Hasbro Confirms New Unannounced Dungeons & Dragons Video Game in Development

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks has confirmed that an in-house studio is developing an unannounced Dungeons & Dragons video game. In a feature posted today on Bloomberg News, Cocks stated that Hasbro was actively developing a Dungeons & Dragons video game via one of its in-house studios. No further details were provided about the video game, nor was any timeline given about its release. Hasbro plans to release one to two video games a year by 2026, not including third party licensed games.

Hasbro is actively pivoting into a video game developer, having purchased or created several in-house studios in recent years. One of the most high-profile ventures is Exodus, a sci-fi RPG created by several BioWare veterans. A GI Joe video game focused on Snake-Eyes is also in development at a Hasbro-owned studio.

Hasbro is also actively working with several third party studios on new D&D video games. Gameloft, the maker of Disney Dreamlight Valley, is making a survival-life sim set in the Forgotten Realms, while Starbreeze Entertainment is also actively working on a D&D video game. Hasbro also cancelled several video game projects, including several Dungeons & Dragons-themed games back in 2023 as part of a strategic realignment.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Are the Horizon (Zero Dawn, Forbidden West) games an RPG?

No.

They're action-adventure games. Like most AAA (and many indie) games today they have RPG elements, but limited ones. That's not just me saying that - the devs involved also say that, as do reviewers etc.

They're judged in a different way to RPGs - though good action adventure games are another genre with a long tail (but even mediocre RPGs have a long tail, whereas mediocre action-adventure games vanish without a trace).

Same with BG 1 and 2, all of the old Gold Box games. The details of how you proceed through the linear story are left up to you until you come to the boxed text or cut scene.

Absolutely right, but if you put them out today as new CRPGs like that, people would be confused and angry.

Very few games actually have a truly significant number of possible branches.

What exactly does this mean? There are so many qualifiers involved that, with respect, I don't this sentence actually has meaning. What standards are you judging from exactly? What counts as "truly significant"? What's "possible" doing there?

I mean, BG 3 is amazing but it also took, what 6 years of development that really stretched into 8 with all the patches and modifications? At a certain point the long tail doesn't pay for the massive investment of time, if not manpower.

Oh yes it does. Time and manpower are interchangeable here - they're money. The main dev cost for all videogames is the staff, the developers - it's the vast majority of the cost (often over 90%) every time with AAA games.

That's what you're apparently not getting. It pays for itself many times over. BG3's revenue is probably well north of $1bn by now, given it had sold 15m copies in March. Its development costs, for all those years, was $100m.

Do you see the profit margin there? It's insane, even if we factor in tens of millions of advertising (which it didn't actually have) and the limited number of boxed copies it sold being less profitable. You can do the math on how long it would have needed to be in dev to not making money, even with Steam taking 30% of a lot of that revenue and WotC taking an estimated 5-10% (probably 8% based on what we know). It would be decades.

And my brother in Nergal, that's in less than 1.5 years! And the game is still selling. It'll still be selling next, and the year after that. It's probably already past 20m, and may well get past 25m without even having a big price cut (the deepest cut it's had was 20% off, for a week, quite recently, which rocketed it back to the top of Steam's game charts).

BG3 is the best case scenario profit-wise, pretty much. However it is also, not entirely coincidentally, the highest-effort example in terms of what the devs did to get the game made. Effort was rewarded. BG3 is pretty laser-targeted for what CRPG players actually respond to. It's not a coincidence that it has more genuine branching than most CRPGs, too (and way more fully naked elves/githyanki/vampires/druids!).

What's funny is I'm not even that keen on BG3 - it's good but Act 3 is a typical Larian "Whoops let's finish the game real quick!" deal and even Act 2 is polished but weirdly short (much more obvious on a second playthrough). It's just that it absolutely nails what CRPG fans and just a lot of gamers in general want from this kind of game.

