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Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

polygon.com

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Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#141

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

oflannabhra wrote: post #28

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 Gat…

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!).

Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#142

Post by ska »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #113
ska wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the jurisdiction, severance packages may be required for mass layoffs.

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. Obviously, local laws will vary greatly.

> Obviously, local laws will vary greatly.

Yes this is one area where it is all over the map, and you have to check your employment jurisdiction.

Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#143

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

kridsdale3 wrote: post #138
brianwawok wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Somehow get companies to be like Valve.

I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Whatever happened with Valve, it should be repeated

Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#144

Post by acdha »

influx wrote: post #86
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you live through the 80s? I did and find this wildly inaccurate. See the Greed is Good memes and hero worship of Wall Street.

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.

Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#145

Post by nine_zeros »

brianwawok wrote: post #125
sircastor wrote: post #114

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 a…

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.

> So what is the alternative?

That shareholders and execs accept a few quarters of low/no growth? Infinite growth quarter-over-quarter is madness.

Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#146

Post by mcphage »

slimsag wrote: post #78
oflannabhra wrote: post #28

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 Gat…

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 Z…

> By comparison, brands like Lego have evolved, are insanely expensive (>$100)

They have expanded their product range upwards, but they still have tons of inexpensive, non-3rd-party-brand Lego sets.

Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#147

Post by corethree »

sunshowers wrote: post #109
corethree wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honor Among Thieves wasn't quite the all-time great that Baldur's Gate 3 was, but I thought it was pretty fun and enjoyable. I think the other D&D game that came out recently (Dark Alliance) is probably a better example of devaluing the brand.

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.

Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#148

Post by corethree »

brianwawok wrote: post #122
corethree wrote: post #83

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.

Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#149

Post by Karrot_Kream »

roughly wrote: post #56

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.

[1]: https://www.ign.com/articles/dungeons-dragons-owner-hasbro-l...

[2]: https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/hasbro-layoffs-toy-compa...

Re: Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

#150

Post by heelix »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #126
TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BG3 was disappointing from a monetization perspective? How on earth, it sold over 20 million copies in less than a year!

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.

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.

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