Wizards of the Coast Steps in it. Again.

With leading contemporary genre artist Dave Rapoza severing ties, another nail is driven into the slowly sealing coffin of Hasbro/Wizards.

This story isn’t entirely fresh news at this point. One could argue that, accounting for “internet time’s” rapid pace, this story’s already got graying hairs and a receding hairline as it enters its equivalent of the mid-fifties. However, coming off of my own comments on a recent article by

Raven Wulfgar

wherein he looked back at the OGL scandal of last year, I thought it apropos to show a more contemporary example of Wizards of the Coast’s unenviable curse of stepping in just about every mound of feces lying in their path over the last five or six years. (In truth this curse has run for far longer than a scant handful of years, but their crap-stamping ways have really ramped up in this time.)

But let’s not bury the lead. The first portion of this article is going to touch on the controversies WotC/Hasbro were wrapped up in across the past couple years. The reason for this is so that those who aren’t aware can be brought up to speed, at least in part. However, there are more than a few in my audience who are already aware of the scandals I’ll be touching on, or who may simply not be interested in looking back at them even if they’re not fully aware. For you folks, go ahead and scroll on down to the next section, where I’ll actually be talking about the day’s topic. It should be nice and easy to find, just look for the next picture. For those who aren’t skipping ahead, let’s continue.

---

---

As I’ve discussed in a past article, WotC/Hasbro has been no stranger to controversy over the years. Some controversy is, of course, to be expected of any company catering to the public in some way. Not everyone is going to like what a business does or how they do it, so controversies end up being a natural part of life. However, what really defines a company’s perception is how they handle those situations. Do so carefully and tactfully, and chances are good your core consumer base will forgive and forget in short order, severity of the controversy notwithstanding. Unfortunately for WotC/Hasbro, tact and care haven’t exactly been well understood terms in their lexicon over these last few years. Between the two major properties specifically under the Wizard’s part of this corporate umbrella, those being famed tabletop RPG¹ Dungeons & Dragons and the long running deck-builder TCG² Magic: The Gathering, both of which will henceforth be referred to as D&D and MTG respectively, we’ve seen them railed for the following scandals over the last couple years:

• The now infamous Open Game License (OGL) scandal, in which Hasbro/Wizards attempted to completely rewrite and undermine the license created by prior company leads in the very early 00’s which allowed fans and third party publishers to create and sell their own content for D&D. The idea was to rewrite the OGL in such a way that a sizable portion of the rather impressive profits seen by some of these projects within this niche would be signed over to Hasbro/Wizards or, barring that, they could shut down or even claim ownership of these third party projects for themselves. This is merely scratching the surface of how deep this particular scandal ran.

• The $1000 MTG 30th anniversary collector’s pack, featuring reprints of long out-of-print cards with their original art. That’s right, for the low, low cost of half a month’s rent you, too, can buy a random assortment of four 15 card booster packs!

• Wizards removing terms such as witch from MTG on the flimsy excuse that it’s a “real world religious identifier,” followed then by strong considerations of doing the same thing for terms like druid and shaman.

• The altering and sometimes censoring of text in current and older edition books, often times without warning. This is a particular issue for those who own copies on digital platforms such as D&D Beyond or the Roll20 virtual tabletop, as those versions can be back edited without the customer’s knowledge at any time.

• The planned hypermonetization of their upcoming virtual tabletop, in which each and every element of the program is slated to involve some kind of one-time fee or subscription to access. This is paired with the rumor that WotC’s planned conversion to a “digital only” product will include gating any and all content needed to play the upcoming version of D&D - that is to say, the rules themselves may well be locked piecemeal behind various paywalls.

Are all of these going to be seen as major scandals in the eyes of members of the public? Your mileage may vary from incident to incident. The point, however, remains the same - WotC/Hasbro has done very little in recent years to ingratiate them to their public, and as of the 6th of January, they took another step into a stinking little pile.