I'm not saying this is without risk to be clear - you can screw up and put too much effort into a game, in theory, but I can't think of a single AAA CRPG or even really a story RPG where it didn't actually do at least okay compared to its budget. Like, Mass Effect Andromeda was a bit of a disaster, but as Jason Schrier reported, it only had a budget of $40m (nothing! you wouldn't even be AAA today with a budget like that! It's the same budget as 2007's ME1!), and even in initial sales, it sold 3m+ copies, which was enough to make it a financial success by EA's standards (it was up 5m later the same FY, we don't know after that). Cyberpunk 2077 was something of a car crash on launch, and cost over $400m in development and marketing costs (inclusive of the years spent on it after release, and the expansion dev/marketing costs), but it sold 13m copies instantly, and whilst it being a disaster slowed it down, it's now north of 25m, and has never gone below half price - and most of the copies sold were full price - so it was still hugely profitable for CDPR (esp. as they managed to sell north of 5m copies of its astonishingly good expansion, Phantom Liberty).

There may be a recent (say, post-2010) AAA CRPG/story RPG I'm forgetting though, which was a genuine flop. The closest I can think of is Pillars of Eternity 2, but that was very much AA, not even close to AAA. It sold appallingly and it's not clear why apart from maybe people didn't like Pillars 1, because it was a flatly better game, and a good game by basically any standards.

EDIT - And to be clear, the reason CDPR put so much effort into fixing and rehabilitating the public opinion of 2077 is that they knew it would translate directly into sales, and keep the game selling long-term

 

[Dire Bare]

Well, whether anything good will come from WotC new studios only time will tell...but the signs are shockingly positive so far. They are doing the smart things in terms of setting up new studios, getting real talent and then giving them time and money to cook. Exodus is going on 6 years of development, and there is no release date quite yet so it isn't being rushed to market. That's how good video games get made...time, talent and money. Same as BG3.

As an aside, I am currently about 1/5 through the officially licensed Exodus novel, The Archimedes Engine...and it is unhinged and delightful, it hits the right notes for "Space Opera D&D" in ways I wouldn't have thought possible before reading it. They are not pulling any punches with world building.

I'm sorry, but this response is too positive.

A true fan response is to point out how terrible this news is, despite the fact we really don't have any information to make real complaints about.

If you could revise and resubmit your response, it would be appreciated.

Totally kidding, of course!

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Wizards of today, has planted its flag in a very safe, very inoffensive, place. I would be shocked to see a CRPG direct from them that comes even close in tone, sexual content, violence, as BG3.

I'm honestly a bit surprised that WotC allowed BG3 to be so full of M-rated content, even before the shift towards becoming more inoffensive. If I have one criticism of BG3 it's that it can sometimes feel tryhard edgy (especially the Dark Urge storyline).

 

[Scribe]

I'm honestly a bit surprised that WotC allowed BG3 to be so full of M-rated content, even before the shift towards becoming more inoffensive. If I have one criticism of BG3 it's that it can sometimes feel tryhard edgy (especially the Dark Urge storyline).

Oh its way over the top, but thats the funny part to me. The people spoke, and it was one of if not the greatest games of all time. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, my entire life its been know that edgy and sexy sells. Was BG3 great outside of those elements? Sure, but did they hurt the product? Absolutely not.

I havent played the Dark Urge, my laptop didnt handle the back 3rd of the game well at all, but I'm sure you could drop it straight into the 90's and it would fit right in.

 

[Oofta]

No.

They're action-adventure games. Like most AAA (and many indie) games today they have RPG elements, but limited ones. That's not just me saying that - the devs involved also say that, as do reviewers etc.

They're judged in a different way to RPGs - though good action adventure games are another genre with a long tail (but even mediocre RPGs have a long tail, whereas mediocre action-adventure games vanish without a trace).

Absolutely right, but if you put them out today as new CRPGs like that, people would be confused and angry.

What exactly does this mean? There are so many qualifiers involved that, with respect, I don't this sentence actually has meaning. What standards are you judging from exactly? What counts as "truly significant"? What's "possible" doing there?

