Boycott Hasbro For the Repeated Failures of Mythic Edition Distribution

This petition proposes a boycott of Hasbro and its subsidiary Wizards of the Coast. Signers of this petition agree to collectively attack Hasbro's profits by refusing to purchase any of its products or provide Hasbro with financial support in any other tangible manner until they begin acting in good faith and demonstrate an intent to make amends to the Magic: the Gathering community.

Between the months of October 2018 and May 2019, Hasbro released three limited edition collectible sets pertaining to one of their flagship intellectual properties, Magic: the Gathering. Each set was limited to two copies per individual, and each was made exclusively available through Hasbro’s ebay store at a predetermined time and date.

No apparent fail-safes or tools were put in place to prevent resellers from running scripts and dummy accounts to buy up massive quantities of the first Mythic Edition release, enabling them to resell it to consumers at an inflated price point. The product was sold out within 30 minutes and thousands of consumers were never able to access the purchase page; many others had their orders canceled. Hasbro publicly apologized for this fumble in a letter distributed in November 2018 to anyone who had attempted to purchase the first Mythic Edition set.

The second Mythic Edition release contained very lackluster cards; there was a direct correlation between this fact and the second set’s relative accessibility for a matter of hours.

The third and final Mythic Edition set contained the most valuable cards yet, and its release was botched even worse than that of the first set: hundreds of dummy accounts with zero feedback bought up thousands of copies of this limited product, and all quantities (12,000 in total) were exhausted within five minutes of its release. Once again, the vast majority of consumers were unable to load the purchase page or had their orders revoked afterward. Had Hasbro instituted any means of screening dummy ebay accounts (such as filtering out buyers with zero feedback—a trivial task even for the average user), all 12,000 sets still would have sold out within a matter of hours, with the majority of copies going into the hands of end consumers.

In retrospect Hasbro's original apology rings hollow. In light of these events and in addition to multiple instances not detailed in this petition, Hasbro has demonstrated that they do not care about enabling end consumers or protecting them from price-gouging. This is not the behavior of a company that values ethics. These are not the practices of a company that deserves your hard-earned money; these are the practices of a company that will chase a dollar by any means they deem necessary until consumer confidence is eroded. We can wait for that time to arrive, or we can act on what we believe is better for ourselves and the community.

Remember: Hasbro does not see profits for any trading cards purchased on the secondary market. You can continue to shop online or support your local game store by purchasing single cards from them rather than sealed products such as booster packs or per-constructed decks. You can continue to attend events with the exception of those that entail sealed product such as drafts or release events for upcoming sets. You can continue to enjoy Magic: the Gathering without profiting the company that seems intent to milk this game dry without regards to its long-term health or to the consumers that make Wizards’ and Hasbro’s success possible. By acting together we can guide this game in a direction that benefits everyone. Thank you for your consideration.