The artwork posted above is by contemporary genre artist Dave Rapoza, who is rightly considered to be one of the best in the industry today. This art piece was a bit of promotional work that Larian Studios hired him to draw for their hit CRPG, Baldur’s Gate 3, which I’m sure most people reading this article have at least heard of, if you haven’t played it yourself. This bit of promotional material is for the game’s Dark Urge storyline, which takes the game’s already dark storyline and gives it an extra twist by having you play an amnesiac with extremely violent urges that you can either attempt to resist or give into.

Now, for those of you who aren’t so familiar with Baldur’s Gate, you may be asking yourselves how this applies to WotC/Hasbro. The answer is quite simple - the Baldur’s Gate games are D&D video games. Baldur’s Gate 3 is based on and borrows heavily from the mechanics of D&D’s Fifth Edition, the current version of the game on the market today, and its thoroughly positive reception amongst not just fans of D&D but RPG fans in general is easily the single biggest win that WotC/Hasbro has had since the COVID lockdowns saw sales of D&D books start to spike. Plus, it’s a win that came on the cheap for them, seeing as all they had to do was give Larian permission to use their license and some of the characters from the prior two mainline games. I can’t say how much of a cut they actually got off sales for the game as I’ve never seen the figures, but it did end up being some very positive press for the D&D brand.

So, how did they screw it up this time? Well, for that we need to peek back at the miasma of controversy they found themselves in around the time of the OGL scandal early last year. You see, as is often the case with WotC/Hasbro, the controversies don’t tend to come one at a time, falling down one after the other like a series of well spaced dominoes. Rather, their controversies tend to pile up on each other, often occurring close enough together that one could safely compare them to a wobbling Jenga tower or, perhaps more appropriately, a house of cards falling in on itself. In this particular instance, leaks and rumors were starting to flow from the meeting rooms of executives and middle managers in the company. These talks involved the ins and outs of how they might cut back on costs while maximizing profits, all very typically corporate, and what term should come up in that discussion?

AI, both for use in writing the books and sourcing the art for them on the cheap.

AI has, for reasons both fair and not, become something of a boogeyman recently. Questions of ethics have been raised on just about every side of this issue, and they’ve been answered both with careful nuance and club-like bluntness. Regardless of one’s personal stance on AI, though, there’s no question that a massive amount of people take issue with the idea that major corporations might start using it to cut writers and artists out of their jobs. That very debate is raging right now in the worlds of manga and anime. Western and Eastern fans alike have become so sick of Western localizers altering the scripts of dubs in particular by shoving them full of nods to their political beliefs, sometimes to the point that the lines are completely changed from their original context, that the door has been opened for Japanese publishers to start using AI to translate the work in their place. As early as last summer that would’ve drawn shock and dismay from a huge chunk of the public, but the seemingly subversive nature of those translations combined with the terrible attitudes many of these localizers have when addressing said public has ruined their reputations to the point that fans are now happy to see they’re being replaced by AI.

WotC/Hasbro found themselves on the flip side of such a situation just last week. In the aftermath of the OGL scandal and the various subsequent leaks that came after, part of the company’s damage control was to state unequivocally that they would not be making use of AI art in their products. They took a public stance and, with a bright white smile, said “no” to AI art.

How’d that verse by The Undisputed Truth go? Oh yes, that’s right.

Smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes, yeah,
They don’t tell the truth.
Smiling faces, smiling faces they lie,
And I’ve got proof.

Fast forward to Jan. 4th, when Wizards released a promotional image for their MTG “retro frames” prints. These, as the name implies, featured new cards printed with the classic frame designs old players like myself used to see in the 90’s and early 00’s. They sent out a tweet celebrating how great the cards looked with those classic frames, and you know what? They do. Those cards look damn nice, and the art on them looks nice, too. Oh, and to be clear, it’s not the card art that’s the issue in this case. It’s… Well, take a peek at these tweets and you’ll see.

The style of the art in question is in regards to the background. The full image is pictured at the top of the article if you wish to take a closer look, but suffice it to say it doesn’t take a very close inspection to start seeing that there’s quite a few things which are off about that background image. The reason for that is exactly what you think - the background image was AI generated.

