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.

 

[Oofta]

A WotC-developed game could almost certainly re-use some assets from Sigil. Especially if they also used UE5 (which is very popular and frankly, whilst I am not a developer, does seem like a cool engine with great features built in). Code, probably they wouldn't want to try to re-use, but assets for sure. I mean, technically you can often migrate assets across entirely different engines, though it might be a real pain, but UE5 to UE5 is likely to be very easy. And assets can be one of the heaviest elements of development budgets (hence them often being re-used, either partially or entirely, across games, especially at the lower and middle parts of AAA and below). By assets to be clear I mean 3D models, textures, animations, sounds, etc.

(One interesting example of asset re-uses vs. not re-using is Dragon Age Inquisition vs Mass Effect Andromeda. Both were in EA's Frostbite engine, but DAI re-used animations, particularly, from DA, DA2 and even the ME games, tweaking them and improving them, and they felt like this was hugely helpful (there's an article about it somewhere). A few critics did mildly criticise the animations for being stiff but for the most part they were well-accepted. MEA, on the other hand, decided that wasn't good enough and developed animations entirely from scratch, which turned out to be a significant burden, and when they launched, a lot of animations were still were not quite working right. They also ended up trying to outsource/offshore some of the work because there was so much, which didn't go very well. Lesson is - sometimes cheaping out is just a win!)

There's a lot that could potentially be shared in the back end like the online coordination such as class structures and spells as well as animation and tools for building out the environment. Imagine a game along the lines of BG 3 in terms of size where people could just use all the assets from Baldur's Gate to make brand new cities with a simple drag and drop tool. It also seems like you could easily port over the character builder from Sigil into other games. For all we know Sigil could be a loss leader while the real money will be in games that use parts of it's engine as a stepping stone. I just hesitate to say "It would be easy!" because things like this often seem easy to people from the outside looking in.

So for me it's just speculation that they wanted to pull everything internal so they could develop and integrate something along the lines of the Frostbite engine for D&D games. Time will tell if it works, I'm withholding judgement until we have something other than vaporware and vague promises to shareholders.

 

[Parmandur]

There's a lot that could potentially be shared in the back end like the online coordination such as class structures and spells as well as animation and tools for building out the environment. Imagine a game along the lines of BG 3 in terms of size where people could just use all the assets from Baldur's Gate to make brand new cities with a simple drag and drop tool. It also seems like you could easily port over the character builder from Sigil into other games. For all we know Sigil could be a loss leader while the real money will be in games that use parts of it's engine as a stepping stone. I just hesitate to say "It would be easy!" because things like this often seem easy to people from the outside looking in.

So for me it's just speculation that they wanted to pull everything internal so they could develop and integrate something along the lines of the Frostbite engine for D&D games. Time will tell if it works, I'm withholding judgement until we have something other than vaporware and vague promises to shareholders.

Sigil is built using Unreal, Exodus is being built using Unreal, the G.I. Joe game WptC is making uses Unreal, the D&D project (if it is seperate) that WotC Montreal studio is making uses Unreal...

They will almost certainly use Unreal for anything else, for bulk savings if nothing else.

 

[Oofta]

Sigil is built using Unreal, Exodus is being built using Unreal, the G.I. Joe game WptC is making uses Unreal, the D&D project (if it is seperate) that WotC Montreal studio is making uses Unreal...

They will almost certainly use Unreal for anything else, for bulk savings if nothing else.

Ah, that's right. I knew that! Well, at one time I knew that. It makes sense, there's a reason so many games use it. There's still a lot of shared libraries they can use, such as scene building tools and assets. Also things with the support small-scale multiplayer games where it's not an MMO but you can still play with your friends.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So for me it's just speculation that they wanted to pull everything internal so they could develop and integrate something along the lines of the Frostbite engine for D&D games. Time will tell if it works, I'm withholding judgement until we have something other than vaporware and vague promises to shareholders.

I would personally say 100% this isn't going to happen, based on the most recent previews/user experiences of Sigil (as recent as a month ago).

As a tool it's far, far too limited to be ever of use for building an actual CRPG, and most of the ways it could share are pretty trivial stuff except the assets. I will say it's further along than vapourware though - it's very pretty and is an actual usable 3D VTT, just a very limited, clumsy, and oddly-behaving one (lots of people really surprised by unhelpful or odd stuff it did), with a really bad UI (but that last is unsurprising at this point in development).

I don't mean this as a takedown - I know you don't really care whether it succeeds or fails - but I think there are others who absolutely will see what you're suggesting as extremely exciting and be very disappointed when it doesn't happen.

I just hesitate to say "It would be easy!" because things like this often seem easy to people from the outside looking in.

