WoTC Makes More Money Than Hasbro? | Roll For Combat Ryan Dancey Clip
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ม.ค. 2023
- Ryan Dancey, the co-creator of the original Open Gaming License (OGL 1.0a) tells the story about how everyone in the financial community was completely ignoring WoTC until just a few years ago. And now WoTC is the cash cow for Hasbro and everyone knows it.
Check out the original video this was clipped from, One of the Architects of the Original OGL, Ryan Dancey, Discusses Its Creation | Roll For Combat ► • One of the Architects ...
Download the OGL 1.1 here ► ogl.battlezoo.com/
Original release of the OGL 1.1
@TenkarsTavern ►► • I Have the OGL 1.1 in ...
@Indestructoboy ►► • I have D&D's OGL 1.1
Check out our other videos relating to OGL 1.1:
►► The New OGL 1.1 Is Pretty Horrible, But It Will Be Very Hard to Enforce: • The New OGL 1.1 Is Pre...
►► Expert Contract Lawyer Explains WotC's New OGL 1.1 and What It Means: • Expert Contract Lawyer...
►► We Received the Original and FIRST Leak of the Open Gaming License 1.1 (OGL) Live On Air!: • We Received the Origin...
Please support our 5e and Pathfinder products at battlezoo.com/
🐉 Play a Dragon PC, explore the Indigo Isles, create gear from monster parts, and more at: battlezoo.com/ 🐉
✨ Never before have players been able to play such legendary monsters in their PF2 and 5e games such as mimics, slimes, and intelligent weapons... until now! Check out the Year of Monsters at: battlezoo.com/products/year-o... ✨
Follow the Roll For Combat and their many podcasts:
►► / rollforcombat
►► discord.rollforcombat.com
►► / rollforcombat
►► / rollforcombat
►► / rollforcombat
Subscribe to the podcast:
►► itunes.rollforcombat.com
►► www.subscribeonandroid.com/rol...
Thumbnail by Rich Merry at: / richmerry0
#dnd #dungeonsanddragons #OpenDnD #ogl - บันเทิง
Glad to see Ryan's eloquent and professional answer to the question I asked.
Having him as an insight to the foundation and development of the game is truly a treasure.
My tinfoil hat theory about WoTC trying to escape from Hasbro was supposed to be a joke.
I forgot how silly the writing is for this "real world" thing.
the campaign setting for "real world" is very wacky.
I like it when an expert appears and explains to people the 1D chess these companies are actually playing, compared to the elaborate fantasies they have in their heads.
Some of these companies are playing checkers when they think they are playing 4d chess. None of them are smart enough to be playing MtG which makes all of them combined look like checkers.
It's actually interesting that several investors wanted to do that. The idea failed but it would be interesting if the leak is purely to leave Hasbro
The idea of voting in a new board and spinning off Wizards didn't work, but that's because the existing Hasbro more or less became "the Wizards company". Investors know where the money comes from now and they're paying attention - that's why the sudden interest in growing D&D's revenue.
A little annoyed that I spent all night reading the latest SEC filing from Hasbro to learn what Ryan just said, but there's a ton of stuff in there, that I was surprised by.
A lot of journalists and youtubers are getting a ton of numbers and info wrong in weird ways. Like the OneTV thing. They arn't selling that company at all. Just the parts of it that have nothing to do when them making films and tv shows based on their products.
Also the 1.6 billion in revenue is not for the year. It's for the QUARTER. In the last 9 months, Hasbro has made 4 billion dollars in revenue, with 500 million in profit. And yes, the majority of that profit, is 5 to 1, in WOTC's favor. What's super interesting, is that the filing talks about why. The toy market for Hasbro right now is completely a mess, because of pandemic and war related shipping issues. Everything costs way too much to ship right now.
Now for the really silly. They claim, that one of their goals is to take their current subscriber platforms, like Hasbro Pulse, and D&D Beyond, and turn them into billion dollar platforms, by rising their subscribers from 20 million, to 50 million users by 2027.
In 2020, Hasbro announced that there was currently 50 million people who had used DND products. So that's a very ambitious plan. :P
And they just did everything possible to ensure everyone leaves instead of growing the service. Fantastic.
