WOTC Layoffs Confirmed
Numerous sources now indicate that Wizards of the Coast has undergone a round of layoffs in what is unfortunately becoming an annual holiday event. According to sources approximately 24 people were laid off, out of a staff of 100.
Confirmed layoffs (via Lisa Stevens, CEO of Paizo Publishing ENWorld post) include the following (representing, it seems, a huge hit to D&D Insider, as well as several names closely associated with 3rd Edition):
- Randy Buehler (VP of digital gaming)
- Andrew Finch (director of digital games)
- Stacy Longstreet (senior art director)
- Julia Martin (editor)
- William Meyers (creative manager, digital design)
- Dave Noonan (game designer)
- Jennifer Paige (online community manager)
- Jennifer Powers (marketing)
- Jonathan Tweet (game designer)
An article on ICv2 quoted an unnamed WOTC spokesperson as saying: “Wizards of the Coast consolidated its digital game organizations to streamline execution of digital growth strategies for core brands.”
Wizards of the Coast President Greg Leeds was also quoted in that article as saying: “Consolidating internal resources coupled with improved outsourcing allows us to gain efficiencies in executing against our major digital initiatives Magic Online and D&D Insider. Wizards of the Coast is well positioned to maximize future opportunities, including further brand development on digital platforms. The result of this consolidation is a more streamlined approach to driving core brands.”
This follows on a previous announcement in August (in the wake of Gleemax's demise) which resulted in layoffs then:
Wizards Announces New Organizational Alignment
Wizards of the Coast today announced new organizational alignment to focus on key growth strategies for core brands.
“As a company, we will continue to be the leader in entertaining the lifestyle gamer,” said Greg Leeds, President of Wizards of the Coast. “Re-aligning resources ensures we achieve this goal for our most powerful brands.”
While restructuring results in some job eliminations, Wizards of the Coast is actively recruiting to fill open positions in multiple areas of the company.
“Organizational change is always difficult on those impacted,” said Leeds. “But we will take great care in the transition, and continue to invest in the growth of the business, specifically innovation for our Magic and Dungeons & Dragons fans.”
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What is "innovation for our Magic and Dungeons & Dragons fans" going to mean? More 4E-like oversimplification?
Letting go both Jonathan Tweet and Dave Noonan sounds bad... cutting back on designers is a big step.
Jeez, do you have to be a WASP to get a job at WotC? Powers, Paige, Martin, Longstreet, Tweet, Finch... Buehler sounds downright exotic by comparison.
Noonan and Tweet!? They've got their names all over D&D books (pretty good ones at that). This sounds a lot more like a company falling apart than "restructuring."
At least it a good sign that those incompetent morons are loosing money, with any luck they'll go out of buisness soon. Sorry WOTC, Karma's a bitch.
Poor David Noonan, His PHB2 was my second favourite D&D supplement, and he co authored my first.
It actually *does* sound like restructuring to me. I just came back from a corporate retreat in the mountains and this is the first thing I read after sitting down and turning my laptop on, and none of this seems alien or odd to me.
-"As a company, we will continue to be the leader in entertaining the lifestyle gamer,” said Greg Leeds, President of Wizards of the Coast. “Re-aligning resources ensures we achieve this goal for our most powerful brands.”
That translates to, 'it's not roleplayers, but people who like games in general that we are targeting; we want to sell certain things that we know shift units, so we're freeing up cash for that...only some products get a push.'
That's not unreasonable from a strictly business standpoint.
I'll offer up that Monte Cook's best work all came after he left WoTC prior to another string of lay offs from their R&D team many years back. If you don't like what Wizards or 4e are doing to your hobby you should be happy that these respected designers futures are now freed up to do something you (and they) can be proud of. Otherwise, they'd be stuck by contract writing books for a game you don't like and don't play, released by a company that you don't respect.
Scott, please note that you are quoting the previous announcement, not a new one.
It seems WotC has a habit of these layoff cycles, as mentioned.
I honestly can't believe these names were made public. Is that legal? How would you like it if you lost your job, and before you've even told your family, the internet is already blogging about -why- you lost it. It's one thing if you are a public figure, but... Jennifer Powers? Andrew Finch? How embarrassing! I'd be contacting my lawyer.
