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.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

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.

Oh yeah! It could be Skeleton Key, we don't know what they are working on, when we're they founded?

Also outside possibility they open a sixth studio just for Baldur's Gate.

 

[Parmandur]

Oh yeah! It could be Skeleton Key, we don't know what they are working on, when we're they founded?

Also outside possibility they open a sixth studio just for Baldur's Gate.

They opened in 2022, two years now, also with ex-Bioware staff. Been hiring, nothing to talk about yet.

I doubt any internal game that WotC are working on currently is meant to be BG4: thst basically just came out, and nobody expected it to be as big as it has been.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

They opened in 2022, two years now, also with ex-Bioware staff. Been hiring, nothing to talk about yet.

I doubt any internal game that WotC are working on currently is meant to be BG4: thst basically just came out, and nobody expected it to be as big as it has been.

Yeah I'm looking at the evidence and the timelines just don't match up, every studio would be busy with its own projects right now, so the D&D is probably whatever Invoke is working on, not BG3.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah I'm looking at the evidence and the timelines just don't match up, every studio would be busy with its own projects right now, so the D&D is probably whatever Invoke is working on, not BG3.

Honestly, good? It would be awesome if they made a game exploring something farther afield.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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

Another reason why I don’t think the new game will be a crpg - the best way to avoid unfavourable comparisons with BG3 is to be in a different genre all together.

Here is what I would make if I was in charge:

Bloodwar: Battle for Avernus

And army level strategy game, with cameos from Karlach, Wyll and other characters from BG3.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Another reason why I don’t think the new game will be a crpg - the best way to avoid unfavourable comparisons with BG3 is to be in a different genre all together.

Here is what I would make if I was in charge:

Bloodwar: Battle for Avernus

And army level strategy game, with cameos from Karlach, Wyll and other characters from BG3.

Army-level strategy games are a suicide mission, like your odds of success are low double-digits!

Of course:

If you do succeed, you potentially have a franchise, which might be quite long-running, because whilst army level strategy games don't usually sell great, they do have loyal fanbases.

All we know about the next games is from Swen, who is an, um, unreliable narrator as it were. He contradicts himself and re-writes stories with some frequency. He's said a number of things that don't quite line up, that I'll try and lay them out:

• They're working on specific two games.
• They're not working on two specific games, one is specific, and the other is up in the air.
• The specific one won't be DOS3 but will be familiar
• The specific one may be an entirely new IP
• The up in the air one may be a Divinity Tactics game
• Those games were planned since before BG3 came out.
• The specific one he pitched during BG3's production at some point.
• They're working on one specific game and it's an RPG that's bigger in scope than BG3.
• Actually not it isn't bigger in scope, it's smaller
• They're working on one game codenamed Excalibur but they don't know what type of game it quite even is
• Anyone who tells you they know what Larian is working on even if they work at Larian is lying*
• The next game might be action
• There's no timeline for the next game, it'll come out when it's done
• But that'll probably be 2029
• But that'll probably be 2028

* = This is very funny because the only person who talks to the press about "what Larian are working on" is Swen himself.

So we have very little idea what they're doing. The only other info we have is from hiring - sometimes this can be a very accurate guide to what a company is doing - though often we don't see the results for years. The positions that we've seen being advertised/hired seem like positions you'd hire for an RPG or certainly a very narrative-heavy game, because they're hiring more writers among other things (they did lose some after BG3, but if they genuinely didn't have any idea at all what was next, they would be unlikely to be hiring new ones).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Army-level strategy games are a suicide mission, like your odds of success are low double-digits!

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

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.

At least half of all video game projects are cancelled before the public ever hears about them. You don't want to announce a game until you're close to certain that it's actually coming out.

Software projects are much harder to plan than linear media like books and card decks. As long as you keep writing and editing your book will get done and probably be at least decent quality, but with software it's possible to engineer yourself into a hole where the only way out is to restart almost from scratch.