American toy company Hasbro is seeking to sell its well-known IP

Speed Daily exclusively learned that the American toy company Hasbro is seeking to sell its well-known IP “Dungeons & Dragons” (referred to as “DND” below), and Tencent is one of the potential buyers.

At present, the negotiations are still in the early stages and both parties have not yet reached an agreement on the details of the transaction.

According to informed sources, the financial crisis faced by Hasbro is the main reason for considering the sale of DND, and Tencent Investment’s Larian Studios is acting as an intermediary in this transaction. Larian Studios’ game “Baldur’s Gate 3” won the TGA Game of the Year award in 2023 and is considered one of the most successful adaptations of DND. As a result, it was seen as a potential target buyer by Hasbro. However, due to insufficient funds, Larian ultimately introduced this deal to shareholder Tencent.

Hasbro was founded in 1923 and has a history of over a hundred years. In 1935, the company gradually became a world-class toy company with its Monopoly series games. It owns well-known IPs such as Transformers, Dungeons & Dragons, Monopoly, and My Little Pony. However, this century-old enterprise is currently facing a huge crisis due to losses. Its stock price has dropped from a high of $108 in 2019 to $51 (closing data on January 26th).

According to the financial report, as of the third quarter of 2023, Hasbro has been experiencing consecutive losses for four quarters due to its main business of toy sales. The accumulated loss from Q4 2022 to Q3 2023 exceeds $500 million USD, and in Q2 2023, there was even a negative free cash flow situation. According to Forbes reports, in response to the crisis, the company underwent significant layoffs last year, with a total reduction of over 1,900 employees accounting for more than 20%.

Although the company as a whole is in a loss situation, its DND-related IP is a high-quality asset and has achieved considerable success in video game adaptations. Last year, the release of “Baldur’s Gate 3” by Larian Studios was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. It not only won six TGA awards, including Game of the Year but also generated revenue of $657 million, surpassing the Harry Potter IP adaptation game “Hogwarts Legacy,” making it the most profitable PC exclusive game last year.

The success of “Baldur’s Gate 3” is also reflected in the financial data of Hasbro. The financial report shows that in the third quarter of 2023, driven by “Baldur’s Gate 3” and another Monopoly IP game called “Monopoly Go!”, Hasbro’s electronic gaming and licensing-related business achieved a contrary year-on-year growth of 40%, reaching $423 million.

Outside of electronic games, DND is also one of the most popular tabletop games in Europe and America. It has appeared multiple times in American TV shows such as “The Big Bang Theory” and “Stranger Things”. A large fan base has formed around its related culture, making it a top-tier IP.

A Tencent IEG (Interactive Entertainment Group) insider revealed that Tencent, represented by its overseas business department IEG Global, is in negotiations with the aim of acquiring a series of rights including the adaptation rights for electronic games such as DND.

According to the aforementioned IEG insiders, Tencent currently holds the game adaptation rights for many top-tier IPs. However, due to the licensing model mostly not being a one-time buyout, Tencent not only needs to bear high copyright fees and long-term revenue sharing but also frequently faces restrictions from its partners in terms of development and operation. Previously, the mobile game adaptation of “NieR” developed by Tencent TiMi Studio was unable to be launched even until the project was cancelled.

If this acquisition is successful, it will enable Tencent to gain dominant control over the IP of Dungeons & Dragons, which will largely avoid the aforementioned issues.

Companies in Europe and America attach great importance to the value of intellectual property (IP), while Chinese companies have limited opportunities to acquire top-tier IP from overseas. For Tencent, the opportunity to acquire the Dungeons & Dragons IP from Hasbro due to financial considerations is a rare chance.

    • ulkesh@beehaw.orgEnglish
      15·
      11 months ago

      I get it. But I’ve seen how Tencent does things. And I don’t like what I see. It’s not about what’s worse, it’s about going to a company that will do right by the IP. Hasbro sucks, I agree, but moving the IP to another company that sucks is not what I’d like to see for D&D.

      • Arcane_Trixster@lemm.ee
        7·
        11 months ago

        It’s hard to not sound snarky here, but you could play another system that’s not seen as a commodity to be passed around Corps for profit.

        I switched a couple years back, and honestly couldn’t see going back even before their licensing drama. As a GM, their books are so hard to make work, and expensive for what you get. D&D became too much of a product, and the game has suffered. 3rd party stuff has always had better value and usability compared to WotC books (few exceptions), and other systems give much better support for GM’s to actually run the game.

        The coolest shit you do in D&D is the stuff you’re group comes up with at the table, and you get that with any system. Tencent also can’t buy that, so there’s nothing stopping you just playing 5th Edition, and not 6th (or One, whatever Marketing ends up calling it).

        • ulkesh@beehaw.orgEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          Of course! I have numerous various systems at my disposal: Savage Worlds, Fate, Fudge, Mork Borg, etc.

          But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a soft spot for D&D. I played it back in the early 90s when it was still AD&D 2nd edition. I remember having a love/hate relationship with THAC0. So I’d like to see D&D get owned by a company that understands what they have is something to be nurtured, not exploited. So if Hasbro sells it, my hope is it will go to a company that will do that. I’m sure I’ll be disappointed, but I’m still going to leave room for that hope.

        • MangoKangaroo@beehaw.org
          8·
          11 months ago

          Tencent only owns a minority share in Larian. (Some resources say it’s around 30%; this is the source used in Wikipedia’s article.)

          The most important of these is undoubtedly the studio founder Swen Vincke, who still heads Larian to this day - but not only as managing director, Swen also makes creative decisions. Because Swen also owns the majority of the studio - the Chinese publisher Tencent holds only a minority of the shares - Larian is immune to the waves on the stock exchange, to which CD Projekt, for example, is exposed. (Translated from German to English using Vivaldi.)