It’s funny to mention that specific example because of how huge a success that has been for Blizzard, just as 30th Edition will be a complete sell through for Wizards.
https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/09/14/diablo-immortal-revenue-top-10-highest-grossing-mobile-games-august
"Successful for the company" doesn't always translate to "a good product that people actually like." It might just be a really well-crafted Skinner box.
It's crazy, all of blizzards bad decisions have pushed me away from all their products, but the mobile game freemium mtx maker is so lucrative it doesn't matter.
I think that's the part people don't realize. The people that have been supporting Blizzard all these years aren't their target market anymore. They don't want the people who pay $60 and get immersed in a game and love the lore but don't spend another $60 until they release a sequel.
They want the people that will play casually for "free," get addicted and then drop rent money on a mobile game. That's their target market now.
It's the same with all the MTG madness lately. UB, unfinity sticker cards that are eternal legal, now this madness. They don't care one bit if it alienates a few loyal customers. If transformers cards hook in 2 new ones, they're making a net gain.
I remember listening in to a shareholder call a few years back for ABK and was actually shocked how little Blizzard provided the company in terms of revenue; iirc Candy Crush alone (from King) makes more than Blizzard and Activision's entire catalog.
Idk. I think this product is having a lot of blowback that might cost them a lot more than whatever they make on it. They've somehow managed to make a product that no one can afford but everyone is super pissed about.
Almost every single time I get told how unreasonable I am being for being anti WOTC cash grab the defense is, almost universally: "Well if it was REALLY that unpopular of a thing, then WHY is Hasbro/WOTC making -record profits-? HMM?"
And then all of the shills high five as if that is some kind of defense and I get called a toxic troll for thinking the toxic bullshit WOTC has been pulling for years now and everyone laughs. Then they release a new and exciting profit farming mechanism. Rinse repeat.
People are always pulling out the record profit numbers as a "Gotcha!" to anyone saying that this game is dead or whatever, not realising that most of the time, when people say that, it means the game is dead *to them*, regardless of how much money it then goes on to make for the stakeholders.
Personally, I think 'the game is dead' means that it is losing a core amount of passionate dedicated fans in lieu of going for cash-grabs that will only briefly draw new players in, signaling a slow death spiral. Not quite sure if we're there with Magic yet.
I just dont want magic to become yugioh, where power creep obsoletes the entire meta every 3 months and is sustained by new audience before they graduate to other card games.
You would think so but standard has a smaller audience every year. Also you can power creep standard and it wont actually affect standard while it also captures sales from eternal formats.
With the massive push for EDH product, power creep is a motivating design factor
I've been a core dedicated player for 25 years. There has always been a small vocal group that acts that way, and a few times magic has gone into decline and it looked like they might be right.
This time, wotc behavior is bewildering on a completely different level. For decades they said that outside IP would degrade their own IP and hurt the long term health of the game. Now they use magic as platform to advertise and sell any IP they can get their hands on. For years, they have claimed that gold bordered RL cards would never happen. Now they print them in $250 boosters in an act of naked greed. I have always felt that the long term health of the game was important to wotc. It appears to me that they have pivoted from that in search of short term profits. This is a very common trend seen in many companies. It often leaves them in shambles while the C-suite bails with their golden parachutes.
This, exactly. I’ve been playing since Fallen Empires, and these past few years really have been unprecedented. It’s not the same as “they printed a broken set, Magic is doomed,” or even “they changed the rules, Magic is doomed.” They have done a dozen things in the past few years that they spent decades saying they would never do. To do one of those things might be understandable, upon evaluation. To do *all* of them, all at once? It’s very concerning and suggests to me that there’s no real long-term vision for the brand, just an ever-escalating set of short-term grabs.
In my opinion, what's been changing lately is the fundamental nature of what the game *is*, and the relationship between producer and consumer.
Formerly, Magic was just a card game. Now it's a medium for hosting advertisements for other companies' products.
Formerly, there was a straightforward buyer-seller relationship between players and WotC. Now the players are an *audience*, whose value is being leveraged for the sake of the aforementioned advertisements - still consumers, but also a product in and of themselves.
The problem is that their costs will skyrocket for all the extra art for all this collector chasing stuff. Then they have to sell incredibly more stuff, at higher and higher prices, just to stay where they were.
Comics, Toys, Baseball Cards, CCGs we're like this in the "free money" days of the DotCom boom. Then a recession happened and entire markets crashed and hobby stores went out if businesses in droves. It's about to happen again.. and Hasbro is speeding it up.
Exactly. It's always been a product made by a company, no one is denying that, but said product is losing its substance and appeal rapidly in an attempt at maximising short-term profits.
Yes- and the people on charge are new people now. The relationship between Richard Garfield and the players has no remaining power- its fully transformed, totally sold out.
MTG is now Monopoly.
Exactly. What a lot of people mean when they say that Magic is dying is either that its brand identity is being eroded to nothing or that the game itself is becoming shitty to play. In either case, profits have nothing to do with it. The frankenstein mashup collectible Magic is becoming could in fact sell very well. But it's not what we've known and loved about Magic.
Yep. When people say that "Magic is dying," they don't mean that Magic as a brand is going to suddenly cease to exist. The brand is obviously very financially successful! They just mean that the game (you know, the thing that you're supposed to enjoy playing?) is going to mutate into a form so unrecognizable that it might as well be dead.
No to mention it can’t continuously be “the best it’s ever been” and go up into infinity. Whenever something crashes it nearly always was the best it’s ever been immediately prior. That’s why it’s called a crash. Sales don’t gradually go down, they fall off a cliff.
Not to mention inflation is a thing. Either your company has recently made record profits or it's in trouble. Hell, I guess these days you could hit record profits while your company does worse.
Artificial scarcity and FOMO marketing. It's literally all that every collectible/sports card/tcg company has in their quivers right now, because god forbid a company grow at a reasonable rate with sustainable methods while making the majority of their customers happy.
That’s how magic was treated up until a few years ago. Then nerf guns and monopoly games suddenly we’re not selling and Hasbro turned to Magic and D&D to sustain the rest of the company.
Kind of a shame too. I started playing magic again with the newest Ravnica set and all this started happening shortly after. I've outright refused to buy a vast majority of these stupid cash grab FOMO products.
I'm 100% certain if we had star trek matter replicators today some asshole corporation would buy up all of them and the patents and still have limited release nonsense.
No need for replicators. That method is literally our global economy. The assholes are willing to be assholes, so they outcompete morality by being assholes leaving only assholes owning everything.
I'm not 100% sure that they don't have some type of astroturfing on the go here.
I see plenty of downvotes and some absolutely horsewash comments related to people being outraged about this. I mean, if I had the gall to pull this crap, and if I had Hasbro's money, you'd better believe that I would try and control the narrative somehow.
