Maybe Hasbro is finally realizing that they never understood why D&D is valuable, and are coming to the conclusion that they’ll never be able to monetize it properly.

With seemingly-comparable game franchises, a lot of the value is in either a business model that’s good at generating consistent sales (selling cards or miniatures) and/or the setting and characters that can be used to sell merchandise. D&D has neither. No one really cares that much about the D&D lore, and the business model is selling books that aren’t even that necessary to play the game.

The value in the D&D franchise is that the game mechanics (which aren’t protected by IP laws) are well-known by a large user base, plus there’s a lot of existing material that is compatible with that system. People play D&D because lots of people already know how to play, and it’s easy to find material to play with. Stuff like Baldur’s Gate is popular incidentally, mostly because the developers have been good at making games, but no one is going to get excited about a mediocre D&D game in the same way that people would for a 40k game.

Hasbro has shown that they don’t understand this dynamic. When they tried to monetize the game system itself with the OGL nonsense, people just said “Okay, I guess I’ll just switch to a different RPG system” because of course that’s what you’d do. The community is interested in the hobby, not the franchise, and if the franchise is going to make it difficult to engage with the hobby, then the hobbyists, including content creators who do a lot of the heavy lifting to keep the franchise relevant, will go elsewhere.

Hasbro likely thought they could take D&D and do the usual “we have this user base and we can get X amount from merch, Y amount from video games, Z amount from some sort of subscription service, etc.” not realizing that no one actually cares that much about D&D as a franchise, at least not in the same way as with stuff like Warhammer or Star Wars. It’s a hobbyists hobby, and the hobbyists aren’t going to go full “consooom!” on D&D lunchboxes and funko pops.

TTRPGs are, to their credit, extremely difficult to monetize. It’s hard to squeeze money out of a game when the players can buy a couple of PDFs and then play for years, only buying new material when there’s an update or a setting book that looks interesting to them. It’s a bad business, which makes it a terrific hobby, and I wish Hasbro a very lmao get owned if they do try to pass it along to someone else.

If this is true, can't wait to hear all the gamer-brained dorks whining because Tencent is a Chinese company. As if they can't handle it worse than Hasbro has already.

So excited for DnD fans to get even more racist

Hasbro has no clue what to do with the game since their games-as-service, closed ecosystem plan went kaput after they backed down on the OGL revision (which would have been necessary to shut out other VTTs and ensure player & DM subscriptions). I think the recent lay offs of senior people in the D&D related teams suggests this as well. This article doesn't seem well sourced at all, but a shake-up would be very interesting at this point.

Side-stepping some of the speculation and impact on the traditional market/fanbase, I am curious about the interest in D&D in China, as a Tencent acquisition would presumably make it much easier to market the game there. From the searching I've done, there doesn't seem to be a ton of interest in D&D, and there's no official translation into Mandarin. The movie didn't do great at the Chinese box office, although Baldur's Gate 3 did fine? Obviously, if Tencent does put together a subsidiary to design a version for the Chinese market, I'm not sure if they'd want to start by translating/adapting existing books or using the ruleset to design a bespoke version (either with a fantasy setting or based on relevant Chinese IP.)

Larian Studios (30% owned by Tencent) was attempting to buy D&D. They weren't able to afford it, and to they pulled Tencent into the negotiation. I don't know if that means Hasbro actually is interested in selling - though it's hard to see a world where they're not. https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/31/hasbro-is-selling-the-dungeons-and-dragons-ip-and-tencent-is-the-potential-buyer/

However, Wizards of the Coast is saying that they don't intend to sell, as of an hour ago: https://www.pcgamer.com/wizards-of-the-coast-dispels-rumours-that-tencent-wants-to-gobble-up-dandd-like-a-tarrasque-to-be-clear-we-are-not-looking-to-sell-our-dandd-ip/

Keep it on-topic. This is not the place for flamewars about exactly how bad China's human rights abuses are.