Wyrmwood’s bitter medicine is proving hard for audiences to swallow

EDITOR’S NOTE: After Rascal informed Wyrmwood of the planned time of publication as a deadline for a response (making it clear that the piece would still be updated with the response, whenever it was received), Wyrm Lyfe published a 27-minute video on December 13, titled “Here We Go Again…” responding to our reporter’s questions rather than responding to us directly. The video starts with the assumption that Rascal would twist or undermine the statements Wyrmwood would send. Rascal decided to publish this article as originally written. We will address the video directly should we conclude it merits a response.

On December 6, 2024, Wyrmwood Gaming, a woodworking company best known for their flagship Modular Gaming Table and once-regular sponsor of Critical Role, posted a ten minute video on its reality show-style YouTube channel, Wyrm Lyfe, titled “We Laid Off 50% Of The Company.” The video follows CEO and co-founder Doug Costello as he walks into a large room in a warehouse where the Plant Manager has already broken the news to the remaining employees—the “survivors.” Costello makes his way across the crowd and stands at the edge of the meeting. After the Manager emphasizes that this would need to be a time where people would have to train people and work on machines they might be unfamiliar with in order to make up for the lost employees, Costello takes the floor. He explains that his “theory” that would’ve led to things being “wavy gravy” did not hold out and that meant taking a “bitter medicine” of restructuring and layoffs. As people shifted awkwardly from one foot to another in the background, Costello spoke for five more minutes, telling people that he was going to wring “every ounce of production” out of them for their own good. Then, he said, “We lost some really good people today… people that should not have had layoffs were laid off today… and I want everyone to just keep that in mind as we move forward, cause I will.” Then turning to the camera, he smiled, clapped his hands with finality and said, “Okay, that's it!” 

This was the second of three videos that the company had posted across three  consecutive days (unusual for a content channel that typically posts once or twice a week). On December 3, 2024, they published a video titled, “This Is Not What We Wanted.” It opens with Costello, stretching out his arms, yawning, and saying, “I have to restructure the company.” Then, he says, “Everybody thinks the boss is the boss because they’re called the boss. But it’s not true. The boss is the marketplace.” He explains that the company is staffed to produce $600,000 of product a week, but they only sell half of that. Inventory is piling up. Then, the video cuts to a business meeting with senior management where Costello gives a brief financial history of the company (something he also does in an earlier video, “Wyrmwood Is Taking A Turn…” which predates the layoffs by about six weeks according to time of posting). While Wyrmwood has achieved 30 million dollars in revenue per year for the last few years, Costello estimates that being halved in the next year. Then, after a discussion of profitability and cash flow, the team begins to discuss how the layoffs must happen. The HR manager proposes that it needs to be done in person, one on one—to be humane. Costello responds, “I'm fine either way. Just me talking personally, I'd almost feel more awkward and pissed off in a one-on-one setting… Fuck, there's a bunch of layoffs—like the last thing I want to do is actually go sit down and talk to the person one-on-one and all this bullshit.” (In the response video, Costello stated that around 10-20% of the employees did request a one-on-one.)