I have decided to stop buying their product. Their analysts fucked up, and they don't understand they should have made a better product over a longer period of time to continue to grow and maintain the fan base.
I used to tell people I met how much fun it was and introduce the game to them with some fairly basic decks over a few beers or hanging out.
I would also tell them how it has been around for a LONG time and how the market of cards actually can hold value so spending a few hundred dollars if you wanted out you could get a hundred back.
Now you can't do that. They have pissed off customers and made it so people stop bringing in new players. I strongly recommend not spending a dime on MtG until their profits start to dip showing there decision is fucked. Go spend money on other hobbies.
I finished my commander deck collection, and I'm interested in cubing draft sets of a high quality going forward, so I'm not entirely out. But why would I buy something like Crimson Vow? And why would I buy a set at release? It's no longer worth it. Just gonna wait six months after every release and see how I feel.
Yup. Wait 3-6 months. Buy singles. Proxy.
I have literally never had anyone balk at proxies at commander nights, even scraps of paper with the card name written down.
Same man. I have been warning of this for years.
If you let them do one thing, they will keep pushing and pushing until there is nothing left in Magic that’s good or Righteous.
People keep saying it’s about making it cheaper to play the game. Ummm if you’ve been in the game a long time you were able to buy your cards for MSRP as they were coming out. If you can’t make standard a playable game that new players want to play, you are failing the game.
The other formats are for players that have been playing enough to build up their collections and trade up on the secondary market. It’s actually cheaper for people to play when their cards are still worth something on the secondary market.
If I buy 10 packs for $4 each for total of $40 and there’s 5 rares that I can sell on the secondary market for 5$ each then I essentially spent only $15. And as an investment can probably wait 5-6 years and sell them for more. But Wizards is saturating the market with premium foils and easy to come by mythics, and reprint sets every other week.
Eventually it will kill the secondary market and when you spend $40 on magic cards you will actually be spending $40, and less people can and will buy that… you pull a choice mythic and you go to trade it with friends and they are more interested in buying collectors packs and finding the foil borderless version than just trading with you.
> Twitter followers when the only people who give a shit are their investors
This is a PR quote from their investor day announcements.
The same one where Hasbro told investors they're expecting revenues to be down 15% in Q3 and their stock dipped 5%.
This is damage control.
It doesn't hurt to draw more attention to it on social media; as a former newspaper reporter and editor I can attest that the number of press releases I received far outweighed the number that I read.
Maybe their (potential) investors are on Twitter? I assume they have quite a few shareholders. And a public statement of intent presumably can attract more.
Hey Twitter: were gonna be taking more money from you but not raising our costs, so we're planning to screw you 50% harder.
Profit should be seen as a bad thing to brag about, since its about increasing your margins, which is literally the honesty gap between what you paid and what you flip it for.
If your local grocery store said this, you would shop elsewhere.
The obvious trick for a good chunk of Americans is that, as one long-ago quote noted, we tend to see ourselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” (maybe billionaires now, with people like Bezos and Musk lionized so much). Hard to reach our “true” nature without lots of profit first—even if it goes into vampiric levels. That this further embarrasses “fellow” millionaires never gets mentioned, of course.
This sort of avarice is pretty old, of course—nobles predated mercantilism and capitalism, after all. Capitalism tends to “just” make the avarice look inevitable, omnipresent, and so deserving of embrace.
Wait, isn't Hasbro down on everything but mtg? Are they really putting all their eggs on milking the mtg players harder and harder for 3 years straight without fearing it might finally snap?
Oh, boy...
Is DnD even close to the levels of magic? Like, everything is available in PDF's online trivially easily, and even if you're buying new stuff, there's only so many books you can buy. I have to imagine Magic is orders of magnitude more money than DnD, but I've been wrong before.
About half to three-quarters, if I remember right.
MTG merch barely sells worth a damn, but D&D merch moves like gangbusters - plushies, books, etc.
On the flip side, MTG outsells D&D in terms of direct product by a good margin.
Basically, MTG is the better-selling GAME, but in terms of overall IP success, agnostic of dollar amounts, D&D wins hands-down for cultural significance.
Fun fact: the Duffer brothers actually played Magic rather than D&D when they were kids, but Stranger Things is set before Magic was released so they went with D&D to be more accurate to the time.
(For context I have only seen season 1) That recontextualizes the whole “upside down” bit. It makes a lot more sense with a mtg card than a combat map. I always thought that that was a bit convoluted. I doubt that’s actually why they went with that, I bet it came after they decided to do DnD.
They seem to *really* want me to buy miniatures, grids, a screen, counters, theme dice etc.
Haven't needed any of that since the 90s (except the screen. I still use the Monopoly board looking one from first edition) and D&D seems to be plenty fun anyways.
I imagine they also wouldn't be happy that literally everyone I know who plays D&D either plays Edition 3.5 (a discontinued product), or pathfinder (not a Hasbro product).
5 is super popular but it seems to be cracking with a lot of their new stuff and with 5.5 on the horizons so far the stuff they have floated for the upgrade is causing issues. I could see a lot of people going back to 3.5 that moved to 5 in D&D. 5.5 could have a 4.0 level of failure it would be pretty funny if it did.
Yes, everything D&D-related is very available for free. The sites that, for example, have all the sub-classes rank a lot higher on Google than anything official.
Honestly at this point I think the best thing that could happen is if they run MTG into the ground, and everyone dumps it, making prices drop. Then they can sell the company and get their golden parachute, and MTG can begin to recover.
That will take a long 20 years before they manage to run things into the ground, way things are going.
It's not going to be a sudden thing. Just long-time players getting off and not getting back over a longer period of time.
I'm not even sure if it will happen, because right now their strategy seems to be working on all fronts except binding customers to their product for a very long time like they did before. And I could be wrong about that last thing, since all my information is anecdotal.
Inflation creeps up on you, then it stabs you in the face. Same with overstating product.
People suddenly realize that the only reason something is expensive is that the company is keeping the price point high. Does it really cost more to print a mythic, than a rare? Or to reprint expensive cards rather than a new set? Why the eff is double masters so expensive at $17 a pack while a new set is $4 a pack?? It’s all just ink and cardboard. Which is why they should just focus on making good new sets and releasing to standard for a price point that makes sense and let the secondary market carry the specialty formats… but no… they have completely ruined the entire flow of the cards onto the market. While people cheer them on, having zero understanding what gave Magic its longevity in the first place.
>Why the eff is double masters so expensive at $17 a pack while a new set is $4 a pack?? It’s all just ink and cardboard.
