Wizards of the Coast revealed today that October’s controversial The Walking Dead Secret Lair drop is currently its best-selling drop ever.
Don’t miss our coverage of today’s other Secret Lair news: The Foglio Secret Lair, Ultimate Edition 2, and a preview of five drops coming in 2021.
The drop “was our best selling Secret Lair drop to date,” Product Architect Mark Heggen said on the Weekly MTG stream. Not only that, but it brought in “the most new customers to Secret Lair ever,” he continued, as well as “the most new-to-Magic customers of all time for a Secret Lair drop. And we know that we reached […] many many players [for whom] these were their first Magic cards. These were the first Magic cards that they ever owned and that this was their invitation [into the game].”
“I don’t want to understate how powerful this release was for us […] in terms of growing Magic and welcoming a new crowd of people in to become tomorrow’s Magic players,” he said.
The Secret Lair x The Walking Dead drop was sold from October 4 to October 12, 2020 in order to coincide with the debut of the The Walking Dead: World Beyond, a new spinoff series based on the massively popular The Walking Dead franchise. It contained five mechanically unique cards based around five characters from the show—Daryl, Glenn, Michonne, Negan, and Rick—for $49.99.
Many Magic players reacted negatively to the drop’s contents due to the fact that the cards were mechanically unique, meaning that the cards had rules and stats that can’t be found elsewhere, and that those cards could only be acquired by buying a limited-time-only promotional product.
Heggen also addressed the controversy surrounding the drop. “We know it was not popular with everyone. We know that some people were not fans of that test,” he acknowledged. “We don’t dismiss any of it, it’s all important and it’s all going to help drive what we do in the future.”
He didn’t have any announcements to make about future partnerships with external IPs, but said that “we will continue to try experiments in that space.”
“We saw some very promising, very exciting results [with The Walking Dead drop] and we’re going to continue to figure out what [future partnerships] can continue to get some of the upside we saw while also respecting the fact that we hear full well that this was not ideal for everyone,” he concluded.