Dan Ayoub, head of Dungeons & Dragons for just over a year, has been named President of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Digital Games. He now oversees D&D and Magic: The Gathering along with Hasbro’s digital games, including Warlock and Exodus. Ayoub joined Wizards in 2022 to lead its digital studios and rose to senior vice president of digital games before taking over D&D.
His year at D&D was spent on damage control. “Look, you know, I mean, I’ve been here a little over a year, so I can say, yeah, we we we lost some trust, right? Over the years for for a lot of reasons.” Ayoub has described the effort as an apology tour. On the 2023 attempt to rescind the Open Gaming License, he said: “In some cases, it’s caused damage we are still trying to fix today.”
The apology has come with product. At Gen Con 2026, Wizards announced a new edition of Dark Sun for 2027, with Dark Sun: Edge of Oblivion and Dark Sun: Blood and Power, the first D&D sourcebooks to carry a shrink-wrapped Mature Content Warning. Greyhawk gets a new adventure, Crown of the Witch Queen. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman are writing the first Dragonlance tabletop book in more than 20 years.
Wizards’ earlier return trips to old settings ran into trouble. Spelljammer came back in 2022, and Wizards deleted the new Hadozee backstory from every digital edition after critics compared it to the Tuskegee study. The company’s statement read: “We failed you, our players and our fans, and we are truly sorry.” In February 2023, D&D executive producer Kyle Brink told YouTuber Bob World Builder that “the Dark Sun setting is problematic in a lot of ways.” Wizards now plans to sell that setting under a warning label.
Ayoub takes the job after a shake-up at the top. John Hight, Wizards president for about two years and a former World of Warcraft vice president, left the post Sept. 1. A late-July SEC filing disclosed that he would move into a one-year advisory role under a Transitional Advisory Services Agreement. Hasbro’s second-quarter report wrote down $56 million in cancelled assets, and Wizards revealed that several planned video games had been cancelled. A Wizards spokesperson said, “There is no change to the strength of the Wizards business.” While Wizards searched for a successor, its leadership team reported to Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, who ran Wizards from 2016 to 2022.
Much about Hight’s exit remains unconfirmed. Wizards has not said why he left. It has not named the cancelled games or said whether they connect to his departure. No replacement for Ayoub’s D&D role has been announced.
Ayoub also steps into a labor fight. The United Wizards of the Coast Union (UWOTC-CWA) formed earlier this year around the Magic: The Gathering Arena team, and Wizards declined to recognize it voluntarily. The company then sent employees letters encouraging them not to proceed with the vote, saying current benefits were “on the bargaining table for both parties to negotiate.” The D&D team and Studio X, the Magic creative staff, have now moved to join. Wizards again declined to recognize the union voluntarily, said it will respect the election results, and added: “Wizards is not neutral on the question of unionization.”
That puts Ayoub at the top of a company opposing a union drive that includes the D&D team he just led. Wizards deleted the Hadozee lore in 2022 and told fans it had failed them, and Dark Sun now returns with a warning label. Does Ayoub’s apology tour mean the old settings come back as written, or does the 2022 playbook run again?
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