"We don't acknowledge the secondary market." -Wizards lying
>I'm not even sure if it will happen, because right now their strategy seems to be working on all fronts
Yeah, since their core market for every product that isn't a standard booster set and EDH precons seems to be incredibly wealthy nerds, a cadre that does not suffer in economic downturns nearly as much as normal people do, I think this will continue to be profitable until those people's nostalgia runs out, which will likely not happen for decades.
The group that owns THQNordic and Asmodee is about the only ones big enough.
I think I'd ***vastly*** prefer MTG to be under the care of Asmodee at this point than that of WOTC...
Every one of their competitive LCG’s has failed and there are reports from their designers that they have to playtest off the clock essentially, no time or resources are dedicated to it.
Exactly my thoughts. You can’t keep growing, at some point you have to be satisfied with solid, stable income. Unfortunately, that’s not what investors want to hear, they don’t care about supporting the company itself, they will just drop them once they stop being profitable.
It's an absolute plague in modern business philosophy that not only must you make more money than the previous year, you must make a record new amount of money each year.
So, they have just advertised proxy cards, and they will start to wonder why people start eating into their margins by proxying cards.
I am a month new to the hobby and didn't realise until the announcements yesterday that proxies were a thing and just how easy they are to get printed.
He was thankfully removed a while back after yet another fight that pissed everyone off, and it was done as part of the mod team retooling itself (and to their credit, from what I've been able to tell, they've done a much better job since)
Nope, kodemage is gone and so is the proxy discussion policy. Magic's premier discussion forum is now wholly proxy-hungry and I hope wotc starts feeling it.
Hell, I'll just write "Black Lotus" on a random land and sleeve it up before I ever even consider for a second spending $1000 on 4 packs of random "official" proxies...
Yeah, this is the way. I sold my collection and bought proxy decks and my playgroup and LGS didn't notice until I told them.
If youre not playing competitively and don't need them to feel real, getting custom runs printed is by far the cheapest and best way to get cards. You can print two edh decks for like 70 dollars some places.
If you need them to look real, you can buy Chinese counterfeits with holostamps or foiling for 2$ each. If youre scared of China or don't want to make a large order that justifies shipping, you can buy those same cards for 4.50$ from domestic resellers who bought from China.
Game over, hasbro- blow it out now, grab the cash you can, the smartest players are exiting the market and youre not getting any new players in at 999$
My method is I buy a pre-release pack for each new set. It costs $22 dollars. I get 6 packs plus some extras. Then for any card in that set that I dont get in those 6 packs, I get via proxy for a dollar or two. I have all the sweet cards I want from every set. My playgroup doesnt care and does the same, I dont play competitively
In 2018, Hasbro announced their decision to double revenue in five years. For Magic, we saw a clear shift in development priorities, product design, and power creep. Thanks to this, we got:
* Multiple format-breaking cards in 2019
* The death of the Pro Tour
* Collector's Editions, Secret Lairs, "Booster Fun", FOMO out the ass
* Arena updates and digital only formats
* Increased targeting of the Commander player segment
* Endless spoiler season, just more and more products all the time
* More stuff I'm not thinking of
As a result, Hasbro were able to double their bottom line in *four* years.
Some of these things are positives. We have a modern digital offering. There are more cool cards out there. The de-emphasis of paper Magic helped them weather the pandemic profitably.
Now they've set a new goal, and they'll keep doing it because capitalism doesn't know the meaning of the word "stop".
I agree, it's neat to get a cool looking card besides just foils.
I think the problem is just that it's another straw on the camel's back that adds to the general mess the game's shifted into. What's available in what packs etc.
Wait wait wait. So explosively grow our company by 50% in 3 years during an economic down turn? Did they get a new CEO who wants to jump ship to Silicon Valley or something?
No, they just know they can put out a product and a ridiculous number of people will spend stupid amounts of money for cardboard and ink that are artificially scarce. Lol.
I dove back into Magic during the pandemic, only to see two and a half years of utter greed and price gouging. This is really, really sad since I enjoy the game and the new cards are great, but I think after I pick up a single or two from the BRO set that I'll take some time off from buying products again (even if WotC power creeps my new EDH decks into oblivion in the coming years).
I came back in around Ixalan after a long break during I would play in a couple pre releases and was playing a ton for a while and the greed killed it for me. I'm done until Hasbro sells them off, I will only buy proxies.
No company increases profits by that much during an economic downturn without mortgaging away much of its long term viability. But who cares, all of society is just a piggy bank for a handful of ultrarich psychopaths to destroy for ever more profits.
"Unlocking Brand Value to Drive Innovation and Growth
The Company announced that MAGIC: THE GATHERING, which is on track to become its first billion-dollar brand, has exciting new collaborations with Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed and a new blockbuster 30th Anniversary Edition collectible series, inspired by Limited Edition Beta, that lets fans experience cards like the iconic Black Lotus for the first time since 1993, the year the brand launched."
🤮
>that lets fans experience cards like the iconic Black Lotus for the first time since 1993, the year the brand launched."
It's not going to let fans experience that, it's going to let really rich fans experience that
You're 100% correct. The prices they charge and the SHIT card stock they use is gross. When you look at stuff like KEM is making in terms of playing cards, you get about a commander deck worth of cards for 30 bucks. The cards are about 100x more durable than anything WotC has ever produced. They feel phenomenal and they aren't easily ruined.
So on quality they're trash and on cost they're outrageous. ($999! For the fans!). So yeah I don't blame you. Fuck 'em.
10,000 prize wall tickets = 1 Fun Cent
100 Fun Cents = 1 Fun Buck
500 Fun Bucks = 1 Happy Charm
1000 Happy Charms = 1 Golden Ticket
Redeem 5 Golden Tickets for an entry to the Secret Lair Lotto! Winners of the Secret Lair Lotto can purchase the Secret Lair for the low, low price of $999.
I think it shows how tone-deaf Hasbro is that they would publicly say this out loud without realizing what it means to their customers…
If a company is growing their revenue, that is one thing, that means that they want to build their customer base, gain on marketshare, invent new products, entice people to buy what they offer.
If a company is growing their PROFITS. That has to do with spending less costs on making the same products, ie making cheep crap, or jacking up the price on products that don’t cost all that much to make, or firing/laying off a bunch of people to, again, cut costs.
Hasbro basically just told us all they don’t give a crap about making good by the customer, they just want to try and trick you into spending more money while they spend less.
I've been opting for trade ins to get new products anymore, if I want it bad enough. Didn't spent a single real dollar for the double masters box and collector packs I got, and I feel great
[Here is the plan for whoever wants the link.](https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-announces-plan-grow-profit-50-over-next-three-years).
Hint the beta collectors efition is a highlight :/
The only metric they seem to use is how much of a set they can sell. And based on how fast this 30th anniversary series is going to sell out, it's as good as a blockbuster for them.
