In a press release, CEO Adolf Kristjansson said, “This was a difficult but necessary decision. Our strategy is clear: Payday is one of the most iconic IPs in gaming, with unmatched reach and potential. By focusing our investment and talent here, we can accelerate delivery, engage players with more content, and reinforce Starbreeze’s position as the clear leader in the heisting genre. This is about sharpening our focus to create the strongest long-term value for our players, our people, and our shareholders.”

Alongside a non-cash impairment of SEK 255 million (roughly $27.2 million), Starbreeze is redeploying Project Baxter team members to other projects, “most prominently within Payday.” However, it also confirmed layoffs for about 44 contractors and employees to GameDeveloper, though since the following weeks will see union negotiations, the “exact number” couldn’t be specified.

In development on Unreal Engine 5, Project Baxter hadn’t received a gameplay reveal or official title. It would have been another games-as-a-service title, and then-CEO Tobias Sjogren said it was “hard to imagine a better pairing than Dungeons and Dragons and Starbreeze.”

As for what this means for Payday 3, which has floundered since its launch in September 2023, despite multiple updates and improvements. Starbreeze also faced fresh controversy with its new DLC subscription model and price hike on the Infamous Collection for Payday 2. Stay tuned for updates, as always.

In the interview, Hight spoke about how the universe of Dungeons & Dragons is vast, allowing players and developers to come up with plenty of stories on their own. In that vein, the project that Giant Skull is working on is slated to have a broad appeal, including Dungeons & Dragons players as well as those that aren’t already involved with the tabletop RPG hobby.

“Baldur’s Gate is an incredible game,” said Hight. “And of course, we’re going to do a successor. This is not the successor to that game. We go to Stig and his team to tell an incredible story and bring D&D to a very broad audience. Ideally, the game will appeal to D&D players because it will help them realise their imagination. But it’s also going to hopefully appeal to people that love playing action games, that love the Jedi games, that love God of War games.”

“D&D, as Stig said, it’s a playground and it really is for everyone. Hundreds of millions of people have either played D&D or been aware of D&D, and we want to perpetuate that for the next 50 years.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Hight also spoke about how Wizards of the Coast is looking to team up with all sorts of studios, and not just those run by industry veterans. Rather, the company wants to bet on up-and-coming studios as well.

“You don’t find folks like Stig every day,” explained Hight. “So, we’re going to have to make some bets on up-and-coming talent, and maybe do smaller games and give them a shot at building up teams and learning along the way. We’re going to do some experimental stuff.”

Giant Skull’s collaboration with Wizards of the Coast for a Dungeons & Dragons title has been going on for a while now. Back in June, Asmussen had spoken about how Giant Skull’s experience with third-person melee combat will help with the development of the new game.

“We’re experts at melee combat, so that’s something that John [Hight] got to see and it translates very well to D&D,” said Asmussen. “There’s probably still legacy debt that’s in the Jedi games from bad decisions that we made early on. Some of those bad decisions were based on momentum because we don’t get stuck. We just want to keep on moving forward.”

Asmussen also confirmed that the new project is being developed using a vanilla version of Unreal Engine 5 rather than one that has been filled to the rim with custom enhancements. This, he noted, allows the studio a “clean slate” to build the project very quickly on.

“We’re experts at melee combat, so that’s something that John got to see and it translates very well to D&D,” said Asmussen, referring to Wizards of the Coast president John Hight who previously worked with him on God of War 3. “There’s probably still legacy debt that’s in the Jedi games from bad decisions that we made early on. Some of those bad decisions were based on momentum because we don’t get stuck. We just want to keep on moving forward.”

It is worth noting that Asmussen’s team at Respawn Entertainment had worked on Unreal Engine 4 to develop Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and its sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. In this interview, he spoke about how Giant Skull is trying to avoid tech debt by making sure that it doesn’t bring over any of the bad decisions that were made with the Jedi games by starting with “vanilla Unreal”. Ultimately, this clean slate allowed the studio to make a “motion model” that ends up being much faster and smoother than what we saw in the two Star Wars Jedi titles.

“When we started Giant Skull and we started with vanilla Unreal, we couldn’t take what we did with the Jedi games over to a new company. So, all of those mistakes that we had made before weren’t there. We had a clean slate and we were able to build very quickly based on all of our learnings over the years before. That’s allowed us to create a motion model that’s so much faster now, so much more fluid. And it doesn’t have points where you get blocked because you don’t understand how to fix jank. It’s buttery smooth.”

While no other details about this Dungeons & Dragons title developed by Giant Skull have been revealed so far, this emphasis on having high-quality animations for melee combat would indicate that it will be a hack-and-slash game. When the title was announced, some of the words used to describe it were “immersive storytelling”, “heroic combat”, and “exhilarating traversal”. Asmussen noted in the interview that traversal would be a major part of the upcoming title’s gameplay.

“Traversal is really important to us,” he explained. “Giving the player a suite of different ways to probe and interact with the environment, and eventually build their character up to a point where they’re dominating the environment. It all has to feel silky smooth.”