Suffice it to say, people weren’t happy to realize this, nor were they happy with Wizards’ continued denial of the facts. The post has also since been removed by Wizards in a vain attempt to brush the backlash and mockery they received under the rug. Of course, the severity of the backlash may not have reached the fever pitch it did had it not been for what happened soon after.

Two days later, on Jan. 6th, Dave Rapoza stepped to the forefront by linking the above tweet and stating the following:

“And just like that, poof, I’m done working for wizards of the coast - you can’t say you stand against this then blatantly use AI to promote your products, emails sent, good bye you all!”

As he puts it, just like that, Wizards managed to lose their contract with one of the most sought after genre artists alive today. Dave’s been contracted by Wizards many times over the years, lending his talents to the MTG and D&D properties alike. He is a known quantity within that world and even if you didn’t know his name, if you’ve been playing these games recently and went to lookup his work for MTG and D&D, I can all but guarantee you’ll recognize some of his art.

Dave wasn’t willing to let it stay at just that, though. The ripples his move made drew a lot of eyes his way, some supportive, some critical. Questions and accusations were thrown his way, and in some cases unkind words were said of those who still remained to work with WotC/Hasbro. To these, he had the following three statements to give:

“If you’re gonna stand for something you better make sure you’re actually paying attention, don’t be lazy, don’t lie”

“Don’t be hard on other artists if they don’t quit - I can and can afford to because I work for many other game studios and whatnot - some people only have wotc and cannot afford to quit having families and others to take care of - don’t follow my lead if you can’t, no pressure”

“I like the comments asking why I didn’t quit from Pinkertons, layoffs, etc - I’ll leave you with these peoples favorite quote -
‘The best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The second-best time to plant a tree is 25 years ago.’ ”

As you can see, just as with any controversy and particularly with controversies surrounding a company that’s extremely prone to them, there’s a lot of mixed opinions on the various angles of the matter. One thing is for certain, though, WotC/Hasbro doesn’t come out looking good from this. They lost a contract with a major artist from their stable, one who’s so highly sought after that he’s got enough work lined up to safely be able to throw up the proverbial middle finger to the company and leave on a whim. They got publicly caught in a lie, then ran to desperately scrub all traces of that lie instead of just owning up to it. They’ve once again pissed off a fanbase that, at this point, has been actively primed to stay angry at them by the corporation itself.

Finally, and perhaps worst of all, this screwup comes just a few weeks short of the OGL scandal’s one year anniversary, which only further serves to remind people of the other scandals they’ve had. The mass layoffs a week before this last Christmas, for example, or the way they sent the Pinkertons - yes, the same so-called detective agency featured in the Red Dead games which really does behave more like a paramilitary force or a mafia goon squad - to raid an MTG YouTuber’s house when he ended up with a May 2022 release set back in April of last year. The YouTuber in question, Oldschoolmtg, is of the opinion that it was a mistake made by the clerk at his local hobby shop. He believes this because the set he was going to buy was named The March of the Machine, and the unreleased set he was given is called The March of the Machine: Aftermath. Pretty easy mistake to make if you ask me, but I leave that for you to decide.

With all of this in mind, that leaves us with the question, what are we to do about WotC/Hasbro? It’s clear that something is deeply wrong inside the company for these mistakes to keep happening as they have been, and I think that has everything to do with the people working there today. The folks in charge of the company aren’t those with a deep love of the tabletop gaming hobby or the products it produces. They don’t have a passion for these things, and that’s not necessarily a problem in and of itself. The problem is more that these people also don’t understand the hobby in any way. They see the brand and only the brand when they look at D&D or MTG. They see recognized names in the tabletop gaming space which they want to further monetize, but they have no idea how to do that in a way that those who make up their core audience, the ones who play and pay for these games more than anybody else, won’t just be willing to open their wallets, but happy to.