The first 5 minutes is the best explanation of what happened I have seen. Excellent job.
This was one of the most telling segments of the discussion you all had. If this goes really bad for Hasbro their value could collapse to the point where they, or at least WotC, becomes the the next property sucked up by Disney. Not rooting for it but wouldn’t be surprised.
Also when people are calling for heads to roll the names they need to keep in mind all 3 that got their positions 1 year ago:
- Chris Cox was promoted from WotC president to Hasbro head of digital gaming.
- Cynthia Williams promoted to president of WotC
- Tim Field GM of digital gaming reports to Ms Williams
feels more like Microsoft is going to gobble up WotC
Disney eating WotC would make me sad.
All I have to do is look at what they did to Marvel and Starwars.
@@VaSoapman I'm not sure disney is going to have the cash to do that for long
The similarities between this and Matt Colville's prediction is kinda nuts
I remember being in the army and one of the things you will always here is someone in the higher position trying to figure something out as quickly as possible. Telling people that they need to do this or that and where. When asked why or if someone had a better solution nine times out of ten their answer is "there is a method to my madness". There were a lot of things that me and my co-workers that were on the lower tier of the totem pole discussing how something can be done faster, easier, and cheaper. But it will almost always go on deaf ears.
The only time when the higher ups would listen to me was when it came to computers (MOS 25B). I knew how to best handle them, network, web browser, and even their tablets. So whenever I say that this one thing isn't the best idea is when they'll slow down on their train of thought and wonder what would be the best option. Not all of the time, but in a blue moon it will happen.
Hasbro doesn't know the key factors that DND provides. They want more money. The higher up in WOTC believe DND could make more. Not sure how to do that they go with the next best thing. Try to monopolize the brand. Kick everyone out of your club house and add an entry fee to those that want to go inside. Almost like Walmart that accepts other brands of products. Then one day they decide to remove every product that isn't Walmart so they can make more money. It won't be Walmart anymore, it'll be a store with a crappy product line.
The thing is, if they actually made the platform good, performant, good tools like a nice character creator (apparently they have this one down through dndbeyond) and had a good way to monetise digital versions of 3rd party supplements on it, they could have them on the digitial platform via incentivising rather than beating the 3rd party supplements down and trying to outright steal them through crazy licencing terms.
EXACTLY.
All 1.1 had to say was "if you wanna publish OGL pdf stuff, you do it on our site and we get 20%." Nothing more.
That means that a 10 dollar product would be 12.99 plus tax. EVERY 3rd party company would have done it and WOTC would've become AMAZON for TTRPGs. Even if companies didn't need the OGL to publish, they would have done it for the access to the store alone.
Even just making a VTT as good as roll20, that used DNDBeyond for all the character management, would cause everyone to dump their old VTTs and switch. Include a group finder. Add a way for DMs to take a payment while skimming a little off the top. Now that they own DNDBeyond, it should be easy to turn DND into a cash cow. Instead, they are driving everyone to other systems. OGL 1.1 is going to make it harder to make money.
@@bartbartholomew precisely :D However having a deal where one can upload the digital version of 3rd party content to integrate in, they could reasonably take a small cut of that without taking a cut of everything. That way it would be accessible for the users, a revenue source for the 3rd party publisher and an extra revenue source for WotC and Hasbro... They get to partially deal with the "undermonetization" they are complaining about without destroying their product by forcing such attrocious terms. Hel, doesn't need to be part of OGL at all, but just seperate contracts for distribution via the VTT.
@@devildham I wouldn't even go that far. Only "if you publish content, agree to it being published in our integrated platform (say, DND Beyond) while still getting your majority cut". That alone would ensure they have a digital platform where *everything* D&D related is easily accessible and integrated into usable tools like character creators, monster lists and other filtered content aggregators. It could easily become be the go-to platform for everything D&D related just for the gargantuan value of its convenience, so 3rd party publishers could still do whatever they wanted with physical copies and PDFs of their content.
Just a thought we should tank the rating for the DND Beyond App Store rating they will notice that.
