Hasbro seems to be spending big to catch D&D up to Critical Role
Hasbro spent years alienating D&D fans and creators, from the OGL disaster to layoffs and a failed virtual tabletop. Critical Role built its own hit system and a media empire in the gap. Now Hasbro is reportedly spending big on an official show to win back a crowd it drove away.
Dungeons & Dragons is the biggest tabletop role-playing game on the planet. It is also, somehow, the one playing catch-up.
That’s the weird spot Hasbro has talked itself into. The company that owns D&D is now hustling to look relevant in a corner of the hobby it basically invented, chasing an audience it spent the last few years pushing away. How it got here is a straight line of self-inflicted wounds.
How D&D burned its goodwill
Start with the big one. In 2023, a leaked draft of a new Open Game License showed Wizards of the Coast planning to gut the deal that let creators build off D&D. Royalties. The right to use fan creations without paying. Language that read like a landlord raising the rent on a house other people built.
Fans revolted. They canceled D&D Beyond subscriptions in droves, the hashtag campaigns lit up, and Wizards retreated, publicly admitting it “rolled a 1.”
It walked the license back. It didn’t walk the damage back. That was the moment a big chunk of the community stopped giving the company the benefit of the doubt, and they haven’t handed it back since.
Critical Role stopped needing Hasbro
Here’s the part that should scare Hasbro. While it was busy alienating people, the single biggest ambassador D&D ever had quietly built its own exit.
Critical Role, the voice-actor crew whose weekly D&D game turned into a media empire, launched its own tabletop system, Daggerheart, in May 2025 through its Darrington Press label. It wasn’t a side project. It was a real, polished rival that reviewers said fixed some of D&D’s oldest problems, and it sold like crazy out of the gate.
Now, credit where it’s due. Critical Role’s flagship Campaign 4 actually still runs on D&D, not Daggerheart. They didn’t torch the bridge.
They just made sure they’d never need it. Between Daggerheart, two animated shows on Amazon, and their own subscription streaming platform, Critical Role became a full entertainment company that happens to play D&D, not a D&D show. And they weren’t the only ones drifting. Acquisitions Incorporated, once a semi-official D&D showcase, packed up and moved to Daggerheart too.
When the people who sell your game to the world start building their own game, that’s a problem no earnings report fully captures.
Hasbro is now playing catch-up
Which brings us to Dungeon Masters, Wizards’ first official actual-play show, launched this spring with a cast stacked with Baldur’s Gate 3 voices and a clear target painted on the format Critical Role popularized.
The tell is the spending. Wizards is putting real marketing money behind Dungeon Masters, buying the promotion to shove it in front of as many eyeballs as possible.
That’s normal for a launch. It’s also a confession. You don’t spend like that from a position of strength. You spend like that when you’re behind and you know it, trying to buy your way into a room you used to own the keys to.
Nintendo abandoned this space years ago, let it grow up without them, and now has to rent its way back in.
(Wait, wrong company. Easy mistake to make lately.)
The alienation didn’t stop in 2023
The frustrating part for fans is that the goodwill-burning never really let up.
Wizards killed Sigil, its big virtual tabletop, in March 2025 and laid off most of the team, folding a once-hyped feature into D&D Beyond. It ran more layoffs across 2025 even as the company posted 45% revenue growth that year, which is a hard thing to explain to a fanbase watching the people who make their game get cut while the game prints money.
By April 2026, Wizards staff were moving to unionize, citing those layoffs and fears about generative AI creeping into the work. AI has been its own running trust sore, with fans repeatedly accusing the company of sneaking machine-made art into products.
Wizards keeps insisting it doesn’t use AI for D&D art or text, and honestly the denials might be true, but “we swear we’re not doing the thing you don’t trust us about” is a rough place for a brand to live.
Every one of these is defensible on a spreadsheet. Stacked together, they read as a company that treats D&D as a revenue stream to squeeze, not a community to keep.
Still the biggest game in the world
Let’s be fair, though, because “Hasbro fumbled” isn’t the same as “D&D is dying.” It isn’t. D&D is still enormous and still wildly profitable, one of the most valuable things Hasbro owns.
So the catch-up isn’t about sales. It’s about trust and culture and the entertainment lead, the stuff that made D&D cool again in the first place, and that stuff Hasbro handed to Critical Role and never got back.
Money can buy a stacked cast and a slot in your recommended feed. It can’t buy back the trust Hasbro spent, and until the company sorts that out, it’ll keep paying to chase a lead it used to hold for free.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.
Hat Tips:
Axios / Sportskeeda — the 2023 OGL 1.1 leak, the fan revolt, the D&D Beyond cancellations, and Wizards’ “rolled a 1” retreat
Wargamer / dungeonsanddragonsfan.com — Critical Role Campaign 4 staying on D&D 5E, and Daggerheart’s launch and reception
AOL / Polygon — Daggerheart’s May 2025 release, pricing, and reviews, plus Critical Role’s media empire
Variety / The Toy Book — Dungeon Masters’ launch and its positioning against Critical Role and Dimension 20
KIRO 7 / Gizmodo / The Seattle Times — the Sigil VTT shutdown and layoffs, the 45% revenue growth, and the 2026 unionization over layoffs and AI
Wargamer / PrintMTG — Wizards’ AI-art controversies and its stated no-AI policy