This is further compounded by the numerous people within the Seattle based Wizards of the Coast who are pretty open about their dislike for not just the game’s legacy, but the fans themselves. I’ve said this many times in the past, though maybe not so often here on Substack, but this is the same sort of terrible attitude taken by those who work at the American comics giants of DC, Marvel, and Image to a lesser extent. Though, calling them giants is being rather generous these days. Regardless, WotC/Hasbro’s recent actions mirror more than just the bad attitudes of the arrogant and bitter writers and artists in American comics who keep getting into spats with fans of their properties. Much like Marvel Comics before them, WotC/Hasbro is actively trying to take D&D and turn its publication to an entirely in-house process in order to maximize the profits they can make off their books by cutting out the publishing middle men and setting any and all prices themselves. Additionally, they’re also attempting to turn D&D into what one would call a “lifestyle brand” which, once again, mirrors how Marvel Comics has been trying to operate for years now.

At the middle/upper management and executive levels, WotC/Hasbro don’t see D&D and MTG the hobbies. They don’t see the players, the games, or the artistry and creativity that goes into them. They don’t see the passion, the discussions from the purchasing public, or the concerns of brick and mortar FLGSes³ that sell the products, host game nights, plan tournaments, try to build a sense of community with their customers, and hopefully make a few extra bucks to keep the lights on. WotC/Hasbro only see the brands. Brands that can be slapped on video games and in movie titles and on mugs and T-shirts and posters.

“Spaceballs the T-shirt, Spaceballs the lunch box, Spaceballs the breakfast cereal, Spaceballs the flame thrower!”

In my response to Raven’s recent article, I ended on a harsh criticism of WotC/Hasbro that I’m largely going to reiterate here - they are atrocious stewards of the D&D and MTG properties, (ironic in the latter case since they created MTG) and they’ve been awful at preserving and protecting these properties for well over a decade now. You might be tempted to think the initial successes of D&D Fifth Edition might say otherwise, but recall the situation we were in:

Fourth Edition, which was released in 2008, failed miserably by changing every aspect of what people enjoyed about the previous three editions. Each of those editions, not to mention the various reworks and expansions that were around before First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons existed, had some stark differences, but they were similar enough to be easily recognized as D&D. Because Fourth changed that, Paizo came onto the scene with Pathfinder and dominated the market for nearly a decade by effectively making their game a further improved version of Third Edition D&D. This was unprecedented in the TTRPG space. No one had so completely usurped D&D’s position at the top like that. However, after nearly 15 years playing basically the same game, (Third Edition was released in 2000, its 3.5e updates in 2003, Pathfinder 1e in 2009, and then D&D 5e finally came in 2014) and watching that game continue to grow and bloat as more and more books were released, people wanted something a little snappier and a little fresher. D&D 5e provided that, and it happened to come at a time where it got caught on the winds of a new cultural zeitgeist - TTRPGs being played online for viewing entertainment. That is to say, the eventual surge in Critical Role’s popularity also caused a surge in the popularity of 5e.

These are just a few of the factors that played into the early surge of success 5e saw. However, it didn’t take long before cracks started to show. As the 5e adventure paths started getting released, players and Dungeon Masters alike soon started to see how shallow they were, especially compared to the detailed APs released for Pathfinder. Questions about how to make certain things work in the game became more and more commonplace, new releases became increasingly lackluster, and the honeymoon period so many had with the game ended as we began to see the many flaws it has.

On their own, these wouldn’t be enough to spell doom for D&D, MTG, or WotC/Hasbro, but taken with the many scandals they’ve had over the years? Taken with the atrocious attitude with which some within the company treat fans of these IPs? Well, it becomes pretty damned clear how mismanaged and mistreated these properties have been, and while it’s nostalgically painful to think that someday we’ll likely lose D&D as we recognize it, considering the unfortunate state D&D as we recognize it is in, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Besides, we’ve got plenty of great spinoffs and older options out there. BECMI, AD&D, Basic Fantasy, Castles & Crusades, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Old-School Essentials, the White Box set, and so on.

We don’t need to be stuck with what WotC/Hasbro has on offer. They’re not the only game in town, and if you’re not happy with how they’re doing things, then I humbly request you close your wallets to them and look elsewhere. There’s plenty more out there that’s actually worth your time, from designers and publishers who actually care about making great games first.

---

1. Role playing game, for those unfamiliar with the shorthand.

2. Trading card game, for those unfamiliar with the shorthand.

3. Friendly Local Game Stores.