Scott's right though. This is typical of corporate re-alignment. The failure to launch D&DI was a big hit to the company. I think they had a business plan designed around a subscription-based online community, and the launch of 4e was intended to drum up interest and bring lapsed gamers back into the fold. But the momentum from 4e is already wearing off and D&DI has become a joke. Very bad.
Companies shift and twist and dodge and weave much easier when they are smaller. My company makes changes of direction mid-course monthly...or even weekly. You set priorities, measure them with metrics, and when something goes above or below a line on a graph you make fast changes to affect the results in real time. The smaller the company, the easier this is to do quickly.
Layoffs trim companies down to a manageable size. They also tend to make everyone else have to do more work...sometimes that's for the best though. On the other hand however...freeing up ops cash or making your company more manueverable by laying people off is a really lame way to do it. It's pretty old school. Most *successful* businesses don't do it that way anymore. The ones that *do* do it that way are usually ones that have CEOs, COOs, and CFOs that are more concerned with bottom line and the impact that line has on their bonus structure. It's a cold, mechanical, heartless way to do business.
In short...it's draconian. So maybe we should be giving them credit for finally doing something the old school 1e and 2e way. Maybe they could get Elmore or Easley to illustrate the big wigs for their staff newsletter.
Another thing to consider is this; if they have enough material in the can to cover a release schedule, they don't need some of these people around anymore. By the next time they need anything new created, they may want different people doing it because they realize those materials will be created in a different climate than the one they currently are in. As such, best to get them out now to free up that cash until they need it somewhere else. If I wasn't wanted somewhere anymore, or had been deemed "unnecessary" or "extraneous" (or "beligerant and hard to deal with" in my own case) I would want to know now...not later. And then I would expect a severance package (which I *would* get), and then I would take a month or two off and hve some fun before getting back to work on something I truly believed in rather than something that was just paying bills or fulfilling a contract.
Or, to look at it a different way; maybe Tweet and Noonan said, "We don't like the way things are going, but we've done alot of good work for you. Maybe it's time we left, but here's how we should do it." If they were on good enough terms with their employer, it's not hard to believe or unreasonable that they engineered a lay-off rather than a voluntary termination of contract (ie: "I quit"). It happens all the time.
I also think that these people probably knew, told their families, and have already made some plans for what to do next before the names became public. It's not that common that someone comes in to your office and says, "you're leaving today...but we already leaked this on the 'net yesterday so I'm surprised you don't know about it already". It's much more common to say "finish out the month", or "wrap up whatevers on your desk" if said employee was in good standing. I don't know if Hasbro (and therefore their subsidiary entities like Wizards) is a publicly traded company or not. If they are, then the names of those laid off being released is also very common practice.
SF wrote:
" It's much more common to say "finish out the month", or "wrap up whatevers on your desk" if said employee was in good standing."
Dude. I've been laid off 3 times and it was ALWAYS a shock. In my experience, lay offs usually follow a big corporate meeting or team building event where we are all told how great business is.
The first instinct a person has when he/she gets laid off is to to think "Great! I was too good for that place anyway! Don't feel bad for me! Feel sorry for the people who are still there! They sure do have their work cut out for them! And I can finally do that thing that I always wanted to do!"
But the reality usually sets in about a month later. The money's gone. The honeymoon's over. You start leafing through the ads and realize how difficult it is to translate your experience into something new, and insecurity starts to creep in. You end up exhausting your friendships by constantly pestering them about opportunities & recommendations. You end up working for Starbucks and feeling like you've guttered out. Eventually you get a admin assistant gig and your bosses treat you like shit. Before you know it, it's been 3 years and your still earning a third of your former salary and wondering what happened to your life.
At least, that's my story.
Damn...that's not a fun story at all.
And it's precisely why I always cultivate about three or four standing oppurtunities with people that I already do business with. If things ever go south, I can start a new job within a week.
My hope is that the dramatic recession might actually encourage the American government to come up with an effective public healthcare system. If enough people are unemployed, Americans might come to appreciate some of the tenants of socialism.
But I'm being selfish. As a Canadian with an American green card, the only thing stopping me for exploring my options in the States is their stupid stupid stupid government. Americans, despite all their patriotic hubris, still haven't figured out that the government is supposed to work -for- them, not -against- them.
From the ENworld thread :
Thanks for the kind words, folks. They mean a great deal. And my wife was reading over my shoulder, and they cheered her up _immensely_.
