Wizards of the Coast

• 1. A Basement in Seattle

  ›

  Wizards of the Coast began in Peter Adkison's basement outside Seattle in 1990, with a handful of employees and a name borrowed from a guild of wizards in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign Adkison was running. The company's first products were modest: a third-edition rulebook for Talislanta, and an original supplement called The Primal Order in 1992. That second book nearly killed the company before it had really started. Palladium Books sued WotC over references to Palladium's game system, and the legal battle dragged into 1993 before a settlement was reached.

  The lawsuit forced a creative workaround that changed everything. When game designer Richard Garfield approached Adkison in 1991 with a card game idea, Adkison set up a separate corporation called Garfield Games specifically to develop it. That new company sheltered the game from the ongoing litigation with Palladium. The name of the game Garfield was developing was Magic: The Gathering, and the plan was to produce something portable and quick enough that players could finish a round between rounds of other games at conventions.

• 2. Magic Changes Everything

  ›

  In July 1993, WotC debuted Magic: The Gathering at Origins Game Fair in Dallas. The following month at Gen Con, the game sold out all 2.5 million cards in its supply. That stock had been intended to last through the end of the year. Within two years, the revenue from Magic's success had grown WotC from a basement operation to a company of 250 employees with its own offices.

  In 1994, Magic: The Gathering won the Mensa Top Five Mind Games award, along with two Origins Awards: Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Board Game of 1993 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game of 1993. That same year, WotC published RoboRally, the board game Adkison had originally rejected from Garfield in 1991 as too expensive to produce. The company could now afford it. RoboRally won the same two Origins Awards for 1994. Garfield also contributed a second card game, The Great Dalmuti, in 1995, which won the 1995 Mensa Best New Mind Game award. By the close of 1995, WotC's annual sales had passed US$65 million.

• 3. TSR and the D&D Legacy

  ›

  On the 10th of April 1997, WotC announced the purchase of TSR, the publisher of Dungeons and Dragons, for $25 million. The deal also included Five Rings Publishing Group. TSR employees were given the opportunity to relocate from Wisconsin to the West Coast. WotC kept the TSR brand name running until 2000 and let the trademark lapse in 2004. Between 1997 and 1999, the company discontinued several TSR campaign settings, including Planescape, Dark Sun, and Spelljammer, choosing to concentrate resources on the more profitable Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms lines.

  The third edition of Dungeons and Dragons arrived in 2000, alongside the d20 System. WotC released both under the Open Game License, allowing other companies to build on those rules. That license is credited with spurring a boom in the RPG industry in the early 2000s. In 2002, WotC held a design contest for a new campaign world; game designer Keith Baker's submission, Eberron, was selected, and its first campaign book appeared in June 2004. The Eberron Campaign Setting won the 2004 Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Supplement. The 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons launched on the 15th of July 2014, and sales of its Starter Set grew from 126,870 units in 2014 to 306,670 units in 2018.

• 4. Pokemon and the Patent Fight

  ›

  On the 2nd of August 1997, WotC received a patent on collectible card games. In January 1999, after acquiring the rights the previous August, WotC began publishing the Pokemon Trading Card Game. The game sold nearly 400,000 copies in fewer than six weeks, moving ten times more units than initial projections. Demand was so intense that some sports card series were discontinued in 1999 because too many printers were occupied producing Pokemon cards.

  WotC published the Pokemon TCG until 2003. The final WotC agreements expired on the 30th of September 2003, and The Pokemon Company, formerly known as Pokemon USA, launched its own edition the very next day. WotC filed suit against Nintendo the following day, accusing the company of abandoning its contract and using WotC-patented methods to manufacture the games itself. The companies resolved the legal action in December 2003 without going to court. After the Pokemon boom of 1999, WotC had also expanded into retail, acquiring and expanding a US chain of gaming stores called The Game Keeper, eventually renaming them under the Wizards of the Coast brand. Those stores were all closed in early 2004.

• 5. The Hasbro Years

  ›

  In September 1999, toy manufacturer Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast for about US$325 million. Avalon Hill, which Hasbro had purchased in mid-1998, was folded into WotC by the end of 1999. Peter Adkison resigned from the company on the 1st of January 2001. In August 2001, WotC was consolidated into Hasbro's game division, a move that trade publication ICv2 described as widely seen as a loss of autonomy for WotC. Hasbro sold both Origins Game Fair and Gen Con in the years following; Gen Con was sold to Adkison himself in May 2002.

  By 2003, WotC employed 850 people. In 2008, a restructuring brought that number below 300. That same year, on the 6th of June 2008, the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons shipped. In 2012, reporting noted D&D sales had slumped, despite WotC declining to release official figures. By 2017, according to The Seattle Times, D&D was seeing its highest player counts ever. Sales of the 5th edition rose 41 percent in 2017 compared to the prior year, and another 52 percent in 2018. In 2017, nine million people watched others play D&D on Twitch.

• 6. OGL Crisis and Backlash

  ›

  In January 2023, journalist Linda Codega published a leaked copy of a proposed Open Game License update called OGL 1.1, reporting that it would affect every single licensed publisher and keep power close at hand for WotC. Competitors Kobold Press and MCDM Productions announced new open tabletop RPG systems almost immediately. Paizo announced the Open RPG Creative License, and other publishers joined its development. Subscription cancellations to D&D Beyond spiked. WotC's internal messaging reportedly characterized the fan response as an overreaction.

  In the weeks that followed, WotC reversed its OGL changes and released the System Reference Document 5.1 under an irrevocable creative commons license, CC-BY-4.0. A Washington Post analysis described the episode as an irreversible act of self-sabotage that squandered prestige accumulated over 20 years in a matter of weeks. In April 2023, WotC sent agents from the Pinkerton detective agency to the home of a Magic: The Gathering YouTuber, demanding he destroy cards from an unreleased set he had been accidentally sent and threatening a $200,000 fine and imprisonment. The response was a player boycott. In December 2023, Hasbro announced layoffs of 1,100 employees across all divisions, representing 20 percent of its entire workforce.

• 7. Studios, Sigil, and What Remains

  ›

  WotC built a network of game studios across North America through the 2010s and early 2020s. Archetype Entertainment opened in Austin, Texas, in April 2019, led by gaming veteran James Ohlen. Skeleton Key, focused on AAA games and headed by Christian Dailey, formerly of BioWare, opened in Austin in July 2022. Atomic Arcade opened in Raleigh, North Carolina, in September 2021. In April 2022, Hasbro acquired the digital toolset D&D Beyond from Fandom and transferred it to WotC.

  The 3D virtual tabletop simulator Sigil launched as part of D&D Beyond in March 2025. Later that same month, approximately 90 percent of the development team was laid off. Senior vice president Dan Rawson stated in an internal communication that aspirations for Sigil as a large standalone game would not be realized. The following month, Creative Director Chris Perkins and Game Director Jeremy Crawford, both described as lead designers of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition who had been with the D&D design team for decades, announced their departures from the company.