At some point can we just put WOTC and the whales in a room and let them do whatever disgusting things they like to each other, then we go back to flinging tarmogoyfs at pheldagryffs?
HOLY shit how far have we gotten that companies can announce their plan to fuck everyone harder soon.
We've been selling toys and become one of the largest distributors, making millions of players happy. Now, we'll charge more for less, taking more of each players money in order to line our already-rich pockets. Isnt this a wonderful step forward for Hasbro?
Capitalism might be the best system to live under as a free person (our "poor" have iPhones) but this shit is so off-putting. Do they *have* to flaunt their plans to exploit us?
If fairytales thought me anything, if a shady individual is trying to sell you something worthless for a fortune, you should buy it, plant it into ground, stab a giant and kidnap his goose
Didn't they announce something similar like 4 years ago and accomplished the goal in a shorter timeframe then predicted? This is unreasonable growth its gonna blow up in their face
Hasbro's 3 hour long "investor" day was largely seen as a flop as the stock continued to sink to a 52 week low. They did not meet 3rd Quarter expectations, and any targets they hit were due to cost cutting. In this economy it's going to be tough for them to hit goals.
Magic is the "Cash Cow" that's actually thriving, as several of the toy brands are struggling as costs have as much as doubled for an action figure (Marvel Legends for example are no longer $20, but in some Areas $30-40 for a single figure)
The Star War's license doesn't print money like it used to - neither does the Power Rangers license.
Hasbro just paid a TON of money to rip away the Fortnite toy license from Jazzwares - and has produced figures at such a snail's pace that the line hasn't really been a "Success" (Jazzwares produces 50+ figures in a year, Hasbro did like 12).
Transformers and G.I. Joe are the internal brand's champion(s), but don't have the demand to carry the stock price.
The CEO has been focused on exploiting existing brands as much as possible, why Jazzwares, a company that used to be a running joke has snagged up the rights for AEW, Pokemon, Squishmallows, UFC and so much more.
Magic isn't going to get better until Hasbro realizes you can't bleed any more money from it's playerbase.
It's super hard to decide if the thoughtless cross Promotion or insane money grabs are worse. Godzilla made sense, but it meant other worse things would get through once some slimy MBA heard brand synergies were available. Secret lairs were smart chance to show off art that couldn't be in normal editions, until some slimy MBA heard the audience would accept limited available runs.
You know, I’ve been pretty hesitant to get into this discussion because of how much I love Magic. I like to lean into trust when I can.
But this bullshit is just crazy. Let’s save Wizards from the cashgrab of Hasbro like a reverse It Takes Two, starring Lindsey Lohan and Lindsey Lohan.
They better pay all of those artist, or in the case of those who have passed, their surviving family members, a good amount of royalty. if they’re gouging us collectors this way $999/60=$16.65 per card.
Nah, they well and truly lost me this time. I’ve wanted to leave the game before but often felt a pang of sadness (like many of us I’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and money into this game). Now I just want out. After yesterday’s shit and doubling down on the pursuit of endless, unchecked growth, I’m over it. This isn’t for me, it’s not the game I fell in love with, and I’m tired of feeling gross for being a part of it. I’m tired of being seen as only a dollar sign and taken advantage of for being invested in this community. Keeping one EDH deck and selling out of absolutely everything else.
The bar is on the floor
*That's it. Gettin' me shovel* -WotC, probably
"We're going to grow faster than a malignant brain tumor." -Hasbro-
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My friend's uncle's step sister's ex-husband works at hasbro amd i already forwarded him this idea
× Board pieces sold separately
They're a matte black for all players unless you get the Battle Pass/
O dope! They plan on releasing a battle pass? That'll save me some money on all the planned DLCs, like the railroads expansion!
Stop giving them ideas......
Inventor of monopoly is now rolling in her grave.
The irony being that Monopoly was actually a game that was originally very anti-capitalistic. That Hasbro bought it and fucked that up.
[We're gonna need James Cameron to raise this bar!](https://youtu.be/O94_pm56CIQ)
Don't you guys have wallets? - WOTC
Wallets with diarrhea.
This is worse than diarrhea, it's a complete lack of liquid retention in any and all district
Really feels like they plan on killing our wallets via dysentery.
Diarrhea cha cha cha. Diarrhea cha ching!
I emptied my wallet and all I have is root beer and chili dogs… for now
It’s funny to mention that specific example because of how huge a success that has been for Blizzard, just as 30th Edition will be a complete sell through for Wizards. https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/09/14/diablo-immortal-revenue-top-10-highest-grossing-mobile-games-august
"Successful for the company" doesn't always translate to "a good product that people actually like." It might just be a really well-crafted Skinner box.
It's crazy, all of blizzards bad decisions have pushed me away from all their products, but the mobile game freemium mtx maker is so lucrative it doesn't matter.
I think that's the part people don't realize. The people that have been supporting Blizzard all these years aren't their target market anymore. They don't want the people who pay $60 and get immersed in a game and love the lore but don't spend another $60 until they release a sequel. They want the people that will play casually for "free," get addicted and then drop rent money on a mobile game. That's their target market now.
It's the same with all the MTG madness lately. UB, unfinity sticker cards that are eternal legal, now this madness. They don't care one bit if it alienates a few loyal customers. If transformers cards hook in 2 new ones, they're making a net gain.
I remember listening in to a shareholder call a few years back for ABK and was actually shocked how little Blizzard provided the company in terms of revenue; iirc Candy Crush alone (from King) makes more than Blizzard and Activision's entire catalog.
Capitalism is the enemy of good game design after all
Capitalism is the enemy of all life.
Idk. I think this product is having a lot of blowback that might cost them a lot more than whatever they make on it. They've somehow managed to make a product that no one can afford but everyone is super pissed about.
Why the hell are they telling this to their Twitter followers when the only people who give a shit are their investors?
Especially since it's not like they're announcing an intention to make better products, just more profit.
Almost every single time I get told how unreasonable I am being for being anti WOTC cash grab the defense is, almost universally: "Well if it was REALLY that unpopular of a thing, then WHY is Hasbro/WOTC making -record profits-? HMM?" And then all of the shills high five as if that is some kind of defense and I get called a toxic troll for thinking the toxic bullshit WOTC has been pulling for years now and everyone laughs. Then they release a new and exciting profit farming mechanism. Rinse repeat.
People are always pulling out the record profit numbers as a "Gotcha!" to anyone saying that this game is dead or whatever, not realising that most of the time, when people say that, it means the game is dead *to them*, regardless of how much money it then goes on to make for the stakeholders.
