uptick in November / December layoffs. Is it just me or was it really not a thing companies did with such frequency around the holidays?
I feel like its as much a shedding of costs as it is a flex of big business trying to show strength because they all hate any inch of worker gains in the past 3 years that were made.
In other news: It appears that Hasbro is shifting to become a trading card and video game company, per the article:
>Meanwhile, Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, which publishes both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, is experiencing all-time highs for both revenue earned and the number of players engaged in those brands
>One area of investment for Hasbro appears to be the video game sector. Its latest project, Exodus, made a big splash last week at The Game Awards.
Seems like they're trying to gear up those divisions while winding down their toy division at least somewhat. Its unclear if their stragetic growth with WOTC will also include investments in table top games there or if they will be primarily focused on the core money makers around Magic: The Gathering.
If they can hit big in video games that will certainly bolster revenue though. We shall see if Hasbro is about to be an unexpected giant entrant into that industry
I am still taken aback when they do these holiday layoffs. My employer (Nextdoor) cut 25% of the company in November, and it's hard not to see the timing as a particularly brutal power play.
Perhaps it's a case of improved forecasting/data methods. Hasbro knows already this holiday season will be disastrous for them apparently, and previously companies that needed the holiday season to make their numbers had to wait until after it ended to really make decisions.
If enough of these companies start doing these “forecastings”, what are the odds that these forecasts end up causing the very event to happen.
Some stats in an index goes down, companies forecast annual sales downfall, starts cutting workforce in every industry, consumption tanks, makes the sales downfall a reality.
Also, really ? Being laid of at Christmas time ?, to save a few bucks, its not like hasbro’s going bankrupt or anything.
Humans do trade to improve each other’s quality of life, and not do things just for profit. It’s a means to an end, not the end. Too many companies are making their eyes into excel sheets, and ending up causing the very downfall by preparing for the downfall that they “anticipate”.
They will have to take returns from retailers if things aren't selling. Retail orders are half the battle for a company like Hasbro - the products still need to sell.
I wonder if it's companies trying to inflate their year-end numbers to appease shareholders. I agree that it feels like more layoffs this month than I expected, but none of them are necessarily due to 'market conditions' per se, like the layoffs that happened at the end of last year and earlier this year.
Spotify and Hasbro seem like they just made bad investments and focused on the wrong areas for their business and now they (or rather their employees) are paying for it. With Hasbro specifically laying people off right now, I bet it's a way to cut down the numbers of payroll ahead of the Christmas sales rush, which I think probably inflates their overall profit margin.
I haven't looked at Hasbro, but the impression I've gotten is that fiscal years and calendar years rarely align for larger companies. No one wants to be spending the Christmas/New Year holidays working on end-of-year accounting.
A completely unenforcable concept, but an interesting thought exercise: if executives (and with that, SVP/VPs) were as likely to experience the recieving end of a layoff the same as those below them on the org chart, how would that affect how often they happen in the first place?
For instance, if the VPs and SVPs in charge of the toy division were guaranteed to be part of the layoff, do you think the calculus would have changed? You rarely hear about it actually having reprocusssions on the C-Suite or their immediate peers (VP / SVP).
Look at it from another angle: if the layoff has to happen due to poor planning or lack of direction etc. Thats set from the top but only the bottom layers of your company is affected by the layoff. Shouldn't actually be in the reverse, where executives, SVPs and VPs should be booted as a matter of course, as they are the ones that set the direction after all and supposedly "bare the responsibility" of the company.
This reminds me of a book I was reading, The Hard Things About Hard Things. Its an interesting book, full of alot of useful information, but one thing that grinded my gears is how he talked about layoffs vs removing executives (defined as VP and up)
With layoffs, he says to do it successfully, you need to train you managers to do the following:
- Be able toexplain briefly about what happend, and that it is a company rather than a personal [employee] failure
- Be clear how the employee is impacted and that the decision is non-negotiable
- Be fully prepared about the benefits and support the company plans to provide.
Okay, on the surface, this seems good, but the first two bullets are extremely specific and targeted, while the last one uses more lax language regarding benefits and support the company plans to provide. Which is to say, it does not say serverance, it does not say what good support should look like.
Follow so far? Okay, so its pretty open ended, particularly that last part.
