Magic: The Gathering Is in Trouble

It's not very often that I get to do two controversies in the space of a few days but it's also not very often that you see a company shoot themselves in the foot either! At least, I don't think it is. Just like last time, I'm going to try and link all the coverage that I can find. Let's get on with it.

First off, who are Wizards of the Coast?

Wizards of the Coast is the company behind the massively popular Magic: the Gathering trading card game. They're a subsidiary of the Hasbro games company.

What is Magic: The Gathering?

For those who don't know, Magic: the Gathering is a card game in which players battle it out using creatures, artifacts and spells to defeat an opponent.

Created by Richard Garfield and released by Wizards of the Coast in 1993, Magic also has the distinction of being the first TCG ever created. The game has a huge player-base with a solid 20 million players worldwide.

The game's competitive scene is very active with Grand Prix events (very big tournaments), Pre-releases, and Pro Tour qualifiers being quite popular - particularly for socializing between players.

So, with huge player-base and active competitive circuit; why is Magic in trouble?

Yes, you read that heading correctly; a game store has been effectively banned from hosting/playing at sanctioned Magic: the Gathering events...because of a flag on the wall. Alright so, let's go back to the beginning here so I can give everyone a picture of what's going on. Someone walks into a game store, a Store of Fire and Dice in New York and posts a picture of a Kekistani flag on the wall to the internet.

There's a lot of online outrage at this flag and Wizards of the Coast revokes a Store of Fire and Dice's WPN status - which as I said earlier means the store can no longer host sanctioned events and the owner can no longer play in sanctioned events.

Now, for those who don't know; Kekistan is a fictional country created on online forums as a tongue-in-cheek origin for internet trolls.

Having their WPN status revoked and being unable to host sanctioned Magic events is, believe it or not, not the big problem here. No, the bigger problem with having their WPN status revoked is that they only have limited access to Wizards of the Coast's merchandise.

The many patrons of this store who play Magic now have to find somewhere else to play if they want to take part in sanctioned events. The store's revenue is severely cut due to the limited access to Wizards Merchandise. Fear not though, following the initial coverage of the story; the store experienced one of the best business days ever - which should help quite a bit.

When this story broke, there was a lot of outrage about it. I've seen a lot of comments along the lines of: "I quit."

Many people are leaving the Magic: the Gathering scene in disgust; selling their collections and going in search of a different game to play. Even some of the employees at Wizards of the Coast seem to be a little peeved with the company's decision.

The general consensus here seems to be that Wizards has greatly overstepped their boundaries and is just not worth supporting anymore. This line of thought has just been exacerbated by the company's response to the number of complaints they were receiving.

In response to the story, as I mentioned, people started dialing the customer care line and filing complaints over the company's decision to ban a Store of Fire and Dice. Wizards of the Coast responded to this criticism by blocking THOUSANDS of players online.

Now the way I understand it, this means that these players cannot comment on the WotC social media platforms and they can't voice their concerns in any way.

Do I even need to explain where the problem with this lies? A company is built around making money. In order to make money you have to keep your customers happy; the happier your customers are, the more money you make. If you alienate your customers, you lose that revenue.

To put all this into perspective, let's take Jeremy's (the dude in the video) example and crank it up a bit: let's say each of these players who were blocked spend between $500.00 and $2000.00 on Magic: the Gathering every year. I counted 10 or 12 screenshots of players whom Wizards have blocked. Now, assuming that each of these players spends $500.00 on Magic every year that's between 5 and 6000 dollars in revenue gone. If they spend 2000 dollars a year on the game it's closer to 30 thousand dollars in revenue lost.

This is a huge problem for Hasbro, the company who owns Wizards of the Coast, because it's bad press. You've got a company which, according to our friend in the video, is spiraling downward with revenue going down, bad card stock, tournament attendance tanking, and so on. They are, in short, costing Hasbro money and making the company look bad.

Speaking of Hasbro...

Here's an interesting and, I think, valid question: Where the blazes is Hasbro in all of this mess? They bought Wizards of the Coast back in 1998/1999 for around $325 thousand dollars. Why have they not stepped in and dealt with this situation? I mean, I know they're a big company and could likely survive the bad press but still; don't they care that Wizards is essentially losing money and making them look bad?

Even if they do survive the bad press, the fact that they've seemingly ignored this situation could very well be a black mark on the company's reputation.

In terms of helping a Store of Fire and Dice to transition away from Magic - since that's apparently no longer a viable source of income - a fund raiser was set up by our friendly video host to help with that. It's sitting at just over 6000 dollars which considering it's only been a week or so is fantastic.

I'll echo what our video host said, if you can't contribute/back the fund raiser yourself then share the videos around as much as you can.

As for My Thoughts on This Whole Mess

From a business perspective, I think Wizards of the Coast may have just destroyed themselves or at the very least damaged their viability as a reliable distributor. This company seems to have a lot of problems, to the point where I believe Hasbro should've stepped in months if not years ago.

I have to admit I don't know what's going to happen next. The story is, at least for now, at a standstill. I'd like to think that Hasbro will get involved and help clean up this mess but I'm not really naive enough to get my hopes up too high.

In regards to whether or not Magic: the Gathering will survive this mess...well, yeah; I think it will - in some form or another. I can't say Wizards of the Coast are really helping matters by alienating their customers but Magic is too big to just die off altogether and has enough of a player-base that it may be able to continue on regardless of this situation.

Ultimately I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens next - if anything at all. This story is far from over and I have my doubts as to whether it'll end quietly or not.