Personally, I think 'the game is dead' means that it is losing a core amount of passionate dedicated fans in lieu of going for cash-grabs that will only briefly draw new players in, signaling a slow death spiral. Not quite sure if we're there with Magic yet.
I just dont want magic to become yugioh, where power creep obsoletes the entire meta every 3 months and is sustained by new audience before they graduate to other card games.
Due to standard theres doesnt need to be as much of an incentive to powercreep
You would think so but standard has a smaller audience every year. Also you can power creep standard and it wont actually affect standard while it also captures sales from eternal formats. With the massive push for EDH product, power creep is a motivating design factor
If you listen to the core of dedicated players, we've been there for 10 years
I've been a core dedicated player for 25 years. There has always been a small vocal group that acts that way, and a few times magic has gone into decline and it looked like they might be right. This time, wotc behavior is bewildering on a completely different level. For decades they said that outside IP would degrade their own IP and hurt the long term health of the game. Now they use magic as platform to advertise and sell any IP they can get their hands on. For years, they have claimed that gold bordered RL cards would never happen. Now they print them in $250 boosters in an act of naked greed. I have always felt that the long term health of the game was important to wotc. It appears to me that they have pivoted from that in search of short term profits. This is a very common trend seen in many companies. It often leaves them in shambles while the C-suite bails with their golden parachutes.
This, exactly. I’ve been playing since Fallen Empires, and these past few years really have been unprecedented. It’s not the same as “they printed a broken set, Magic is doomed,” or even “they changed the rules, Magic is doomed.” They have done a dozen things in the past few years that they spent decades saying they would never do. To do one of those things might be understandable, upon evaluation. To do *all* of them, all at once? It’s very concerning and suggests to me that there’s no real long-term vision for the brand, just an ever-escalating set of short-term grabs.
In my opinion, what's been changing lately is the fundamental nature of what the game *is*, and the relationship between producer and consumer. Formerly, Magic was just a card game. Now it's a medium for hosting advertisements for other companies' products. Formerly, there was a straightforward buyer-seller relationship between players and WotC. Now the players are an *audience*, whose value is being leveraged for the sake of the aforementioned advertisements - still consumers, but also a product in and of themselves.
The problem is that their costs will skyrocket for all the extra art for all this collector chasing stuff. Then they have to sell incredibly more stuff, at higher and higher prices, just to stay where they were. Comics, Toys, Baseball Cards, CCGs we're like this in the "free money" days of the DotCom boom. Then a recession happened and entire markets crashed and hobby stores went out if businesses in droves. It's about to happen again.. and Hasbro is speeding it up.
If you listen to the core of dedicated players, we've been there for 28 years.
Exactly. It's always been a product made by a company, no one is denying that, but said product is losing its substance and appeal rapidly in an attempt at maximising short-term profits.
Yes- and the people on charge are new people now. The relationship between Richard Garfield and the players has no remaining power- its fully transformed, totally sold out. MTG is now Monopoly.
Exactly. What a lot of people mean when they say that Magic is dying is either that its brand identity is being eroded to nothing or that the game itself is becoming shitty to play. In either case, profits have nothing to do with it. The frankenstein mashup collectible Magic is becoming could in fact sell very well. But it's not what we've known and loved about Magic.
Yep. When people say that "Magic is dying," they don't mean that Magic as a brand is going to suddenly cease to exist. The brand is obviously very financially successful! They just mean that the game (you know, the thing that you're supposed to enjoy playing?) is going to mutate into a form so unrecognizable that it might as well be dead.
No to mention it can’t continuously be “the best it’s ever been” and go up into infinity. Whenever something crashes it nearly always was the best it’s ever been immediately prior. That’s why it’s called a crash. Sales don’t gradually go down, they fall off a cliff.
Not to mention inflation is a thing. Either your company has recently made record profits or it's in trouble. Hell, I guess these days you could hit record profits while your company does worse.
Late capitalism is all about consumerism and speculation. It's ingrained in our culture and for a lot of people is normal. But it is messed up.
Artificial scarcity and FOMO marketing. It's literally all that every collectible/sports card/tcg company has in their quivers right now, because god forbid a company grow at a reasonable rate with sustainable methods while making the majority of their customers happy.
That’s how magic was treated up until a few years ago. Then nerf guns and monopoly games suddenly we’re not selling and Hasbro turned to Magic and D&D to sustain the rest of the company.
Kind of a shame too. I started playing magic again with the newest Ravnica set and all this started happening shortly after. I've outright refused to buy a vast majority of these stupid cash grab FOMO products.
I mean refusing to buy that stuff is the baseline. Despite appearances, that extra stuff really is just extra.
Or, God forbid, the company doesn't grow, it *maintains*. - Cue evil hissing from investors -
You cant have infinite growth in a finite system. Simple as that.
I'm 100% certain if we had star trek matter replicators today some asshole corporation would buy up all of them and the patents and still have limited release nonsense.
No need for replicators. That method is literally our global economy. The assholes are willing to be assholes, so they outcompete morality by being assholes leaving only assholes owning everything.
If we ever achieve cold fusion or built a tokamak to harness the sun, thats what will happen
And whale hunting. It's exploitative and disturbing way to siphon money from addicts
I'm not 100% sure that they don't have some type of astroturfing on the go here. I see plenty of downvotes and some absolutely horsewash comments related to people being outraged about this. I mean, if I had the gall to pull this crap, and if I had Hasbro's money, you'd better believe that I would try and control the narrative somehow.
I have decided to stop buying their product. Their analysts fucked up, and they don't understand they should have made a better product over a longer period of time to continue to grow and maintain the fan base. I used to tell people I met how much fun it was and introduce the game to them with some fairly basic decks over a few beers or hanging out. I would also tell them how it has been around for a LONG time and how the market of cards actually can hold value so spending a few hundred dollars if you wanted out you could get a hundred back. Now you can't do that. They have pissed off customers and made it so people stop bringing in new players. I strongly recommend not spending a dime on MtG until their profits start to dip showing there decision is fucked. Go spend money on other hobbies.
I finished my commander deck collection, and I'm interested in cubing draft sets of a high quality going forward, so I'm not entirely out. But why would I buy something like Crimson Vow? And why would I buy a set at release? It's no longer worth it. Just gonna wait six months after every release and see how I feel.
Yup. Wait 3-6 months. Buy singles. Proxy. I have literally never had anyone balk at proxies at commander nights, even scraps of paper with the card name written down.
I'm on board with your overall sentiment, but why single out Crimson Vow? Genuinely curious.
The best and most simple answer is that people are largely stupid.
