A second wave of Hasbro layoffs has been announced by the Dungeons and Dragons publisher in a public 8-K form from December 11. After revealing plans to cut around 800 staff in January, the toy company announced a further 1,100 redundancies just two weeks before Christmas.
Despite D&D, Magic: The Gathering and Baldur’s Gate 3 boosting Hasbro’s Q3 revenue for this year, the story is less promising outside of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming. Total revenue was down 10% for the quarter, and Hasbro shares have declined around 21% in the past six months. The January layoffs were similarly prompted by a “challenging holiday period environment”.
“I know this news is especially difficult during the holiday season”, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks says to staff in a memo on Monday. “The market headwinds we anticipated have proven to be stronger and more persistent than planned.” “While we see workforce reductions as a last resort, given the state of our business, it’s a lever we must pull to keep Hasbro healthy”, Cocks adds.
“We entered 2023 expecting a year of change including significant updates to our leadership team, structure, and scope of operations”, the memo continues. “We anticipated the first three quarters to be challenging, particularly in Toys, where the market is coming off historic, pandemic-driven highs. While we have made some important progress across our organization, the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday and are likely to persist into 2024.”
The 8-K form says Hasbro intends to further cut costs by relying on a third-party outsourcing provider for certain internal functions and relocating from its Rhode Island office. Wargamer asked Wizards of the Coast if it was affected by Hasbro’s announcement, but we have not received a reply at this time.
For more recent Wizards of the Coast news, here’s the newly-announced DnD release schedule and MTG release schedule for 2024.