Then, in the exact next chapter, he talks about firing an executive, and it is suppose to work as follows:
- Be clear on the reasons
- Use decisive language
- Have the severange package approved and ready
As you can see, clearly, to fire an executive, you must clearly provide a serverance package and make sure its approved and ready
In a nutshell, this is how they see it. The executive class does not play by our rules, and never has to take the same ownership the rest of us do, period. Its explicitly spelled out that the executive must have a severance package, approved and ready where as supporting frontline employees in a layoff is left to the readers imagination as to what you should be doing for benefits and support.
I want everyone to remember this. Ben Horowitz has said outloud that what we're all thinking is true. Executives see themselves as above non executives, and expect to be treated as such.
This is in a nutshell is why the average worker should never trust the executive class and should unionize
I mean, of course. A lot of things would happen differently in business if the decision makers shared consequences and downside with the worker bees. Our system unfortunately is set up such that the executive class reaps the majority of the rewards and upside, while the workers primarily shoulder the downside.
Video games are a better market than toys for children, sure, but it still doesn't feel like a reliable bet for Hasbro to get into.
Particularly the mention of video game licensing rather than development just screams execs amazed at how well that did, but I think they're overestimating how much they can make that repeatable. What with Pathfinder and Divinity games having laid the foundation for a CRPG comeback, Baldur's Gate 2 being one of those games still talked about nearly 25 years later, the wave of growth TTRPGs and derivatives got over the pandemic (see also the critical role amazon shows), there was a lot weighing in favour of BG3 that I don't think is repeatable on a more frequent basis. Not to mention Hasbro being relatively hands off and probably having forgotten they licensed it out.
I think Hasbro think they're going to knock out Baldur Gate 3's and that it was their brand that provided all the value so they can charge the next people more, and maybe stuff it full of microtransactions. But I think much more likely is an outcome like the opening of Warhammer, a bunch of "ehh, it did ok I guess" mid tier games, and if they try to extract too much value from it they'll crush it.
Hasbro tried the video game business back in the 1990s. They bought Atari assets and name in 1998, and Microprose as well, and became a pretty major player, but it flamed out. Video game development/publishing is a tough business.
I feel like a lot of attention from this is on the WotC side, which is doing very well, bully for them, I consume a lot of the D&D product line. But what's up with the rest of the company doing poorly? They have a huge trove of great IP that's failing. Play-doh and Nerf seem like they're still children's play staples no? Is there a big shift in consumption of action figures I should know about? Or is the story more about issues with inflation/affordability for these types of toys?
The problem is, nobody cares if the can actually says Play-doh on the label. When kids become brand aware it matters what phone they get, not so much the brand of a toy gun. You can pump them full of commercials to sell stuff, but anyone can do so, and it doesn't matter what your brand used to be before they were born.
I think the way kids consume commercials has also changed? I think my kids (age 2-8) have maybe seen no more than 10 commercials each in their entire life? But I know influencers and such are going to start leaving a mark.
Vs as a kid, I saw so so so many commercials for GI Joe, etc.
I never understood these layoffs. Don't the management team see it coming and plan it? Seems like a knee jerk reaction which affects people. Sad to see them ruining Christmas
They got lucky with D&D. The ruled gameplay isn't even that good/original with D&D when compared to other RPG mechanics from other systems... it's mostly the lore that enabled WoTC to sell rights to the IP to get us Baldurs gate, torment etc.
With magic it's just an addictive game and the "lore" though slim makes it feel adultish.
D&D got lucky that both stranger things and critical role happened more than anything. I wonder what % of the popularity boom was from those two sources?
D&D has been around forever. It has always been super niche. Then it somehow jumped into mainstream?
Stranger things? Did it really popularize D&D that much? I saw the first season and they played the game like a couple of times. Didn't think it would cause a huge surge in D&D sales.
There was a big investor push recently (led by Alta Fox) to get Hasbro to spin WotC out into an independent company [0], which failed. The big concern being that forcing growth on those properties (Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons) to continue to support failed strategies with legacy properties could risk ruining those properties through mismanagement for short-term gains.
I really don't know where Hasbro goes from here. I don't think the toy market will ever recover, and the board game world has completely passed by properties like Monopoly. Chris Cocks, the CEO is the former head of WotC, so I'm hoping there is some level of understanding of stewardship of the WotC properties, but I'm really not confident. Even the recent D&D movie was disappointing from a business perspective (although surprisingly wonderful for fans). They also have a huge success in Baldur's Gate 3, although it is also disappointing from a monetization perspective. Even those recent lukewarm wins are within the WotC umbrella.
[0] - https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/hasbro-wins-wizards-of-the-coas...