Hasbro cancels D&D video game by Giant Skull

Hasbro has cancelled development of a Dungeons & Dragons video game led by Stig Asmussen, the director of the Star Wars: Fallen Order games. Bloomberg News reports that the game, under development from Asmussen’s Giant Skull studio, was cancelled less than a year after it was first announced. Per Bloomberg, Wizards opted not to “pursue an early concept” from Giant Skull, but was still taking pitches from the developer. There are apparently no hard feelings about the cancellation.

Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are ramping up development of D&D video games, following the success of Baldur’s Gate 3. However, many of these projects have been unceremoniously cancelled, with changes in direction primarily cited as the reason for the games not being finished. The next D&D video game confirmed for release is Warlock, which will release sometime in 2027.

Wizards of the Coast told Bloomberg that it decided not to "pursue an early concept" from Giant Skull, but that it's still taking pitches from the developer. Asmussen indicated that there are no hard feelings, and that "things are good" at the studio.

 

[Guest 7056707]

No game is better than a bad game

It could have been a great game tho. No way to know unless it gets made.

 

[Afroconan]

Swen said the reason they didn't want to do a DLC because they're "boring". Whatever did or did not happen at Bioware wasn't a factor.

From an interview on XDA "We are not a company that's made to create DLCs, expansions. We tried that actually, a few times. We failed every time - it's not our thing."

Someone on reddit told me it was because WotC got greedy but Larian are too smart and gracious to let that slip.

I wish I were joking.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Someone on reddit told me it was because WotC got greedy but Larian are too smart and gracious to let that slip.

I wish I were joking.

I know 'Someone'. They are a very good Redditor. I'd believe everything they said.

 

[CF07]

Swen said the reason they didn't want to do a DLC because they're "boring". Whatever did or did not happen at Bioware wasn't a factor.

That may well be but I guarantee he also thought through the business strategy, too. My point about Bioware's path isn't that Larian's following it exactly (of course they're their own company and it's 2026 not 2004), but doing BG3 pushed them into another level from where they were. This is what happened at Bioware after having hits with BG1, BG2, and KotOR. Those were licensed properties, which come with benefits (brand recognition) and costs (cost of the license and all the extra stakeholder management). By the time they got done they were big enough they could sell Mass Effect and Dragon Age on their own merits without needing the D&D or Star Wars names.

 

[Planescape]

No game is better than a bad game

Sure.... but this game barely got out of early concepts by the sound of it so it never even had a chance to start being bad or good.

Wonder what the deal is.

 

[Selas]

Yeah, seems they pitched an idea, got a deal to produce it, but when they actually came with a draft of what the game was about, Hasbro said "No thanks! That's not what we're looking for." and cancelled the deal. The fact that they're still accepting pitches from the company means that it was not cancelled with prejudice.

To be fair, I'd say this is actually responsible of Hasbro, because many a game have been green-lit on empty promises and failed to deliver (Concord, Highguard). Although not a DnD game, Exodus was green-lit and is still on the docket to release next year because the studio made a good pitch and delivered on their concept enough to convince Hasbro on the investment. As mentioned in another post, Larian themselves were turned down on their first pitch, so this is not unprecedented.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

I read the title and instead of parsing 'Giant Skull' as a company name, I imagined Hasbro working with a giant floating skull and having a business meeting to cut ties with it in a very HR-friendly way. Like there's a giant floating skull with a tie tied around the bottom in a meeting room with a bunch of execs in suits saying "... so we don't think this game is a good fit for our brand anymore. To be clear, we have been impressed with your body of work... oh I'm so sorry about that phrasing."

 

[GreyLord]

Because people need to keep having a reason to be mad at WotC. If they don't... eventually other people see their continued anger at this random company as rather silly. Especially if the best they can do is keep complaining about stuff that happened more than a decade ago and they've been unable to let it go.

Heck, that's how I look at people who still show up here to whine about 4E nowadays, LOL.

OR...and this is just an OR....

Two things can be true at the same time. One is more palatable to be accepted, while the other is more of a something kept under the table, but known to those who know...

Especially when the source of both come from the same individuals. One is more polite and political, the other is what got the ball rolling on that reason in the first place.

 

[GreyLord]

Yeah, seems they pitched an idea, got a deal to produce it, but when they actually came with a draft of what the game was about, Hasbro said "No thanks! That's not what we're looking for." and cancelled the deal. The fact that they're still accepting pitches from the company means that it was not cancelled with prejudice.

To be fair, I'd say this is actually responsible of Hasbro, because many a game have been green-lit on empty promises and failed to deliver (Concord, Highguard). Although not a DnD game, Exodus was green-lit and is still on the docket to release next year because the studio made a good pitch and delivered on their concept enough to convince Hasbro on the investment. As mentioned in another post, Larian themselves were turned down on their first pitch, so this is not unprecedented.

I have high hopes for Exodus.

Many of us on the boards probably do I expect.

 

[Umbran]

He did walk back the comments, that's for sure, but I think we need to read between the lines here.

If you are going to decide what they mean for them, do you really need them to say anything at all?