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]

However I will say that Larian falls into the "evil is more cool and interesting" side of things than I personally care for. I'm not particularly religious or prudish, it's just that I think good can be just as cool and interesting, if not more so.

Yeah this seems to be one of Larian's permanent flaws, and it 100% is to do with Swen, because they didn't even have the same lead writers this time as with previous games, they two entirely new people, and basically whenever the writing was discussed in sit-down video things Larian did, Swen would be swooning about some utterly psychotic blood-drenched murder-option and going on about how he loved this kind of thing, and to be fair, the leadiest lead writer, even though he's new, did seem to be into it also, though I'm not sure how much of that is "I'd like to keep my job".

DOS1 and DOS2 are absolutely full of insane murder-options and most of the playable origin characters in DOS2, as written, are pretty evil or at least creepy/dark. Specifically:

Sebille - Tortured and scarred slave who has lost her mind somewhat and intends to torture and murder her enemies, and has like special "extra-nasty" dialogue options.
Red Prince - Failed Emperor of the racial supremacist and evil Lizardperson empire - he got exiled for banging demons, and likes to tell people how superior he is.
Ifan Ben-Mezd - Mercenary murderer with a dark backstory - sometimes get specifically (and correctly) called out as a murderer by NPCs.
Lohse - Demon-possessed and has barely managed to avoid doing a bunch of murders - but I guess she's not personally evil at least?
Beast - Uhhhh I can't remember who this is lol. He's a dwarf apparently? I guess I missed him.
Fane - An undead guy who can cut off people's faces and wear them. He is the most sane and nice origin.

DOS2 in general is an incredible "crapsack world" trope setting, in that virtually everyone you meet is either outright evil or a victim, or sometimes both.

It's worth noting that when BG3 first launched into Early Access, it was pretty much the same way. All the companions/origins were significantly nastier than they later became (yes even Gale, who was also less joke-y - Karlach wasn't a companion then), and many of the situations in the launch Early Access were only given lose/lose ways to resolve them (or just like "you can be brutal, greedy, or mean-spirited, which do you prefer?").

This got a ton of negative feedback, though, from the EA players, and to their credit, once it had been put to them that they were just replicating DOS2, that all the origin characters were unlikeable, and that this was D&D, and the Forgotten Realms, not the ghastly Divinity setting, so heroism needed to be allowed, they started altering course pretty rapidly. There's still a rather excessive amount of grimdark-ery left in BG3, but at least you can actually play a heroic character, which you literally could not at EA launch.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

It's selling well and getting good reviews. May we all fail so spectacularly.

Veilguard has apparently sold about a million copies, which sounds good until you consider it is a game that likely cost several hundred million dollars to make. At this point it doesn't seem like it's going to come close to earning back its budget.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Veilguard has apparently sold about a million copies

This is lower than the figures I've seen suggested, but no-one knows exactly.

you consider it is a game that likely cost several hundred million dollars to make

This is absolutely insane nonsense that someone has sold you.

Very few AAA games cost over $100m, let alone "several hundred million dollars". Where on earth did you get this bit of nonsense from? Who told you this? The earliest post I can see claiming this is a guy with no sources claiming it on the Steam forums, and then people are just believing this. No reputable source has reported it, so it seems to be that some idiot made it up as part of the whole anti-woke thing, and then people like you just believed it and didn't check.

That you are claiming this really calls your first figure into question as well.

 

[Oofta]

Most Veilgard development cost estimates are at least $250 million, it's sold a million copies. It took 10 years to develop and was rebooted twice. It's looking like a major loss, like several other AAA games lately.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Most Veilgard development cost estimates are at least $250 million

No.

No reputable source has reported any such thing. This is a made-up nonsense figure. Frankly, it's completely impossible, given the development team size.

You're literally believing numbers Steam forum members made up by pulling out of their arse. You should genuinely be embarrassed to repeat something like that.

 

[Oofta]

No.

No reputable source has reported any such thing. This is a made-up nonsense figure. Frankly, it's completely impossible, given the development team size.

You're literally believing numbers Steam forum members made up by pulling out of their arse. You should genuinely be embarrassed to repeat something like that.

The lowest estimate I could find was $120 million, but the article also states that the $200-250 is also not unreasonable. I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. Is Dragon Age: The Veilguard one of the biggest gaming flops of the year?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The lowest estimate I could find was $120 million, but the article also states that the $200-250 is also not unreasonable. I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. Is Dragon Age: The Veilguard one of the biggest gaming flops of the year?

Find me an actual journalist reporting anything of the sort.

Go on.

I'll wait.

What you've linked there is not reporting. And to be fair to it it's not purporting to be reporting!

It's pure speculation - as it admits! There is literally nothing in that article that isn't speculation. It's literally guesswork x guesswork x guesswork and it's not even well-informed guesswork.

Furthermore, even there the actual development budget they estimate is $80m! Then they guess, using the 50% guess which I mentioned earlier in the discussion of Arcane's budget, for marketing - but game marketing varies far more widely than movie and TV marketing - and the article admits they have absolutely no idea.

But don't misrepresent speculation with absolute no facts as reporting. It's not the wildest possible speculation, but it is pure speculation.

