Hasbro is under fire again.
“A new lawsuit filed by shareholders of Hasbro against the company and its directors alleges that company leadership has mismanaged Magic: The Gathering by overprinting sets of cards, thereby devaluing existing ones. It also, quite notably, claims that Hasbro leadership “concealed the true reason” that its widely-criticized, incredibly expensive Magic: The Gathering 30th Anniversary Set was pulled from sale within an hour of its initial release.
The lawsuit, filed in Rhode Island earlier this week, is filed by shareholders Joseph Crocono and Ultan McGlone against Hasbro CEO Christian Cocks, a number of fellow company directors, and Hasbro itself. The lawsuit alleges breaches of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, waste of corporate assets, gross mismanagement, abuse of control, and violations of the Exchange Act.”
I have no idea is this particular lawsuit will go anywhere. Hasbro and Wizards seems to be pretty capable of shrugging most of this kind of thing off without any real consequences.
But I think the main complaint in the lawsuit definitely has merit.
It’s no secret that Magic and Wizards generates a significant majority of Hasbro’s revenue, and from the outside it feels like they’re leaning on the property to shore up other lower performing areas of the business, sacrificing some of the good will that Magic has built up over the 30 years it has existed in the process.
Short term gains over long term health does appear to be the name of the game.
The 30th Anniversary debacle puts a pretty fine point on it. WIzards has broken so many of it’s promises over the past 10 years, most likely under direction from its parent company, to give the people at Wizards the benefit of the doubt, that as a Magic customer it’s hard to not feel like being sacrificed at the alter of higher corporate profits every year.
It would be interesting to analyze what Hasbro would look like without Wizards contribution to the bottom line, and I wonder what an alternative timeline version of Wotc, independent from Hasbro, would look like in terms of release schedule and general ethos.
Just a thought.
But imagine being someone who spent $999 on a set of 4 random, non-tournament legal booster packs, opening a Sedge Troll, Lifelace, and couple other middling rares, and then discovering the rest of the supposed “super hot stock” didn’t sell out, but were actually stealthily pulled from the online store and discretely dumped in a Texas landfill in an attempt to disguise the failure as success.