2y ago

'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs

www.pcgamer.com

Suffering and success.

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2y ago

'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs

www.pcgamer.com /theres-almost-nobody-left-ceo-of-baldurs-gate-3-dev-swen-vincke-says-the-dandd-team-he-initially-worked-with-is-gone-due-to-hasbro-layoffs/

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stopthatgirl7 @kbin.social

2y ago

'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs

www.pcgamer.com /theres-almost-nobody-left-ceo-of-baldurs-gate-3-dev-swen-vincke-says-the-dandd-team-he-initially-worked-with-is-gone-due-to-hasbro-layoffs/

16 comments

For context, earlier this week Hasbro (owner of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering) announced that it would be laying off 1,100 employees as a way to "modernize our organization and get even leaner". Not soon after, it was revealed that an avalanche of employees from both D&D and MTG had been laid off.
In an investor meeting in October this year, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks specifically mentions Baldur's Gate 3 as a contributing factor for a 40% increase in digital gaming revenue, alongside Monopoly Go! and Magic: The Gathering.
Well yeah, obviously you gotta fire whoever was the cause of a 40% increase in revenue, otherwise that could even raise to 50%. Where would it end?
Always safer to go with what you know: letting the ravenous mob desperate to throw money at you know just as soon as possible that you're taking steps to remove anything they liked about your product.
Do you think they can get lean enough to break even in their future?
- What the fuck is that logic even? These people contributed to making a great game that made you a ton of money and you have them fired right after. I can't see how that makes sense, if they succeeded once, surely they can make other great products.
  
  Layoffs make the stock price go up. It's a "look at all the money we are saving!" Move. Get a short term profit at the expense of long term gains, because to shareholders short term profits matter more.
The CEO and upper management at WOTC are the real monsters. Greed is bad.
I bet they don't even play D&D.
- There was some sort of QnA with the important WOTC people for some DnD influencers not too long ago, where they confirmed they never played and politely declined a room full of experienced DMs that wanted to run a game for them... Don't remembrr what the event was, but I think it was this sumner
  
  Yeah that was at GenCon this year.
  
  Oh I'm sorry I actually don't like fun so I'll have to decline a game...
  
  Was that back during the OGL scandal? I recall seeing a bunch of interviews then, but that was like 3 scandals ago, so it's hard to keep track.
- Megacorporations are neither Good or Bad, not even Neutral in DND terms. Those are human motivations. They're Shareholder Profit-motivated.
  Some corps are Lawful Shareholder Profit-motivated, some are Neutral Shareholder Profit-motivated and some are Cahotic Shareholder Profit-motivated.
  I find it interesting to reframe their actions and motivations this way...
Seeing a lot of people in this and similar threads confused by the headline apparently not having read the article.
There were no mass layoffs at Larian, the video game studio that developed Baldur's Gate 3.
There were mass layoffs at Hasbro, the company that owns Wizards of the Coast, which produces the Dungeons & Dragons RPG system used by Baldur's Gate 3.
Throughout the development of Baldur's Gate 3, the team at Larian would have been working alongside the team at Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast to make sure the Dungeons & Dragons system was integrated properly into the video game.
Following the layoffs, the CEO of Larian had commented that the D&D team who had helped design the system that Baldur's Gate 3 is based on is now almost completely gone.
So let me get this straight, the developers make a game, and then immediately mgmt lays everyone off so that they can reap the rewards? The developers should be getting their piece of the pie as they are the ones that made this happen.
It's time to unionize, or you're going to be permanently railroaded. We're letting the corporate world do this to us. IN EVERY SINGLE FUCKING OCCUPATION!
We get paid penny's on the dollar compared to upper management. Do you think they work harder than you? It's time to tip the scales in the direction of the worker. We need a General Strike, or we will NEVER be comfortable again. It will only get worse.
- Not quite—the devs of Baldur's Gate 3 didn't get laid off; the people at Dungeons & Dragons that they worked with did
  
  Hmm...fine...I'll put my pitchfork down.
  Still though. Most of my point still stands. Something is going to give. The next 10 years are going to be interesting.
There was an attempt to separate WoTC and break it off from Hasbro in 2022.
Dragging down the games it owns and the stock with it, the powers that be at Hadbro instead decided to stick with the sinking ship.
The spin-off would have been beautiful. Run by gamers, for gamers; like it was in the beginning with people like Peter Adkison and Richard Garfield at the helm.
Yup, sounds like a corporation, nothing shocking to see here.

16 comments