Hasbro/Wizards has laid off almost all of the people responsible for the $63M in digital licensing profits from BG3 they brag about in their investor letter. Two weeks before Christmas.
Meanwhile, Dropout (Game Changer, Dimension 20) has instituted a full profit sharing program with everyone who worked on their productions, the majority of whom are contractors.
Get the D&D people in your life a Dropout subscription instead of the newest 5E book this Christmas!
@kate I didn't say Larian had layoffs! Hasbro's layoffs included almost all of Wizards' digital licensing team, which was responsible for Hasbro's profits on Baldur's Gate 3.
Swen Vincke, the CEO of Larian, tweeted saying almost everyone they worked with on the Wizards side is gone.
Licensing is work! The people at Wizards who worked with Larian are far more responsible for the the revenue Hasbro is listing in their Q3 Investor "highlights" than any Hasbro executive.
I'll add that the layoffs also hit a large number of artists, designers, the D&D Beyond Live Content team which produced the wonderful Battle for Beyond series, and a ton more (all of this coming from tweets from people impacted).
I don't mean in any way to imply that these people are any more or less important; I only meant to use BG3 as a highlight for how expressly blatant it is that this has nothing to do with whether the people laid off are "productive" or "revenue generating".
Dylan Nugent
[GRS] Kate Shrike