Toy manufacturer and video game maker Hasbro is letting go of almost 20% of its workforce after five consecutive quarters of revenue decline, meaning approximately 1,100 people will be losing their jobs.
In particular, these Christmastime layoffs are impacting the Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering teams.
The digital age
Hasbro’s toy portfolio has been flagging for over a year now and 800 job cuts have already been made through 2023. Adding this further 1,100 on top right at the end means almost a third of Hasbro’s workforce will have been axed this year in a huge loss for the company.
It’s a sobering thought when some of Hasbro’s other projects have been such massive successes - like Monopoly Go having become one of 2023’s breakout mobile games, raking in $1 billion in seven months; that’s as fast as Pokemon Go, which has since become one of the biggest mobile games of all time.
Of course, as well as Monopoly, Hasbro is well known for its toys from brands like Peppa Pig, My Little Pony, Nerf and Transformers. Beyond that, Hasbro and its subsidiary Wizards of the Coast also have a number of internal video game studios between them with a games library including Exodus and Baldur’s Gate 3 adapting to the digital age.
Stocks have fallen approximately 20% too, and Wizards of the Coast is taking the brunt of the resultant layoffs in IT, game design and artist departments.
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks blamed the toy division, not gaming, for the sales slump. In a statement to Polygon, he explained: "We entered 2023 expecting a year of change including significant updates to our leadership team, structure, and scope of operations. 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 organisation, the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday and are likely to persist into 2024. Cost-cutting is not a strategy. We know this, and that’s why we’ll continue to grow and invest in several areas in 2024."
Sadly, Hasbro is far from the only games company to have laid off employees in 2023. So too have Unity, Fishlabs, Digic, and many others.