Re-using stuff like the art assets genuinely is pretty doable, including things like the spell animations potentially (Sigil models aren't animated, but spells are). The rest of it? Most of that is more in there "you'd need to do so much it would be a negligible gain, and potentially a drawback by trying to maintain cross-project compatibility between a game in development and software tool in actual use/sale" category - i.e. it would be possible, technically, but not worth it, because of the time and expense involved - it wouldn't save you money, that's the key thing.

So for me it's just speculation that they wanted to pull everything internal so they could develop and integrate something along the lines of the Frostbite engine for D&D games.

I mean, it can't quite be that. They're using UE5 (Unreal Engine 5) as the engine, they're not building an engine like Frostbite or UE5. This might seem like a minor distinction but it's a pretty major difference. They're building essentially a merged suite of applications. The most sensible thing they could probably do if they really thought it would save them money would be to use Sigil not as a loss-leader in that way, but to do two things whilst making subscription and MTX money:

1) Skill up a bunch of developers on UE5 - who could then go on to code a game, though you'd need to leave a decent-sized team to keep upgrading, maintaining and adding to Sigil.

2) Build up a large library of assets they could use for a CRPG. I think this would be slightly risky - gamers can be real twerps about asset re-use, where they notice it - but it might work out!

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

I would at least wait for a bit and see what it's sales are in 3 months or so.

Wife's been playing it hard-core since launch. She kinda likes it but apparently not as good as BG3 or earlier titles.

If it only sells 1-2 million units that's not good.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

but apparently not as good as BG3

What is though?

That's kind of like saying "Yeah he's a good sprinter, but he's no Usain Bolt". True but there probably won't be an RPG better-regarded than or even as well regarded as BG3 for at least a decade. It has a 96% Metacritic. The last story-based RPG or CRPG to score 96% was Skyrim in 2011, or if you don't count that, Mass Effect 2 in 2010. The last CRPG to come close was, hilariously, Baldur's Gate 2 in 2000 (95%), or maybe KotOR in 2003 (94%). I guess it's possible Larian will lap themselves - but they implied their upcoming two games are less ambitious than BG3 (Swen even going out of his way to correct himself accidentally suggesting otherwise) so I rather doubt it.

Personally with DAV, I'd say it's pretty much an 85% kind of game, which is roughly in line with its Metacritic scores. It isn't stunning like BG3, and whilst I liked it better than DAI and DAO (I know, heresy, but I didn't like DAO that much - I felt it was impressive but overrated and it hasn't stood the test of time in the way even older stuff like ME1 or KotOR has), but not as much as DA2, in large part because Hawke had a much more compelling/challenging situation to live through.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Definitely not. The engine used for BG3 is proprietory to Larian and there's no-one trained and experienced with it outside of Larian. It would be truly insane to do that when engines like Unreal 4 and 5 exist, and have huge numbers of people experienced with them. Plus it would cost a huge amount to licence the engine and pay Larian to train your staff, and WotC are penny-pinchers.

Larian have made nothing but RPGs for the entire time they've existed, apart from one RTS, which was a huge flop. And they've already hinted that both the upcoming projects are RPGs (and outright stated that neither is DOS3).

Whether it's a CRPG is harder to say - I'd take the bet and say it was except the definition can be somewhat nebulous (like, DAO is a CRPG, but what about DA2, DAI? DAV is definitely not a CRPG). They've also had insane serial success with CRPGs and seem to like them so I think it's very safe to say the next big game they make (they say the scope is less than BG3, but still large) will be either a CRPG or story RPG (i.e. BioWare-style). I think they may also be developing a tactical RPG, and that would be a lot quicker so might beat this to market, but my suspicion is that will get cancelled or already has been.

I don't think Larian have ever expressed dissatisfaction with their tools - have you seen them do so? So I am not seeing the reasoning behind assuming they are.

I'm not sure if you're referring to WotC here, but just to clarify, Sigil is an entirely separate tool (not engine) unrelated to Larian's BG3 engine in any way, shape, or form. The engine that runs BG3 is Divinity Engine 4.0, which is the latest development of a fully in-house developed original engine Larian created for Divinity: Original Sin. Sigil is a tool (again, not engine) made in Unreal Engine 5, by WotC. They might look a little similar in the scenes they create due to the subject matter and perspective, but there's zero software or asset relationship. Apologies if this is totally unnecessary and I'm just failing to follow the convo properly!

I would personally be pretty surprised if Larian switched to Epic's Unreal engine for a number of reasons:

1) Whilst the initial cost of UE5 is low, and you have to pay Epic 5% of your gross revenue for any sales over $1m gross. Given BG3 has sold like, minimum 15m copies at this point (likely far more), at $60 each, that'd mean Larian would have to pay Epic $42m. Is it likely to cost them $42m to stick with their own engine/could they save $42m by switching? That seems very unlikely (I can expand on this if people really care but it's very boring!).

