Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast (WotC), announced earlier this week plans to eliminate 1,100 jobs (roughly 20 percent of its global workforce) on top of the 800 cuts made so far in 2023.
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks announced layoffs for 1,100 workers in a memo to employees on Monday as the decline in the toy business continues through another holiday shopping season. Many employees will be let go this week while the rest of the layoffs will happen over the next six months, Cocks said.
Cocks called the layoffs a last resort for Hasbro as shares have declined 21 percent over the past 12 months.
“We anticipated the first three quarters to be challenging, particularly in toys, where the market is coming off historic, pandemic-driven highs,” Cocks said. “While we have made some important progress across our organization, the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday and are likely to persist into 2024.”
While WotC has led the way for Hasbro it doesn’t mean that company is safe from the layoffs. Employees that work on Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering have posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, to announce they were hit by the cuts. Even the Senior Communications Manager for WotC was laid off.
The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth became the highest-selling Magic: The Gathering set of all time this year, and is the second set to break $200 million along with Modern Horizons 2, but WotC’s revenue growth was mainly driven by the success of Baldur’s Gate III and Monopoly Go! which drove $63 million of incremental revenue in Q3. Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the best-selling games of 2023 and one of the highest rated video games of all time while Monopoly Go! is the No. 1 mobile game launch of 2023 as the most revenue-generating mobile game of the year.