And no, the article does not state $250m is reasonable, why say that when it's in the article? Did you think I wouldn't read it? What the article says is $200m isn't entirely impossible as the make and market figure - but their own math doesn't support that - Veilguard would have needed to have had a much, much larger team to have cost that much. That's like speculating that Destiny 2 cost over $1bn to make and market, which people did do, but that turned out to be a bunch of nonsense.

The article also contains at least one misrepresentation, too - it says that being "woke" didn't hurt BG3 - it didn't in the end, but not for lack of trying. Many of the exact same people who attacked DAV attacked BG3 for being "woke" and kept saying it would be flop. I discussed this here just a week or so ago, maybe even more recently. Many people made videos saying that BG3 was both "woke" and featured "bestiality", and no, they weren't joking, they were serious. As soon as it became obvious BG3 was going absolutely huge despite their attacks, and that this was going to be embarrassing for them, maybe lose them subscribers and clicks, they started frantically deleting those videos (and Tweets and so on), and either pretending they never said it, or claiming that they were just speculating and actually BG3 isn't "woke" because it does [insert stuff they call 'woke'] in a cool way maaaaaan.

 

[Umbran]

You should genuinely be embarrassed to repeat something like that.

Mod Note:
Ask yourself: Do you want to make this personal, or do you want to stay in the discussion?

 

[Oofta]

Find me an actual journalist reporting anything of the sort.

Go on.

I'll wait.

What you've linked there is not reporting. And to be fair to it it's not purporting to be reporting!

It's pure speculation - as it admits! There is literally nothing in that article that isn't speculation. It's literally guesswork x guesswork x guesswork and it's not even well-informed guesswork.

Furthermore, even there the actual development budget they estimate is $80m! Then they guess, using the 50% guess which I mentioned earlier in the discussion of Arcane's budget, for marketing - but game marketing varies far more widely than movie and TV marketing - and the article admits they have absolutely no idea.

But don't misrepresent speculation with absolute no facts as reporting. It's not the wildest possible speculation, but it is pure speculation.

And no, the article does not state $250m is reasonable, why say that when it's in the article? Did you think I wouldn't read it? What the article says is $200m isn't entirely impossible as the make and market figure - but their own math doesn't support that - Veilguard would have needed to have had a much, much larger team to have cost that much. That's like speculating that Destiny 2 cost over $1bn to make and market, which people did do, but that turned out to be a bunch of nonsense.

The article also contains at least one misrepresentation, too - it says that being "woke" didn't hurt BG3 - it didn't in the end, but not for lack of trying. Many of the exact same people who attacked DAV attacked BG3 for being "woke" and kept saying it would be flop. I discussed this here just a week or so ago, maybe even more recently. Many people made videos saying that BG3 was both "woke" and featured "bestiality", and no, they weren't joking, they were serious. As soon as it became obvious BG3 was going absolutely huge despite their attacks, and that this was going to be embarrassing for them, maybe lose them subscribers and clicks, they started frantically deleting those videos (and Tweets and so on), and either pretending they never said it, or claiming that they were just speculating and actually BG3 isn't "woke" because it does [insert stuff they call 'woke'] in a cool way maaaaaan.

The game is not selling well even if it "only" cost $140 million, which was the minimum estimate.

I'm done arguing. Feel free to quote an actual reporter saying it cost far less or that it is selling far more than reported.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm done arguing. Feel free to quote an actual reporter saying it cost far less or that it is selling far more than reported.

Fine re: not arguing. I will let you, when one reports on it - because I tend to prefer facts over complete and total speculation. Jason Schrier is highly likely to have some actual figures within a year. He's very good at extracting figures from BioWare staff.

I presume the $140m is a typo, given the actual figure the article guesses is about $120m to make and market (despite the lurid headline).

Further, I've tried to replicate their math re: sales and looked at their links when I went to look again, and I can't get the copies sold anywhere near as low - either there was an insane surge in sales since this was published 2 days ago, which doesn't seem plausible, or these figures are from quite further back than the article suggests, or they messed up. If we look at the actual sources they say they averaged the sales figures from they don't support their own math. They say they got an average 510k PC sales (by which they seem to mean Steam sales) - but the lowest figure of those sites they "averaged" for Steam sales is an estimated 636k (with a 50% margin of error!) and the only other site which has a sales guess at all has 753k Steam sales (which no confidence margin listed). The third site they say they used - Playtracker - doesn't have estimated Steam sales at all - it's unclear why they'd include that - I guess they didn't read carefully and confused the "players" there with "sales" - it's not the same thing. Playtracker doesn't estimate sales.

So if we average the actual sales estimates, we increase the baseline Steam sales guess (which they base literally everything else on - like I said this was guesswork x guesswork x guesswork), we're not looking at a 510k base, we're looking at a 695k base - that's nearly 40% higher. Then all the other sales figures go up by the same amount (see above), and suddenly we're looking at something rather less disastrous for the initial sales of an RPG.

I don't need you to respond to this, but I noticed the discrepancy and thought it was worth commenting on. I do commend one element of the article, where they did make an effort to rein in their speculation - they estimate the pre-production staff to be about 1/3rd of the production staff, and that's probably about right. However, the 300 staff figure is less certain (as they admit, again to their credit). There's a real mixture of dodgy speculation and errors, and attempts to speculate reasonably, then some bizarre editorializing to add some clickbait in there.