2) UE developers are plentiful, but Larian doesn't like to unnecessarily fire people, nor does it operate in the ultra-capitalist "please the stockholders!" way most companies do. So hiring a bunch of experienced UE guys whilst firing their own guys would likely not work for them. And sure they could retrain all their current guys to use UE5, but why? That just adds to the tens of millions it's already going to likely cost them from the sales of a future game if they used it.

3) Epic are the sort of company that Swen doesn't seem very keen on. So I'm not sure he'd want to go out of his way to give them tens of millions. Note that Baldur's Gate 3 is not available on the Epic store.

There is one potential countervailing factor however. Both Epic and Larian are part-owned by Tencent (40% and 30% respectively), so maybe Tencent could nudge Epic on this? Or nudge both? But I'd be surprised personally. It's not impossibly but I think the odds are on them sticking with upgrading Divinity Engine - it's clearly possible to upgrade pretty impressively, given the huge leap from DOS2 to BG3 (including bringing in tons of mocap'd cutscenes!).


Ahhh yes FORTRAN used to hang around a lot in the '90s (still does a bit, mostly at older banks) - my wife's first real programming job, when she was still in uni, was to single-handedly move a hugely elaborate program written in FORTRAN 66 (not even 77 - which would still be before she was born!) to a new, modern, codebase. The program had been updated by its programmer from the 1960s to the early 1990s, but he'd retired a few years earlier, and the whole thing used variable names which were just six digits, no letters, no words. As a bonus there was no documentation of the code whatsoever, only of the user-side stuff. It had to work absolutely perfectly because it was for calculating the physical stresses on a certain kind of structure they produced, and could potentially cost the company millions if it failed. But she did it - some early code archaeology! They sensibly ran a huge number of tests too, but it worked and gave the right results! And once they had it in modern code (I forget what), she was able to add new functions, new structures, and so on, which was what they wanted, and made them god knows how much money because other similar companies didn't have flexible tools like that. Of course being a brilliant-but-naive teenager she was wildly underpaid for doing this, but she had no idea until later. Around the same time my really cool driving instructor (who taught me to do burn-outs etc.!) quit driving instructing because he knew FORTRAN (he must have been in his late 30s) and was offered an £80k job (not bad for late-90s London) updating stuff in the run-up to Y2K.

Swen is not greedy man, I don't see him charging an arm and leg for access to the engine and I honestly given fans are already making their own campaigns with it, with training by Larian staff it's likely not going to be a huge issue either.

I mean WotC could literally do a scaled up, upgraded version of what fans are already doing in the modding scene and make crazy money on it. You hire an outside company to do the Cinematics and such.

Although truth be told WotC already has at least two game engines that could be used without relying on Larian's Divinity/BG3 engine. You have the game engine for for Dark Alliance, will has no doubt been heavily upgraded by now or you repurpose Exodus' game engine.

 

[Parmandur]

Swen is not greedy man, I don't see him charging an arm and leg for access to the engine and I honestly given fans are already making their own campaigns with it, with training by Larian staff it's likely not going to be a huge issue either.

I mean WotC could literally do a scaled up, upgraded version of what fans are already doing in the modding scene and make crazy money on it. You hire an outside company to do the Cinematics and such.

Although truth be told WotC already has at least two game engines that could be used without relying on Larian's Divinity/BG3 engine. You have the game engine for for Dark Alliance, will has no doubt been heavily upgraded by now or you repurpose Exodus' game engine.

Both Dark Alliance and Exodus used Unreal Engine, same as Peoject Sigil. See nonreason to suspect they won't just stick with Unreal.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Just did a search on Invoke Studios and they started their next D&D game BEFORE BG3 had a full release, which means it can't be BG4.

Archetypes has its hands full with Exodus still.

Atomic Arcade has the GI Joe Snake Eyes game.

Arena MtG studio is obviously busy with that plus the Commander MtG game.

That leaves just a Washington unnamed studio for BG4 IF they are doing BG4 internally at all.

If WotC is betting this hard on video games, I think it's time they do the kind of thing they do with D&D & MtG were they announce future sets, books, and other products for the coming year/s, but for their video game studios.

 

[Parmandur]

Just did a search on Invoke Studios and they started their next D&D game BEFORE BG3 had a full release, which means it can't be BG4.

Archetypes has its hands full with Exodus still.

Atomic Arcade has the GI Joe Snake Eyes game.

Arena MtG studio is obviously busy with that plus the Commander MtG game.

That leaves just a Washington unnamed studio for BG4 IF they are doing BG4 internally at all.

If WotC is betting this hard on video games, I think it's time they do the kind of thing they do with D&D & MtG were they announce future sets, books, and other products for the coming year/s, but for their video game studios.

There is also Skeleton Key, which doesn't have an announced game yet.

Thing is, a good, big video game now takes 6-7 years to make: WotC cannot keep a hype cycle up that long, so they aren't going to start up media stuff until the games are close to ready. Like Exodus is apparently lookong to get a barage of stuff in.the near future, as the game nears release.