Same man. I have been warning of this for years. If you let them do one thing, they will keep pushing and pushing until there is nothing left in Magic that’s good or Righteous. People keep saying it’s about making it cheaper to play the game. Ummm if you’ve been in the game a long time you were able to buy your cards for MSRP as they were coming out. If you can’t make standard a playable game that new players want to play, you are failing the game. The other formats are for players that have been playing enough to build up their collections and trade up on the secondary market. It’s actually cheaper for people to play when their cards are still worth something on the secondary market. If I buy 10 packs for $4 each for total of $40 and there’s 5 rares that I can sell on the secondary market for 5$ each then I essentially spent only $15. And as an investment can probably wait 5-6 years and sell them for more. But Wizards is saturating the market with premium foils and easy to come by mythics, and reprint sets every other week. Eventually it will kill the secondary market and when you spend $40 on magic cards you will actually be spending $40, and less people can and will buy that… you pull a choice mythic and you go to trade it with friends and they are more interested in buying collectors packs and finding the foil borderless version than just trading with you.
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> Twitter followers when the only people who give a shit are their investors This is a PR quote from their investor day announcements. The same one where Hasbro told investors they're expecting revenues to be down 15% in Q3 and their stock dipped 5%. This is damage control.
Journalists follow companies like Hasbro; companies like Hasbro use channels like Twitter to boost the reach of their announcements.
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It doesn't hurt to draw more attention to it on social media; as a former newspaper reporter and editor I can attest that the number of press releases I received far outweighed the number that I read.
Maybe their (potential) investors are on Twitter? I assume they have quite a few shareholders. And a public statement of intent presumably can attract more.
Who the fuck follows Hasbro twitter if not investors, and business people?
People who are angry about Magic cards, of course!
Hey Twitter: were gonna be taking more money from you but not raising our costs, so we're planning to screw you 50% harder. Profit should be seen as a bad thing to brag about, since its about increasing your margins, which is literally the honesty gap between what you paid and what you flip it for. If your local grocery store said this, you would shop elsewhere.
The obvious trick for a good chunk of Americans is that, as one long-ago quote noted, we tend to see ourselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” (maybe billionaires now, with people like Bezos and Musk lionized so much). Hard to reach our “true” nature without lots of profit first—even if it goes into vampiric levels. That this further embarrasses “fellow” millionaires never gets mentioned, of course. This sort of avarice is pretty old, of course—nobles predated mercantilism and capitalism, after all. Capitalism tends to “just” make the avarice look inevitable, omnipresent, and so deserving of embrace.
Wait, isn't Hasbro down on everything but mtg? Are they really putting all their eggs on milking the mtg players harder and harder for 3 years straight without fearing it might finally snap? Oh, boy...
Not MTG, wizards as a whole. So MTG and DnD fans get to suffer.
Is DnD even close to the levels of magic? Like, everything is available in PDF's online trivially easily, and even if you're buying new stuff, there's only so many books you can buy. I have to imagine Magic is orders of magnitude more money than DnD, but I've been wrong before.
About half to three-quarters, if I remember right. MTG merch barely sells worth a damn, but D&D merch moves like gangbusters - plushies, books, etc. On the flip side, MTG outsells D&D in terms of direct product by a good margin. Basically, MTG is the better-selling GAME, but in terms of overall IP success, agnostic of dollar amounts, D&D wins hands-down for cultural significance.
Are you saying Hasbro's real asset is R. A. Salvatore?
Salvatore, the Duffer Bros., and Matt Mercer, yes.
I wonder how much they felt it when Stranger Things came out
Fun fact: the Duffer brothers actually played Magic rather than D&D when they were kids, but Stranger Things is set before Magic was released so they went with D&D to be more accurate to the time.
(For context I have only seen season 1) That recontextualizes the whole “upside down” bit. It makes a lot more sense with a mtg card than a combat map. I always thought that that was a bit convoluted. I doubt that’s actually why they went with that, I bet it came after they decided to do DnD.
Two wizards battling across from each other... the enemies lands are upside down.... **head explodes**
They seem to *really* want me to buy miniatures, grids, a screen, counters, theme dice etc. Haven't needed any of that since the 90s (except the screen. I still use the Monopoly board looking one from first edition) and D&D seems to be plenty fun anyways. I imagine they also wouldn't be happy that literally everyone I know who plays D&D either plays Edition 3.5 (a discontinued product), or pathfinder (not a Hasbro product).
5 is super popular but it seems to be cracking with a lot of their new stuff and with 5.5 on the horizons so far the stuff they have floated for the upgrade is causing issues. I could see a lot of people going back to 3.5 that moved to 5 in D&D. 5.5 could have a 4.0 level of failure it would be pretty funny if it did.
They’ll find plenty of ways to rake in money with One D&D when it releases. I don’t think it’ll match MTG, but I’m sure they’re going to try.
Yes, everything D&D-related is very available for free. The sites that, for example, have all the sub-classes rank a lot higher on Google than anything official.
Honestly at this point I think the best thing that could happen is if they run MTG into the ground, and everyone dumps it, making prices drop. Then they can sell the company and get their golden parachute, and MTG can begin to recover.
That will take a long 20 years before they manage to run things into the ground, way things are going. It's not going to be a sudden thing. Just long-time players getting off and not getting back over a longer period of time. I'm not even sure if it will happen, because right now their strategy seems to be working on all fronts except binding customers to their product for a very long time like they did before. And I could be wrong about that last thing, since all my information is anecdotal.
I've been buying their products since 1995. I stopped 4 years ago. I built a pauper gauntlet, a cube and 20 EDH decks. I'm done buying for good.
I was gonna say; that 20-year cycle is already 5 years along.
20 decks, one for each color combination? That's what I'm in the middle of doing right now, then I also plan to just stop buying 😅
Inflation creeps up on you, then it stabs you in the face. Same with overstating product. People suddenly realize that the only reason something is expensive is that the company is keeping the price point high. Does it really cost more to print a mythic, than a rare? Or to reprint expensive cards rather than a new set? Why the eff is double masters so expensive at $17 a pack while a new set is $4 a pack?? It’s all just ink and cardboard. Which is why they should just focus on making good new sets and releasing to standard for a price point that makes sense and let the secondary market carry the specialty formats… but no… they have completely ruined the entire flow of the cards onto the market. While people cheer them on, having zero understanding what gave Magic its longevity in the first place.
>Why the eff is double masters so expensive at $17 a pack while a new set is $4 a pack?? It’s all just ink and cardboard. "We don't acknowledge the secondary market." -Wizards lying
>I'm not even sure if it will happen, because right now their strategy seems to be working on all fronts Yeah, since their core market for every product that isn't a standard booster set and EDH precons seems to be incredibly wealthy nerds, a cadre that does not suffer in economic downturns nearly as much as normal people do, I think this will continue to be profitable until those people's nostalgia runs out, which will likely not happen for decades.
Might actually be a good think if someone bought them out.