I can confirm the essential truth of what's been reported, and I am indeed one of the ones let go today. When you're in the midst of the process, you don't really get a sense of what's going on elsewhere in the building. Thus I didn't know some of the names until I read them here. They're quality people. In a weird way, I'm proud to be among them. (I'd rather be employed, sure, but you take the solace you can at a moment like this.)
I'll leave the prognosticating and "...but what does this MEAN?!?" stuff to others. I think the game is in good shape--and I think it's in good hands. In my 10 years at Wizards, I survived a lot of these layoffs--including cuts deeper than this. More to the point for you guys, the _game_ survived deeper cuts than this.
Maybe I didn't say this enough when I was part of "the Man," but the ENWorld community is absolutely terrific. The level of discourse here continues to be top-notch, and there's always an interesting thread sitting right there, begging to be read. But if you're already a regular here, you've already figured that out, huh?
--David Noonan, who should probably get a new user name.
Working in the semiconductor industry, and having been laid off due to cutbacks once, I know it is customary to be treated well and be advised in advance. The idea of "we don't need these guys right now, so let's fire them, maybe hire'em again later" simply doesn't work in my line of work.
Yes, it's true that WOTC has laid off a lot of people from the Renton, WA office. What's not said is that contractors have been "streamlined" as well. Including Interns, Temps, Employees and Contractors, there were easily over 200 staff there this summer. WOTC occupies the top two floors of the building and I consistently see a dozen people as I make my way downstairs to the breakroom/fridge area on 3.
What's also not been mentioned anywhere is that layoffs started happening in earnest this summer. We were at capacity or above in terms of cube space, and now you can see tons of empty cubes. If sales don't exceed expectations over the holidays then there will be even further cuts. Our holiday party isn't scheduled until the middle of January to cut costs. Compared to the largesse of the kid-oriented brands under Hasbro, we could be looking at disappointing numbers going into the new year. A major demographic for us is middle-class adults -- and the wants of middle-class adults are being scaled-back because of the recession.
What I want to make crystal clear is that Wizards is NOT the catalyst of this, but Hasbro as a whole is making cuts across the board. No one wants to cut staff, quite a few people are emotional about losing people. And yeah it did come as a surprise that the layoff happened. No one thinks that "We may need to let a couple of people go" means that they will be the one laid off. I agree with Anon. that it's virtually always a shock.
Podcast sucks too! It was so boring. I'm not fan of 4e, but it seems like they are like every other major corporation by cutting talent in lieu of really basic product for the masses. Problem is that in lean times you're not going to get the masses to do something they probably wouldn't do when they have money, while losing your core business - Starbucks seems to be doing this too.
Anyway, sucks for Noonan who's been pushing the 4e for months.
After reading the article and skimming through the comments here, I have to agree this sounds like a downsizing move that usually only occurs with a company whose revenue stream is drying up.
So many of us tried to tell Hasbro and WOTC 4th Ed. was a mistake... now they are dealing with the reprocussions of having alienated so many of their core fans.
D&D is NOT WoW, its not "Neverwinter Nights", its not "Baldur's Gate", and to try to turn it into that is foolishness. The execs at WOTC saw how well the electronic gaming world has been doing and wanted to try and grab a peice of that pie. I hope this reminds them of who the true fans of D&D are, and by extension what format this game should ALWAYS remain in.
Layoffs are not always a way of downsizing to preserve revenue. Someties it's just aw ay of trimming "fat" so as to *increase* revenue that is already flowing.
Well, looking on Amazon recently it seems like 3.5E products were selling as well or better than 4E. That's gotta be disappointing, financially and otherwise, for WotC. I don't feel sorry for anyone who had a hand in 4E, though. If the less-than wanted 4E showing has anything to do with the layoffs, then I have sympathy for the collateral damage. The people who screwed up D&D with 4th Edition deserve whatever is coming in the way of repercussions for putting out a bad product.
Anywhere is that layoffs started happening in earnest this summer. We were at capacity or above in terms of cube space, and now you can see tons of empty cubes. If sales don't exceed expectations over the holidays then there will be even further cuts. Our holiday party isn't scheduled until the middle of January to cut costs. Compared to the largesse of the kid-oriented brands under Hasbro, we could be looking at disappointing numbers going into the new year. A major demographic for us is middle-class adults -- and the wants of middle-class adults are being scaled-back because of the recession.
What I want to make crystal clear is that Wizards is NOT the catalyst of this, but Hasbro as a whole is making