Oh yes it does. Time and manpower are interchangeable here - they're money. The main dev cost for all videogames is the staff, the developers - it's the vast majority of the cost (often over 90%) every time with AAA games.

That's what you're apparently not getting. It pays for itself many times over. BG3's revenue is probably well north of $1bn by now, given it had sold 15m copies in March. Its development costs, for all those years, was $100m.

Do you see the profit margin there? It's insane, even if we factor in tens of millions of advertising (which it didn't actually have) and the limited number of boxed copies it sold being less profitable. You can do the math on how long it would have needed to be in dev to not making money, even with Steam taking 30% of a lot of that revenue and WotC taking an estimated 5-10% (probably 8% based on what we know). It would be decades.

And my brother in Nergal, that's in less than 1.5 years! And the game is still selling. It'll still be selling next, and the year after that. It's probably already past 20m, and may well get past 25m without even having a big price cut (the deepest cut it's had was 20% off, for a week, quite recently, which rocketed it back to the top of Steam's game charts).

BG3 is the best case scenario profit-wise, pretty much. However it is also, not entirely coincidentally, the highest-effort example in terms of what the devs did to get the game made. Effort was rewarded. BG3 is pretty laser-targeted for what CRPG players actually respond to. It's not a coincidence that it has more genuine branching than most CRPGs, too (and way more fully naked elves/githyanki/vampires/druids!).

What's funny is I'm not even that keen on BG3 - it's good but Act 3 is a typical Larian "Whoops let's finish the game real quick!" deal and even Act 2 is polished but weirdly short (much more obvious on a second playthrough). It's just that it absolutely nails what CRPG fans and just a lot of gamers in general want from this kind of game.

I'm not saying this is without risk to be clear - you can screw up and put too much effort into a game, in theory, but I can't think of a single AAA CRPG or even really a story RPG where it didn't actually do at least okay compared to its budget. Like, Mass Effect Andromeda was a bit of a disaster, but as Jason Schrier reported, it only had a budget of $40m (nothing! you wouldn't even be AAA today with a budget like that! It's the same budget as 2007's ME1!), and even in initial sales, it sold 3m+ copies, which was enough to make it a financial success by EA's standards (it was up 5m later the same FY, we don't know after that). Cyberpunk 2077 was something of a car crash on launch, and cost over $400m in development and marketing costs (inclusive of the years spent on it after release, and the expansion dev/marketing costs), but it sold 13m copies instantly, and whilst it being a disaster slowed it down, it's now north of 25m, and has never gone below half price - and most of the copies sold were full price - so it was still hugely profitable for CDPR (esp. as they managed to sell north of 5m copies of its astonishingly good expansion, Phantom Liberty).

There may be a recent (say, post-2010) AAA CRPG/story RPG I'm forgetting though, which was a genuine flop. The closest I can think of is Pillars of Eternity 2, but that was very much AA, not even close to AAA. It sold appallingly and it's not clear why apart from maybe people didn't like Pillars 1, because it was a flatly better game, and a good game by basically any standards.

EDIT - And to be clear, the reason CDPR put so much effort into fixing and rehabilitating the public opinion of 2077 is that they knew it would translate directly into sales, and keep the game selling long-term

I think BG 3 was a moonshot that had far more options than most games that happened to work. I'm not convinced it will ever be replicated at that level. Cyberpunk 2077 is a decent example, a decent number of choices but ultimately what, 4 or so different endings?

Many games fail. I also don't know that I agree with your definition of what makes a CRPG but I'm not sure it matters. A well made action adventure D&D game would likely get my money.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Cyberpunk 2077 is a decent example, a decent number of choices but ultimately what, 4 or so different endings?

Cyberpunk 2077 has some of the most diverse and best-done set of endings of like, any game that's ever existed. Like, you can end up with completely different stuff going on at the end, wildly so, and there's a load of varied epilogue messages and stuff. I won't spoiler any of it here, but it's 6 endings from the main game and 1 which requires Phantom Liberty (which is either the most depressing or most optimistic one depending on how you feel about it!), for a total of 7.

