D&D Beyond to be acquired by Wizards of the Coast in $146 million deal
- ByStartupStory | April 16, 2022
The role-playing game’s popular digital suite of tools, D&D Beyond, will buy the parent company of Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast. The news was announced this week by the company in a press release, disclosing that it would buy D&D Beyond in a $146.3 million cash deal from current owner Fandom. A subsidiary of toy-maker Hasbro is Wizards of the Coast, which bought the company in 1999.
Fan sites for popular titles hosted by Fandom across movies, games and TV, bought D&D Beyond and in 2017 brought back the rest of the company’s media assets from game mod and community tool Curse, which was in the process of being absorbed with Twitch into a deal.
A digital game companion, D&D Beyond, that’s ubiquitous enough in the scene that you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that Wizards already owned it. As a sort of digital Swiss Army knife for D&D players, has been served by the company’s website and app, offering everything from character creation and encounter building to digital dice. The app, alongside basic free access, already boasts more than 10 million users, which offers paid subscription tiers.
With the latter hosting exclusive digital access to all of the official D&D source books, Wizards and D&D Beyond already collaborated closely, prior to the deal. Among players reluctant to re-buy a digital copy of a physical book they already own, this arrangement has long been a source of consternation, and with paper source books could be in the cards with the acquisition, some are hopeful that pairing digital access.
Follow Startup Story
Related Posts
