It is no secret that Magic: the Gathering makes a lot of money. Hasbro is very proud of that detail, in fact, often lauding the company’s success. Within 2022, MTG became a billion-dollar brand after going from strength to strength. Along with the rest of Wizards of the Coast, MTG is undoubtedly a massively successful part of Hasbro.
Despite all the money that MTG and Dungeons & Dragons bring in, unfortunately, Hasbro isn’t going from strength to strength. The company’s digital sector may be booming, but recent reports show Consumer Product and Entertainment sectors are faltering. As a result of this, Hasbro has been looking to cut costs recently to maximize profit and potential.
To achieve this goal, earlier in 2023 Hasbro announced major job cuts from across the company. Alongside this, Hasbro is also selling its share of Entertainment One which produces the Transformers and recent Dungeons & Dragons films. Unfortunately, despite this dramatic action, Hasbro has recently revealed that its cost-cutting measures aren’t over yet.
In a memo from CEO Chris Cocks, Hasbro has revealed another 1,100 employees are being laid off.
“A Lever We Must Pull To Keep Hasbro Healthy”
In the internal memo, Chris Cocks stated Hasbro was planning “additional headcount reductions.” Due to take place over the next six months, a total of 1,100 additional employees are losing their jobs. This follows the “roughly 800 redactions already taken,” earlier this year.
Explaining the decision, Cocks stated that Hasbro is aiming to “modernize our organization and get even leaner.” Supposedly, this approach will make the company more “solid and profitable,” moving into the future. Speaking of the future, Cocks revealed that Hasbro already has plans to spend the money they’re saving.
“We’ll also tap into unlocked potential across our business, like our new supply chain efficiency, our direct-to-consumer capabilities, and key partnerships to maximize licensing opportunities, scale entertainment, and free up our own content dollars to drive new brand development.”
Alongside their plans for the future, Cocks also offered a glimmer of sympathy to all those being laid off. Stating that “we recognize this is heavy news that affects the livelihoods of our friends and colleagues,” Hasbro went ahead with the layoffs regardless. As if it needs to be pointed out, we’re currently less than two weeks away from the holidays.
Hasbro’s Golden Goose Still Gets Hit
Within the initial company memo, Chris Cocks didn’t explicitly list out the 1,100 employees set to lose their jobs. Unsurprisingly, this all-important detail was shrouded in mystery, with Cocks only stating the layoffs were occurring globally. Following the initial momo, Hasbro explicitly told Dicebreaker “We are not sharing breakdowns on geography or teams out of respect for employees.”
Due to this lack of information from Hasbro, initially, it was unknown who might be affected. Considering their strength as a company, Wizards of the Coast seemed safe, however, no one knew for sure. For better or worse, this information wasn’t hidden for long, as shortly after the memos’ publication, initial layoffs started happening.
Much to the dismay of D&D and MTG fans, it has been confirmed that Wizards of the Coast staff have been affected by the layoffs. Currently, it’s unclear exactly how many WotC staff are being laid off over the next six months. What we have seen so far, however, are some pretty devastating job losses from across both sides of the company.
On the D&D side, Hasbro has reportedly laid off multiple key figures at the upper echelons of D&D design. The game’s Director of Game design, for instance, has been cut, alongside the Art Director for D&D. Worryingly, so many high-level jobs have been cut that we simply couldn’t name them all here.
Unfortunately, many Wizards staff working on MTG have also been laid off in this latest cuts. With designers, a director of Universes Beyond, and MTG’s community manager being named so far, it’s very much a dark day. Worryingly, this may only be the start, as we’ve only seen a fraction of the total planned layoffs.
Read More: New MTG Arena Set Debuts Controversial Typal Art Changes
