Elon Musk is at it again, spending his hundreds of billions for all to see – this time hinting at acquiring yet another company, because apparently putting a social media platform in the ground isn’t enough.
On November 28, just days after his rant Dungeons and Dragons (D&D)‘s new book ‘destroys’ its original creator, Musk casually tweeted“How much does Hasbro cost?” in response to a post on X about the latest drama in the world of role-playing games. It was enough to spark speculation that Musk might actually want to buy Hasbro, the company that owns it D&D.
The saga began on November 22, when Musk publicly lashed out at Jason Tondro, a senior D&D designer at Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of Hasbro). Tondro criticized the 1974 original in a recent book D&D rules against using “insensitive and derogatory language” toward Black people, Indigenous people, women, and anyone who was not a “middle-class white man.” While Tondro stopped blaming directly D&D co-creator Gary Gygax, he noted that the language came directly from Gygax’s original concepts. This criticism was apparently too much for Musk, who declared“No one, and I mean no one, should trash E. Gary Gygax and the geniuses who created Dungeons & Dragons. May they burn in hell.”
Musk’s latest outburst was sparked by a Facebook comment in which Tondro dismissed concerns about backlash from “grognards” — a term used affectionately (or sometimes not) to describe fans of old-school music. D&D. Naturally, Musk and his loyal fan base interpreted this as a direct attack, further fueling the billionaire’s self-proclaimed crusade against “woke culture.” Now Musk seems to think that buying Hasbro would be the ultimate mic drop, presumably for steering D&D back to 1974.
Dude got bullied for being an annoying nerd and now he wants to single-handedly ruin fun nerd culture
— inhuman (@inhuman) November 28, 2024
While Musk’s comments thrilled some fans of his “anti-woke” rhetoric, others were far less enthusiastic. “Dude got bullied for being an annoying nerd and now he wants to single-handedly ruin fun nerd culture,” one user wrote on X. Another said: ‘This is the worst news ever. He would DEFINITELY screw it up.”
Given Musk’s track record on acquisitions, it’s not hard to see why many fans are skeptical that he could keep Hasbro running smoothly if he bought it. After all, his acquisition of Twitter (now X) has been a downward spiral, reportedly with the platform Losing 80% of its value since Musk bought it for $44 billion in 2022. “Elon can’t run Twitter well, and you want him to take over Hasbro?” one person asked. Another joked: “Musk isn’t going to buy Hasbro; he only bought Twitter because he was legally forced to do so.” Not surprisingly, people are questioning Musk’s ability to run Hasbro without seeing its $8.9 billion valuation plummet into the abyss.
Despite the noise, there’s no indication that Hasbro is actually for sale or that Musk is making a serious move to buy it. For now, he seems more concerned about his latest venture: an AI gaming studio to “make games great again.Because if there’s one thing the gaming world needs, it’s more Musk. Or at least he thinks so.
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