Cynthia Williams will resign from her role as president of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Digital Gaming. This all is according to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Hired in February 2022 after her predecessor was promoted to CEO, Williams’ leadership brought in a great deal of fan pushback against the products.
Williams led Magic: The Gathering to publish new card set releases at a much faster turnaround. While the corporate motivation behind this was for more profit, the fans did not respond well. It was an overwhelming amount of products, too much to keep up with, and drove down the overall value of the cards for those interested in collecting.
Dungeons & Dragons also suffered massive backlash with the “leaked” version of their new open game license. The new license implied that Wizards would have full control over fan-made material, could use it without creator permission, and increased how much profit they could take if creations got popular within the fanbase. If it had been put into production, it would have severely hurt indie creators who relied on income from platforms like Dungeon Master’s Guild to provide for their families.
This saw developers such as Pathfinder swoop in and offer alternatives to fans, creating their own open gaming license (OGL) that put creators first and encouraged fan participation.
Of course, it’s worth noting that the captain of a ship isn’t responsible alone for all catastrophes, but Williams has taken the brunt of blame for her leadership decisions. It will be interesting to see the decisions made by her replacement, and if they smooth things over with fans or make things worse. Williams resignation is effective April 26 of this year.