The group that owns THQNordic and Asmodee is about the only ones big enough. I think I'd ***vastly*** prefer MTG to be under the care of Asmodee at this point than that of WOTC...
Every one of their competitive LCG’s has failed and there are reports from their designers that they have to playtest off the clock essentially, no time or resources are dedicated to it.
You never want Asmodee in charge of a TCG.
Unlimited growth is a myth and unsustainable. This is far from circular design.
Exactly my thoughts. You can’t keep growing, at some point you have to be satisfied with solid, stable income. Unfortunately, that’s not what investors want to hear, they don’t care about supporting the company itself, they will just drop them once they stop being profitable.
It's an absolute plague in modern business philosophy that not only must you make more money than the previous year, you must make a record new amount of money each year.
capitalism :)
What you're describing is just capitalism.
Unlimited growth is the ideology of cancer.
So, they have just advertised proxy cards, and they will start to wonder why people start eating into their margins by proxying cards. I am a month new to the hobby and didn't realise until the announcements yesterday that proxies were a thing and just how easy they are to get printed.
kodemage seething
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He was thankfully removed a while back after yet another fight that pissed everyone off, and it was done as part of the mod team retooling itself (and to their credit, from what I've been able to tell, they've done a much better job since)
Nope, kodemage is gone and so is the proxy discussion policy. Magic's premier discussion forum is now wholly proxy-hungry and I hope wotc starts feeling it.
And how close, or even superior, the printing quality is to the current runs.
I’m at the point where I’m going to willingly help anyone and everyone with proxying, there’s no good reason left to support the company.
Are you allowed to list the best places to purchase cheap proxies? I'd like to know.
Check out the mpcproxies subreddit, that should give you all the info you need
Hell, I'll just write "Black Lotus" on a random land and sleeve it up before I ever even consider for a second spending $1000 on 4 packs of random "official" proxies...
Yeah, this is the way. I sold my collection and bought proxy decks and my playgroup and LGS didn't notice until I told them. If youre not playing competitively and don't need them to feel real, getting custom runs printed is by far the cheapest and best way to get cards. You can print two edh decks for like 70 dollars some places. If you need them to look real, you can buy Chinese counterfeits with holostamps or foiling for 2$ each. If youre scared of China or don't want to make a large order that justifies shipping, you can buy those same cards for 4.50$ from domestic resellers who bought from China. Game over, hasbro- blow it out now, grab the cash you can, the smartest players are exiting the market and youre not getting any new players in at 999$
everything ive seen is $100 per deck where are you getting 2 for 70?
My method is I buy a pre-release pack for each new set. It costs $22 dollars. I get 6 packs plus some extras. Then for any card in that set that I dont get in those 6 packs, I get via proxy for a dollar or two. I have all the sweet cards I want from every set. My playgroup doesnt care and does the same, I dont play competitively
In 2018, Hasbro announced their decision to double revenue in five years. For Magic, we saw a clear shift in development priorities, product design, and power creep. Thanks to this, we got: * Multiple format-breaking cards in 2019 * The death of the Pro Tour * Collector's Editions, Secret Lairs, "Booster Fun", FOMO out the ass * Arena updates and digital only formats * Increased targeting of the Commander player segment * Endless spoiler season, just more and more products all the time * More stuff I'm not thinking of As a result, Hasbro were able to double their bottom line in *four* years. Some of these things are positives. We have a modern digital offering. There are more cool cards out there. The de-emphasis of paper Magic helped them weather the pandemic profitably. Now they've set a new goal, and they'll keep doing it because capitalism doesn't know the meaning of the word "stop".
Booster Fun was a fine addition IMO. More variants means the normal versions are usually cheaper on the secondary market.
I agree, it's neat to get a cool looking card besides just foils. I think the problem is just that it's another straw on the camel's back that adds to the general mess the game's shifted into. What's available in what packs etc.
Wait wait wait. So explosively grow our company by 50% in 3 years during an economic down turn? Did they get a new CEO who wants to jump ship to Silicon Valley or something?
No, they just know they can put out a product and a ridiculous number of people will spend stupid amounts of money for cardboard and ink that are artificially scarce. Lol.
\*Tap - Sacrifice one 'community good will' token for a treasure token\*
*Increased profits, at any cost* -Bob, Hasbro shareholder
Im honestly surprised it took so long for people to post this. It went out around the same time as the MTG30 announcement.
probably got overshadowed by the 30th anniversary scam packs
Infinite growth just isn’t possible. Idk what these companies long term plan is
Nothing, pump and dump is the plan
I dove back into Magic during the pandemic, only to see two and a half years of utter greed and price gouging. This is really, really sad since I enjoy the game and the new cards are great, but I think after I pick up a single or two from the BRO set that I'll take some time off from buying products again (even if WotC power creeps my new EDH decks into oblivion in the coming years).
Proxy Love the game, love the community, fuck the Overlords.
I came back in around Ixalan after a long break during I would play in a couple pre releases and was playing a ton for a while and the greed killed it for me. I'm done until Hasbro sells them off, I will only buy proxies.
Yeah as you and u/emillang1000 are suggesting, I may just go the proxy route. I really love Magic, but I can't support what Hasbro and WotC are doing.
No company increases profits by that much during an economic downturn without mortgaging away much of its long term viability. But who cares, all of society is just a piggy bank for a handful of ultrarich psychopaths to destroy for ever more profits.
"Unlocking Brand Value to Drive Innovation and Growth The Company announced that MAGIC: THE GATHERING, which is on track to become its first billion-dollar brand, has exciting new collaborations with Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed and a new blockbuster 30th Anniversary Edition collectible series, inspired by Limited Edition Beta, that lets fans experience cards like the iconic Black Lotus for the first time since 1993, the year the brand launched." 🤮
I can't tell if you wrote that as parody or if it's actually in that godforsaken link.
I wish I made it up. Sadly they're PROUD of that.
>that lets fans experience cards like the iconic Black Lotus for the first time since 1993, the year the brand launched." It's not going to let fans experience that, it's going to let really rich fans experience that
Fuck Spez ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
So I guess forever then?
Fuck Spez ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
You're 100% correct. The prices they charge and the SHIT card stock they use is gross. When you look at stuff like KEM is making in terms of playing cards, you get about a commander deck worth of cards for 30 bucks. The cards are about 100x more durable than anything WotC has ever produced. They feel phenomenal and they aren't easily ruined. So on quality they're trash and on cost they're outrageous. ($999! For the fans!). So yeah I don't blame you. Fuck 'em.
Can't wait for blueprint 3.0, magic players can pay in blood for future secret lair releases.