I cannot think of any game that really beats Cyberpunk 2077 for endings except maybe Fallout: New Vegas?

So if you're putting Cyberpunk 2077 as "barely good enough" for endings, I feel like maybe the bar is a bit high! Cyberpunk also has a lot of choices which make pretty big differences, and can lock out or change big sections of the game - a lot of characters you probably care about will live or die or have their lives changed because of your choices. This is despite a somewhat linear story and V being a pretty fixed person (the initial origins make some difference, but not as much as one might hope).

Many games fail.

Yeah, but not many AAA RPGs or CRPGs fail to make their money back, even kind of mediocre ones like MEA or The Outer Worlds tend to. AA ones do fail with some regularity, which is partly why more are pushing into AAA. Obsidian have traditionally made AA RPGs, but Avowed and upcoming The Outer Worlds 2 are clearly and intentionally in the AAA space.

I also don't know that I agree with your definition of what makes a CRPG but I'm not sure it matters.

Yeah - no definition is perfect for sure, and there's a lot of "I know it when I see it".

A well made action adventure D&D game would likely get my money.

Yes I think a good D&D-themed action-adventure game could be very successful - the issue it would face is that unless you had several possible characters with different classes (not necessarily all twelve, but like, probably at least three or four), you'd get a lot of potential customer pushback (unfairly, you might argue, but expectations are expectations, reasonable or not!).

Certainly there are a lot of games which absolutely stand on the junction of "action-adventure" and "RPG" - The Dark Souls/Elden Ring games lean slightly more RPG but with a lot of action-adventure DNA, whereas the Dragon's Dogma games lean slightly more action-adventure (and Dragon's Dogma 1 has some incredible "AD&D 2nd Edition" vibes for sure). In the West, Mass Effect wasn't really action-adventure but was at the juxtaposition of 3rd person shooter (think Gears of War or similar) and RPG, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard is primarily an RPG but also has clear action-adventure leanings. Many games that are action-adventure also have quite RPG-ish progression systems - sometimes to their detriment - I'd argue Shadow of War, the sequel to Shadow of Mordor, was worse because it got more "RPG elements", but having some clearly enhanced both games.

(The main bar to D&D action-adventure games getting made is really the question of "Why licence from WotC who will demand a revenue share and want oversight and veto power over your lore/story/etc. when you could just use generic D&D-esque tropes for free and with no interference?". Hence you get deeply D&D-inspired games which aren't D&D.)

 

[Oofta]

Cyberpunk 2077 has some of the most diverse and best-done set of endings of like, any game that's ever existed. Like, you can end up with completely different stuff going on at the end, wildly so, and there's a load of varied epilogue messages and stuff. I won't spoiler any of it here, but it's 6 endings from the main game and 1 which requires Phantom Liberty (which is either the most depressing or most optimistic one depending on how you feel about it!), for a total of 7.

I cannot think of any game that really beats Cyberpunk 2077 for endings except maybe Fallout: New Vegas?

So if you're putting Cyberpunk 2077 as "barely good enough" for endings, I feel like maybe the bar is a bit high! Cyberpunk also has a lot of choices which make pretty big differences, and can lock out or change big sections of the game - a lot of characters you probably care about will live or die or have their lives changed because of your choices. This is despite a somewhat linear story and V being a pretty fixed person (the initial origins make some difference, but not as much as one might hope).


Yeah, but not many AAA RPGs or CRPGs fail to make their money back, even kind of mediocre ones like MEA or The Outer Worlds tend to. AA ones do fail with some regularity, which is partly why more are pushing into AAA. Obsidian have traditionally made AA RPGs, but Avowed and upcoming The Outer Worlds 2 are clearly and intentionally in the AAA space.


Yeah - no definition is perfect for sure, and there's a lot of "I know it when I see it".


Yes I think a good D&D-themed action-adventure game could be very successful - the issue it would face is that unless you had several possible characters with different classes (not necessarily all twelve, but like, probably at least three or four), you'd get a lot of potential customer pushback (unfairly, you might argue, but expectations are expectations, reasonable or not!).