I gotta watch the other video, that was a helluva good explanation about Hasbro/WotC and reinforces my thoughts on wasted potential.
Back in the days of Chris Perkins being a DM, they had the opportunity to push forward with all of this stuff before Critical Role and given the videos still available today- had some success. So what happened?
Nothing, they grew complacent. Didn't pay attention to what they had and let it sit in a corner until it got too big to ignore.
They had access to all the same stuff as the 3rd party creators, if not more- resources, databases, creators, apps/video games, and the ability to scout talent as well as make any content official should they choose to- so why didn't they? Motivation.
They had multiple shows in the same vein as Critical Role(Acquisitions Inc, The C Team, Dice Camera Action), Bord Games, Apps(DDB) Video Games(console, pc, and phone) and movies, but didn't make good decisions in marketing. They took up unnecessary political grandstanding and dropped in quality of story/product instead- blaming or insulting the customer base and costing them potential sales/reputation.
In recent years others have used the same model under the OGL 1.0 with their own effort, stories, ambition, and resources- but successfully.
Hasbro/WotC had the same, if not more potential to do it themselves- but didn't.
So basically, instead of doing what the successful models have shown to work through effort- they're taking a lazy and spitefully bullying route that directly and negatively impacts the entire business by essentially shaking down both customer and competitor to make up for complacency.
Hearing the explanation of Hasbro/WotC, they don't deserve to pull off 1.1 just because they missed the ship.
I mean they _could_ publish more books, 5e's content is famously anemic in regards to some classes. Classes, subclasses, sensible magic item prices, more thorough rules for skills, more magic item variety, more thorough rules for mundane items and purchases so the DM doesn't have to _invent_ things to spend money on… there's a lot they could do to increase the ease of play and introduce more options for players.
Boy Ryan hasn’t aged a day in 20 years!
Well, his hair was wizened.
this also helps understand WoTC purchase of DnDBeyond well stated answer I have been wondering why the corporate discourse seemed so Vanilla lol
I am definitely sharing this clip!
It's not just a good sounding answer that seems to account for the most relevant variables succinctly, it's scientific. It references specific data points you can check for yourself.
LoL, that’s like saying Blizzard is going to split from Activision because Bobby Kotick isn’t making more money from them, it will never happened.
Thank you for this. I'm now going to share this with everyone I know
Thx for the share.
Extremely interesting, as usual!
Amazing explanation.
I think digital also means a VTT that will be better than anything out there, something so good that everyone will jump ship, the problem is, many people have purchased online books on Roll20 and wont want to repurchase those.
Id imagine what every subscription service they have will include content for free, at least part of it like basic rules and maybe UA options, but DMs would have to buy adventure books and monster books probably.
@@DivusMagus If you're trying to make money giving things out for free doesn't make sense. They will give out absolutely fuck all, maybe one race and one class and that's probably it. Obviously along with shit that is already free
That's gotta be the greatest iron either ever was. In an effort to make more profit from Wizards of the Coast they chased away the source of those profits!
and instead of merchandise they decide to destroy the game
if you think wotc is a victim here and not also run by the same psychopaths then i have a bridge to sell you
This is bang on accurate.
Best explanation I’ve heard.
"Let's talk about 4th edition." And then the video shuts down. Wow, what a statement on how little people want to talk about it! ;)
In fairness he DID have some really interesting things to say in the full length discussion.
@@caffeinedelusions Oh, I'm sure. I was actually looking forward to his commentary. But the cutoff just made the joke work so well.
Ryan's reply really helped me understand the issue at hand.
where is the full live stream?
Very interesting statement!
That explanation makes an enormous amount of sense
WotC is own by Hasbro who is in turn owned by The Vanguard Group (10.8%) Capital Research Global Investors (9.8%) BlackRock (8.4%) Alan G. Hassenfeld (6.1%)
Damn that's too many circles inside circles we need to break them up, encourage competition thereby discouraging such monopolistic practices as they have shown
You know it's bad when you see the name BlackRock pop up.
Though to be fair on a friendliness scale from 0 to 10 these are probably all the work of the devil. :D
I would love to see that power point.
nice!
