Wizards of the Coast President Steps Down

Wizards of the Coast president Cynthia Williams is leaving the company at the end of the month. An SEC filing disclosed that Cynthia Williams, the president of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming, had informed Hasbro that she was leaving the company as of April 26th. Per the SEC filing, Hasbro is conducting a process to identify her successor, "looking at both internal and external candidates." ComicBook.com has reached out to Wizards of the Coast for comment. Rascal News was the first to report on the SEC filing. 

Update: Hasbro provided the following statement to ComicBook.com: "We're excited for Cynthia to take the next step in her career and grateful for the contributions she has made in her more than two years at Wizards and Hasbro. We wish her the absolute best in her next endeavor. We have started the search for our next President of Wizards of the Coast and hope to have a successor in place soon."

Williams joined Wizards of the Coast just over two years ago, having joined Hasbro from Microsoft, where she served as the General Manager and Vice President of the Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team and helped drive the expansion of Xbox Gaming. Williams also worked for Amazon as part of their e-commerce direct-to-consumer business. Williams took over the job vacated by Chris Cocks, who became the overall CEO of Hasbro. 

Under Williams' leadership, Wizards of the Coast helped grow Hasbro's most profitable business line, with Wizards earning over $1 billion in 2023. Wizards (and Digital Gaming) saw some massive successes including the release of Baldur's Gate 3 and Monopoly Go, but also was the focus of intense scrutiny for a series of corporate missteps involving the Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering brands as well as an attempt by activist investors to spin off Wizards into a separate company, which ultimately failed. Controversies involving Wizards of the Coast in 2023 alone included an attempted change to the Open Game License (which ultimately failed), an incident in which Wizards sent Pinkerton agents to retrieve Magic: The Gathering cards obtained prior to sale date, and a botched release of the Deck of Many Things product, resulting in a rare product delay that missed the holiday window.

While head of Wizards of the Coast, Williams oversaw the subsidiary increasingly pivot towards digital formats, with Wizards adding several in-house game studios to release games under a mix of existing and new IPs and aggressively working with outside companies to license D&D games. She also helped finalize the purchase of D&D Beyond, a digital platform for Dungeons & Dragons, and looked at ways to expand the digital footprint of that game with an in-development virtual tabletop system.