Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast (WotC), announced today plans to eliminate 15 percent of its global workforce this year.
The layoffs are expected to come in the next few weeks and are part of larger leadership and organizational changes. The press release said the first change was that Eric Nyman, Hasbro president and chief operating officer, was departing the company. Hasbro expects to eliminate around 1,000 jobs.
Hasbro CEO, Chris Cocks, pointed toward the underperformance of Consumer Products as the reason to attempt to save $250-300M in annual run-rate cost savings by the end of 2025.
“Despite strong growth in Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming, Hasbro Pulse, and our licensing business, our Consumer Products business underperformed in the fourth quarter against the backdrop of a challenging holiday consumer environment,” Cocks said.
WotC increased its revenue by 22 percent in the last quarter of 2022 compared to the previous year and was praised for becoming Hasbro’s first billion-dollar brand, but even WotC’s gains couldn’t make up for the Consumer Products segment. Hasbro expects its fourth-quarter revenue to reach $1.68 billion, down 17 percent compared to that period a year earlier.
While WotC has preformed well financially, it has caught flak of late in regards to Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. Just recently WotC was under fire for attempting to tighten the open game license agreement from D&D, which would have let WotC make money off products without paying the person who made it. Hasbro canceled those plans earlier this month after backlash from D&D fans. Magic also caught heat last year, leading to Cocks having a fireside chat where he addressed the game’s future and insisted the game wasn’t being overprinted.
Read the press release from Hasbro here.