I'm really curious to know what this proposed new OGL could do to the 3D Printing community. Hasbro stopping third parties from producing new adventures seems like a minor drop in the bucket compared to what it could do if it forced all users of their VTT to use their models rather than stls bought from MMF or Cults.
If they didn't allow Third Party models on their VTT that would definitely be a death knell for their VTT imo.
Don't care, raise the black flags boys!
🏴🏴🏴
#Raisetheblackflag
I would love to see the full interview. It sounds like quite the video
It’s on the ‘Roll for Combat’ live section.
Check it out at th-cam.com/video/2Vz9ogq7JTg/w-d-xo.html !
Wait spinning out WoTC and having it be worth as much as Hasbro only means WoTC accounts for half the value of Hasbro currently, not all. Or am I missing something?
That's what Ryan said: WotC is currently earning half of Hasbro's money.
WOTC is actually makes around 70% of Hasbro's profit, not 50%.
The statement was that if you spin it out, it will be worth as much as Hasbro is worth today. Not as much as Hasbro would be worth afterwards. Meaning that they consider Hasbro incl. WotC to be vastly under-valued today.
@@ShieTar_ Ah, thanks for the clarification. It's hard to imagine losing WoTC wouldn't cause a significant drop in Hasbro's value.
So they're unbelievably messing up then?
What happens if a few thousand people start selling short Hasbro stock? Just saying.
Wow. This puts a lot into perspective. It is breathtaking how much they screwed up their approach to improving revenue.
If I were wizards / hasbrock I'd reach out to companies making games like baldurs Gate 3 and solasta and seeing if they can be paired up with one of these big dnd shows like crit roll, to adapt their worlds
Their idea seems to be why pair up when you can let them make it, either the shows or the games, and then steal it all while also being paid to do so.
The Free the Wizards report has been taken down, so it's impossible to say how valid this all is.
I could only find two articles about it- This AltaVista group were trying in 2022 to get 5 people elected to the board of Hasbro in an effort to get WOTC spun off. Um.. these are the guys who think WOTC is under monetized. What I'm reading in this is they want to 'free the wizards' so they can wring more money out of their customers.
There may just be too much traffic for the server, like a ddos attack, but actual people trying to get the report. Chech back later..
WOTC is the HASBRO Cash Cow?
PEPPA PIG and MLP says-Hold our Milk.
Hasbro's states in Q1 PEPPA PIG is their number one invetment
Yeah, I don’t believe WotC is anything close to Hasbro’s biggest earner
Hasbro's biggest seller is My Little Pony. It used to be Star Wars, but then The Last Jedi came out. That's not a Star Wars hating comment. That came from actual financial reports. When The Last Jedi came out, Star Wars started seriously underselling and My Little Pony accounted for 21% of their revenue, making it their best seller.
Wotc earned like 1.3billion in 2021I think which is a bit less than what retail sales of Peppa pig made in 2019. I think Peppa pig was bought for 4 billion and isn't their money maker yet because of this. (Warning, I'm not good at verifying financial data off the net)
Peppa Pig and MLP might have had really good years, but WOTC, while not great, has always been a stable producer of profit
@@pianotm Yeah they expect PEEPA AND MLP to be their #1 till 2027
Digital #2
Nerf and PLaydogh #3
Transformers and Power Rangers # 4
D&D #5
They already have D&D6X penciled in for 2027
They have a huge media deal with NETFLIX and Parmount+
So the D&D IP may make their money but they are not sure if D&D the game will, thus the migration to Digital D&D.
If 6E succeeds then things will sail as normal till 2027 while they fix that MTG leek
If 6 E fails, they still have the DIGITAL and Physical IP to milk and they can cut WOTC loss by blaming them for the fail.
D&D the lunchbox will always make more money then D&D the game
Ooof...
