GameStop.ca (formerly EB Games) Transformers Sightings and discussion

[Yonoid]

Maybe they have too much older wave stock to get rid of. Cybertron Metroplex anyone?

[RansakWORK]

Originally Posted by RNSrobot

What financial problems?

Otherwise tho yeah this sucks

Ya stock down, layoffs, was a wage reduction on employees. WOTC which they own took a huge loss recently. Plastic free packaging wasnt about saving the environment, it was about saving money because the price of plastic went up

Also remember making a movie is pretty expensive and they are 3 years late on their release date (originally june 2019?)

One of the last board meetings they were advertising +25% increased proft over next few years but that hinged on them monetizing D&D in a horrible way and it failed. So the pain is only starting for them when they dont meet their promised investor targets this year.

[General Tekno]

And I suspect the new eco-friendly plastic is a combination of "Cardboard ALSO isn't cheap" coupled with "turns out with collector-centric lines where a big segment leaves stuff MISB, not having a way to see the toy inside disincentivizes purchases."

And yeah their attempts to monetize D&D backfired HARD to the point they had to roll back all the planned changes on account of enraging the entire community, to the point of making a lot of people start to go "how necessary are you for our TTRPGs anyway?"

[JLvatron]

Please tell me the latest Legacy wave (that we risk not getting) doesn't include Defcon!!

Originally Posted by RansakWORK

One of the last board meetings they were advertising +25% increased proft over next few years but that hinged on them monetizing D&D in a horrible way and it failed.

Dungeons & Dragons?
What's going on (or was supposed to) with that?

[General Tekno]

Originally Posted by JLvatron

Please tell me the latest Legacy wave (that we risk not getting) doesn't include Defcon!!



Dungeons & Dragons?
What's going on (or was supposed to) with that?

Wave 3 is the Devcon wave .

As for D&D, the short version is "WOTC's plans leaked re: the new license agreement they were going to impose on anyone who wanted to make D&D-adjacent/compatible content." And it was going to give them oversight over any content people made (sourcebooks, but also podcasts/streams/etc too) as well as demand a piece of the pie if they made over X amount (which is really bad for crowdfunds and the like where there's already a lot of margins eaten by fees).

The WOTC team wasn't happy (this was imposed from higher up, and so people on the team leaked the drafts), everyone who makes content wasn't happy, the fanbase wasn't happy... WOTC attempted to deny stuff was real when we knew it was due to leaks... End result was a lot of people threatening to not make D&D content anymore as well as a general mass cancellation of D&D Beyond Subscriptions that hit them in the wallet.

WOTC rolled back all the planned changes.

[RansakWORK]

Originally Posted by JLvatron

Please tell me the latest Legacy wave (that we risk not getting) doesn't include Defcon!!



Dungeons & Dragons?
What's going on (or was supposed to) with that?

They changed their open license for D&D (people can create content using D&D ideas and systems) and can profit off it. Think things like Critical Role.. Amazon primes Vox Machina and a game who's name escapes me. Hasbro came out saying they want 25% of what everyone makes off of it and that they can steal whatever they make with a *3 month warning* and without compensation.

Lets not also forget that Hasbro prevents American distributors from selling figures of certain scales limiting the competition. Why you cannot readily get a lot of the foreign figures at retail.

My point to this.. I said Hasbro is has been having financial problems. They will say they are doing great publicly because they are a publicly traded company looking for investors. If you put all the news articles and metrics together it paints a much different picture.

[Banshee]

I was speaking with Amir from Toysnowman about the deluxes today, and he’s making a video about it to give some insight. Long story short, there’s no Canadian distribution for these, at least for smaller retailers. He doesn’t know why, so it could be stock shortages, linked to the hasbro layoffs, or just incompetence from Hasbro.

I don’t think it means there won’t be any, Habsro could fix this at any time, and the figures are a ways off, but still, we’ve seen how bad Canadian distrib is, so I’m not too optimistic.

[General Tekno]

Originally Posted by RansakWORK

They changed their open license for D&D (people can create content using D&D ideas and systems) and can profit off it. Think things like Critical Role.. Amazon primes Vox Machina and a game who's name escapes me. Hasbro came out saying they want 25% of what everyone makes off of it and that they can steal whatever they make with a *3 month warning* and without compensation.

They TRIED to.

All the changes got rolled back because the community was having NONE of it and made a lot of noise/started hitting them in the wallet. Plus a lot of people started to question if the license was actually even legally necessary to use the ruleset (the consensus being "it was always somewhat of a smoke and mirrors thing")

Paizo (the makers of Pathfinder/Starfinder, a company itself made up of former WOTC people) has already had a VERY good year thanks to all this stuff going on.

[RNSrobot]

Originally Posted by RansakWORK

They changed their open license for D&D (people can create content using D&D ideas and systems) and can profit off it. Think things like Critical Role.. Amazon primes Vox Machina and a game who's name escapes me. Hasbro came out saying they want 25% of what everyone makes off of it and that they can steal whatever they make with a *3 month warning* and without compensation.

Lets not also forget that Hasbro prevents American distributors from selling figures of certain scales limiting the competition. Why you cannot readily get a lot of the foreign figures at retail.

My point to this.. I said Hasbro is has been having financial problems. They will say they are doing great publicly because they are a publicly traded company looking for investors. If you put all the news articles and metrics together it paints a much different picture.

Makes sense. I forgot about the WOTC/D&D things.

I've been side-eying Hasbro for a while lately. The constant price increases while claiming "record profits." It's never really added up.

As it stands, I have the stuff I want from the deluxes pre-ordered at A3U. I put in an order at Pulse today just in case.

The constant price increases are defintely making TFs more of a "luxury" items for not really much more. Not all other toy companies have had the same level of price increases. Comparable Mattel products remain less price.

I mean, there's no chance of Hasbro going belly up or TF vanishing. But we could see some changes. Ah well!

It's also possible cos you noted the movie thing. If ROTB is a success, and drives toy purchasing, that is good for TF as a whole. I don't like the Bay movies, but their success and toyline success (until AoE stuff and esp TLK stuff started warming) was good for all TF.

But you gotta wonder when you see things like Devcon, AxleGreese, the more niche/esoteric things in mainline if that's gonna continue going forward if sales are dumping. OFC this wave also has a super desireable character like Beachcomber.

Anyway... I'm still waiting for Core Grimlock to come in from my GS preorder. The voyagers and deluxes for *THAT* wave did lol

just really weird if it's ONLY the deluxes from the announced wave aren't coming to canada, but the core/voyager/leader are.

[RNSrobot]

Originally Posted by Banshee

I was speaking with Amir from Toysnowman about the deluxes today, and he?s making a video about it to give some insight. Long story short, there?s no Canadian distribution for these, at least for smaller retailers. He doesn?t know why, so it could be stock shortages, linked to the hasbro layoffs, or just incompetence from Hasbro.

I don?t think it means there won?t be any, Habsro could fix this at any time, and the figures are a ways off, but still, we?ve seen how bad Canadian distrib is, so I?m not too optimistic.

I look forward to that video. Amir has really taken the lead on breaking down the behind-the-scenes of the business, especially in the face of fans and collectors inventing things to complain about.