Certainly there are a lot of games which absolutely stand on the junction of "action-adventure" and "RPG" - The Dark Souls/Elden Ring games lean slightly more RPG but with a lot of action-adventure DNA, whereas the Dragon's Dogma games lean slightly more action-adventure (and Dragon's Dogma 1 has some incredible "AD&D 2nd Edition" vibes for sure). In the West, Mass Effect wasn't really action-adventure but was at the juxtaposition of 3rd person shooter (think Gears of War or similar) and RPG, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard is primarily an RPG but also has clear action-adventure leanings. Many games that are action-adventure also have quite RPG-ish progression systems - sometimes to their detriment - I'd argue Shadow of War, the sequel to Shadow of Mordor, was worse because it got more "RPG elements", but having some clearly enhanced both games.

(The main bar to D&D action-adventure games getting made is really the question of "Why licence from WotC who will demand a revenue share and want oversight and veto power over your lore/story/etc. when you could just use generic D&D-esque tropes for free and with no interference?". Hence you get deeply D&D-inspired games which aren't D&D.)

Compared to the approximately 17,000 endings for BG 3, 6 endings for Cyberpunk 2077 is nothing.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Compared to the approximately 17,000 endings for BG 3, 6 endings for Cyberpunk 2077 is nothing.

BG3 is counting minor variations, Cyberpunk ain’t.

But I felt the real issue was that Cyberpunk ending were dull and downbeat. I would rather have one good ending than dozens of dull or depressing ones!

BG3 does have its Act 2 ending in which the DM goes off in a huff.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Compared to the approximately 17,000 endings for BG 3, 6 endings for Cyberpunk 2077 is nothing.

BG3 doesn't have 17000 endings, it has 17000 theoretical "ending variations". If we do the same math on Cyberpunk 2077, it's going to be in the thousands too, though I don't know how high.

If we use the same metric as Cyberpunk 2077, BG3 has 9 endings, but the period up to most of those was much more similar than the one in 2077 until the most recent major patch. There's also the "lol credits roll" """ending""" you can get in Act 2!

BG3 is also of note because when it released, it was pretty crap, ending-wise, having essentially what, technically 7 to 9 (I forget the exact number), but it had some (the evils ones especially) had very little content, and there was no real epilogue, just a few post-"ending" scenes, which were jumbled, could contradict each other, sometimes didn't play for no apparent reason, and didn't have proper or sensical endings for most companions. It was close to ME3 launch endings levels of bad at launch. However, Larian have worked pretty hard to improve the situation, first fixing up the post-ending stuff so it actually worked, and adding more/better stuff (particularly for Karlach), then adding an entire proper "epilogue" section, which was a pretty huge upgrade, then adding tons more content to the more evil endings which previously had very little. I guess in my head I still think of how it was at launch so I rate it as worse than it actually is now.

But I felt the real issue was that Cyberpunk ending were dull and downbeat. I would rather have one good ending than dozens of dull or depressing ones!

I don't think "dull and downbeat" is how many people would summarize the Cyberpunk endings, except maybe the Phantom Liberty ending (but as noted, that's a matter of perspective, it's also arguably the most optimistic). Most of the endings are imho operatic and cool, and absolutely not "dull". Downbeat? I dunno, it depends on what you want - it's a cyberpunk game and very much in tune with the genre in the endings, all of which are at best "bittersweet" (and some arguably tragic/tragedy). If "bittersweet" is downbeat, then sure they all are. But dull? No way man. Again except the Phantom Liberty one, but I won't talk about that more lest I spoil something.

 

[Oofta]

Good grief. The 17,000 endings was a joke. I have no idea how many "real" endings it had.

To me it seems like it basically had 2 with variations on the theme with at least one way of ending the game early. But I'd also say Cyberpunk only really had a couple of significant endings for the same reasons. Better than Mass Effect which promised all your work across 3 games would have dramatic impact and there was effectively 1 ending.