The irony of their attempt to increase profits from their cash cow more is that they may severely hobble it
Are you saying Alta Fox was right‽
hmm seems that hasbro has an avenu to solve all problems, split from hasbro and keep it all the same as before investors are happy we see to distance from evil hasbro and get some trust back, wonder if they will take it
They definitely don't make mor than Hasbro
Sadly, this strategy of creating, and forcing people to use, a digital platform, is likely to wreck the whole table top industry. Assuming it works. They are trying to reshape an industry, which serves an inherently in person hobby (although there definitely is space for virtual play), into an industry that is virtual, with all that means (e.g. micro purchases); basically just another MMO. That will be a big lift because it’s so antithetical to the culture of ttrpg, so the odds it will succeed, to the degree Hasbro is satisfied, is low, but it will cause a lot of hurt before it’s done.
Not really, there is a demographic which will lap this up. Also Virtual tabletop is quite popular in the board games community and been around for some time - they release a big box game and then suddenly there is a digital version to play which totally negates why release a physical product as many bleat on how much better the digital version of the game is. Im not a fan of digital due to it gives me headaches and eye strain - prefer physical.
@@Mark-nh2hs Yeah, there is clearly a generational divide. But what is the average age of role players? The real role players are generally older, and this move will lose them. It also puts D&D into competition with other online games, like WOW. They are pushing away a large part of their market to pursue people in a market with a lot of competition. I could very easily see younger players preferring a simpler computer game to all the fuss associated with ttrpg. This is very risky for wotc.
@@marlinperkins6910 the board game community have a lot of older gamers - it's not all those naff board games most people think off lol. We are talking Gloomhaven for example. The tabletop simulator (I think it's called) you find all ages use it it's not just the young lol. Me personally prefer face to face RPG than staring at a computer or mobile screen, you get a better reaction and connection and who doesn't love throwing those dice - computer dice rolling is so unsatisfactory. The thing with RPGs if it hard people modify it to make it easy for people to digest esp new people who may struggle.
On the business side it's all speculation it's easy to say they will lose money, but it's all depends if the new demographic latch and hoping many larger D&D channels will start promoting it (as they have a nice agreement with WoTC) and many will convert. You see it a lot on TH-cam - outcry and screams of boycotting - the company ignores it and go "Toxic fandom" they release a trailer or a test product and fans either go "oh my god this is the best" and suddenly start defending the company or "sod this shit I'm off". It will be interesting to see how many of these outraged TH-cam channels and fans change their tune when WoTC drop a test product...... But I get the fandoms anger I'm not dismissing it, but I've seen this before and sadly it never goes the fans way and the company ends up making money and keeps making money.
Not anymore. WoTC is effectively being boycotted.
( sorry vor my bad englisch)
But this analytic peopel say thad hasbro is a 2.3 billion company and they say wizard share of thad is 100 million ( a billion had 12 zeros a million 6, and no 100 million are not 1 billion^^) so i think yout statment is false
Not aftet this year they wont, wotc's numbers are going to be in the dumpster. Between OGL and mtg 30th
but most of that income is from Magic. Not D&D.
And Hasbro would be worth 1/2 of what it is without WOTC
you're good at D&D , not math
WOTC sucks so much.
This should be vetted first or taken down for making false claims
Is it false? How do you know?
Per the Hasbro 2021 financial statement, page 149, WotC accounted for $547m of their $763m in profit. So yes, WotC is pretty big at Hasbro.
This is blatently not true. Wotc is a fraction of the size, cashflow, profitability and capital of Hasbro. Wboever this speaker is, is making it up. It is blatently not true.
It looks to be about 1/8th of the value.
And Peppa pig seems to be half of Hasbro's value. But idk I'm not entirely sure of the numbers.
Not necessarily. The article he's referencing is actually a thing. If you remember, a few years ago, a group of investors wanted Hasbro's Board to separate WotC from Hasbro. It was for THAT exact reason.
Hasbro’s Q3 2022 Earnings
Operating Profit YTD as of end of Q3:
WotC - $434M
Consumer Products - $137M
Entertainment - $50M
Revenue is higher for consumer products but profits are much higher for WotC.
The speaker is a former Vice President of Wizards of the Coast who was managing the D&D brand at the time of Hasbro‘s purchase of WotC - and the guy who created the OGL.
Insane
free dnd from hasbro/wotc
If you want the presentation the Way Back Machine has it. web.archive.org/web/20220217201817/freethewizards.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Alta-Fox-HAS-Presentation-Final.pdf