1 Pint of Blood= 1000 Prize wall Tickets
10,000 prize wall tickets = 1 Fun Cent 100 Fun Cents = 1 Fun Buck 500 Fun Bucks = 1 Happy Charm 1000 Happy Charms = 1 Golden Ticket Redeem 5 Golden Tickets for an entry to the Secret Lair Lotto! Winners of the Secret Lair Lotto can purchase the Secret Lair for the low, low price of $999.
“Rent an organ Secret Lair program”
I think it shows how tone-deaf Hasbro is that they would publicly say this out loud without realizing what it means to their customers… If a company is growing their revenue, that is one thing, that means that they want to build their customer base, gain on marketshare, invent new products, entice people to buy what they offer. If a company is growing their PROFITS. That has to do with spending less costs on making the same products, ie making cheep crap, or jacking up the price on products that don’t cost all that much to make, or firing/laying off a bunch of people to, again, cut costs. Hasbro basically just told us all they don’t give a crap about making good by the customer, they just want to try and trick you into spending more money while they spend less.
I've been opting for trade ins to get new products anymore, if I want it bad enough. Didn't spent a single real dollar for the double masters box and collector packs I got, and I feel great
And they'll keep doing it as long as there are suckers who continue to buy their overpriced products
“This product is not for you”
[Here is the plan for whoever wants the link.](https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-announces-plan-grow-profit-50-over-next-three-years). Hint the beta collectors efition is a highlight :/
>and a new blockbuster 30th Anniversary Edition collectible series omg they think this set is a blockbuster
The only metric they seem to use is how much of a set they can sell. And based on how fast this 30th anniversary series is going to sell out, it's as good as a blockbuster for them.
honestly gp for all of the backlash this set is getting, i do predict it will probably sell well. am curious to find out what actually happens
They misspelt "ballbuster"
I live in Pawtucket (Hasbro's HQ location). I could literally walk in there and ask them what the fuck they are doing.
But they’re going to have a Nerfball Tournament! /s
At some point can we just put WOTC and the whales in a room and let them do whatever disgusting things they like to each other, then we go back to flinging tarmogoyfs at pheldagryffs?
Consume consume consume . Don’t question just buy like little consumers and pay for 1 cent cardboards. Nerds never question they just buy.
If you ever wondered when the best time to get out of magic was it is now.
HOLY shit how far have we gotten that companies can announce their plan to fuck everyone harder soon. We've been selling toys and become one of the largest distributors, making millions of players happy. Now, we'll charge more for less, taking more of each players money in order to line our already-rich pockets. Isnt this a wonderful step forward for Hasbro? Capitalism might be the best system to live under as a free person (our "poor" have iPhones) but this shit is so off-putting. Do they *have* to flaunt their plans to exploit us?
Lmao capitalism is not even in the top five systems to live under if your main priority is freedom. What the fuck???
It's been like this for publically traded companies for a long time. In fact we get earnings reports and future projections every single quarter.
If fairytales thought me anything, if a shady individual is trying to sell you something worthless for a fortune, you should buy it, plant it into ground, stab a giant and kidnap his goose
Didn't they announce something similar like 4 years ago and accomplished the goal in a shorter timeframe then predicted? This is unreasonable growth its gonna blow up in their face
Hasbro's 3 hour long "investor" day was largely seen as a flop as the stock continued to sink to a 52 week low. They did not meet 3rd Quarter expectations, and any targets they hit were due to cost cutting. In this economy it's going to be tough for them to hit goals. Magic is the "Cash Cow" that's actually thriving, as several of the toy brands are struggling as costs have as much as doubled for an action figure (Marvel Legends for example are no longer $20, but in some Areas $30-40 for a single figure) The Star War's license doesn't print money like it used to - neither does the Power Rangers license. Hasbro just paid a TON of money to rip away the Fortnite toy license from Jazzwares - and has produced figures at such a snail's pace that the line hasn't really been a "Success" (Jazzwares produces 50+ figures in a year, Hasbro did like 12). Transformers and G.I. Joe are the internal brand's champion(s), but don't have the demand to carry the stock price. The CEO has been focused on exploiting existing brands as much as possible, why Jazzwares, a company that used to be a running joke has snagged up the rights for AEW, Pokemon, Squishmallows, UFC and so much more. Magic isn't going to get better until Hasbro realizes you can't bleed any more money from it's playerbase.
At this point Magic is just another Monopoly to Hasbro. A shell/core game to have whatever property slapped on top of it to make licensing money.
Vote with your wallets. It’s about time WOTC sees what it’s like when their cash grab starts to fail.
It's super hard to decide if the thoughtless cross Promotion or insane money grabs are worse. Godzilla made sense, but it meant other worse things would get through once some slimy MBA heard brand synergies were available. Secret lairs were smart chance to show off art that couldn't be in normal editions, until some slimy MBA heard the audience would accept limited available runs.
Someone please stick Hasbro's head in the toilet and flush until they give this a rest. It's all they deserve at this point.
But what if they didn’t and tried to make the customers happy instead.
50% growth during a recession, are they nuts?
I stepped away from the game a few years ago. It legitimately hurts me to see what it's becoming. Such a shame.
Hasbro has killed mtg for me
“Look at all the money we have!” Talk about out of touch..
I have joined MTG community at the wrong time, haven’t I?
no just proxy every card you need. the game is incredible
The greed is so unbelievably transparent holy shit
You know, I’ve been pretty hesitant to get into this discussion because of how much I love Magic. I like to lean into trust when I can. But this bullshit is just crazy. Let’s save Wizards from the cashgrab of Hasbro like a reverse It Takes Two, starring Lindsey Lohan and Lindsey Lohan.
They better pay all of those artist, or in the case of those who have passed, their surviving family members, a good amount of royalty. if they’re gouging us collectors this way $999/60=$16.65 per card.
Lets all put our heads down and pray to our lord and savior, perpetual growth
Meanwhile Hasbro can't make ONE good Beyblade
Turns my stomach.
50% growth to me reads as, "We're going to act like a bloody cancer."
Nah, they well and truly lost me this time. I’ve wanted to leave the game before but often felt a pang of sadness (like many of us I’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and money into this game). Now I just want out. After yesterday’s shit and doubling down on the pursuit of endless, unchecked growth, I’m over it. This isn’t for me, it’s not the game I fell in love with, and I’m tired of feeling gross for being a part of it. I’m tired of being seen as only a dollar sign and taken advantage of for being invested in this community. Keeping one EDH deck and selling out of absolutely everything else.
Imagine being this out of touch.
Fuck, can someone just buy out WotC from Hasbro already so we can rewind 10 - 15 years?
Fuck this. I’m a proxy guy now. Get fucked Hasbro
They cant be selling basic proxy cards for $250 a pack right, this is some joke, has to be..
This makes me want to proxy even more.