The new title is being developed using Unreal Engine 5, and will likely come to PC and modern consoles.

It has been announced that Giant Skull has partnered with Wizards of the Coast to develop an action-adventure title based on Dungeons and Dragons. Work on the AAA single-player title is underway, though further details on the game, what exactly players can expect from it, or when more will be unveiled are currently scarce. The game is in development for PC and consoles.

Giant Skull CEO and former Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and God of War 3 director Stig Asmussen said, “Our talented and experienced team at Giant Skull is built on creativity and curiosity,” said Stig Asmussen, CEO, Giant Skull. “Our goal is to craft a rich new Dungeons and Dragons universe filled with immersive storytelling, heroic combat and exhilarating traversal that players will fully embrace.”

President of Wizards of the Coast and digital gaming at Hasbro John Hight said, “Stig and the team at Giant Skull are exactly the type of exceptionally talented creators we want to work with, and I’m so happy to be reuniting with him on this new project. In our time working together on God of War I got to see firsthand Stig’s artistry and expertise, and he and the Giant Skull team are the perfect fit for our new game. Worldbuilding and storytelling is in our DNA, and this collaboration reflects our evolution and commitment to our Playing to Win Strategy, building a stronger presence in digital play. We look forward to revealing more about this brand-new Dungeons and Dragons game in the future.”

Stay tuned for more details on the project in the coming months and years.

New Survivors include Aestri Yazar, a Bard, alongside a new map, Forgotten Ruins (with dice rolls, loot and other Dungeons and Dragons mechanics included). A public test build for the Chapter is now available to try out. The second Chapter is a collaboration with Konami’s Castlevania, and while the teaser didn’t offer any gameplay, it seemingly confirms Dracula as the next Killer. More details will be revealed on August 6th.

Behaviour Interactive is also working on a new 2v8 mode, with eight Survivors attempting to survive against two Killers. Sporting a larger map, Cages in place of Hooks and classes instead of Perks, it’s a major revamp on the traditional experience. A livestream is set for July to provide more information, so stay tuned. You can also check out the first gameplay trailer for Supermassive’s The Casting of Frank Stone, a single-player title set in the Dead by Daylight universe.

Case in point: Gameloft – the studio behind Disney Dreamlight Valley (and multiple dozens of other games, many of which are mobile-focused titles) – has announced that it’s partnering with Wizards of the Coast to develop a new game based on Dungeons and Dragons that will combine some genres that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with the IP.

Gameloft says the title – which is being developed for PC and consoles – will aim to deliver “unique cooperative gameplay built around an innovative hybrid of survival, life simulation, and action RPG”.

“Players can expect an adventure where the rich lore of this legendary franchise meets real-time survival in a unique campaign of resilience, camaraderie, and danger at nearly every turn,” the developer says. It is currently also looking to hire in a number of different positions to work on the project.

There’s currently no word on when this game will be out (or even what it will be called), but Gameloft has shared a piece of concept art to give you at least some indication of what it will look like. Check it out below.

We're thrilled to announce we're partnering with the world’s greatest roleplaying game – @Wizards_DnD – from @Wizards of the Coast, the IP-holder and a division of @Hasbro, to publish a new PC and console game!@GameloftMTL, the creators behind the award-winning Disney… pic.twitter.com/MpDqN3uiLO

— Gameloft (@gameloft) March 14, 2024

Demeo itself was quite heavily influenced by Dungeons and Dragons, and the game might provide a good insight as to what kind of game we can expect the next title to be. Demeo is a turn-based tabletop-themed game with an emphasis on cooperative multiplayer.

The game embraces its tabletop and Dungeons and Dragons roots with its aesthetics, which has players controlling actual miniatures across dungeons created on a tabletop, all while dice are being rolled, and cards are being played. Even the artwork for Demeo‘s various campaigns are a throwback to classic adventures and modules released for older versions of Dungeons and Dragons.

Currently, Resolution Games hasn’t revealed any screenshots, trailers, or other details about the Dungeons and Dragons VR title, and it doesn’t even have a release window at the moment. If you can’t wait to experience a digital version of Dungeons and Dragons, however, you might want to check out Baldur’s Gate 3 in the meantime.

Developed and published by Starbreeze, Project Baxter is developed in Unreal Engine 5 and will feature cooperative multiplayer and games-as-a-service elements. No other details are known, but CEO Tobias Sjogren said in a press release that it’s “hard to imagine a better pairing than Dungeons and Dragons and Starbreeze – both with their foundation in cooperative and community-driven experiences, ‘play it your way’ and infinite replayability.

“When looking at prospective IPs for our future projects, Dungeons and Dragons was always at the top of our list, and I’m incredibly happy to announce this license. I want to thank Wizards of the Coast for being such a great partner. Development of the game is in full swing, and we are excited to deliver an amazing Dungeons and Dragons action adventure in 2026,” he added.

Eugene Evans, senior VP of digital strategy and licensing at Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro said, “Dungeons and Dragons is having an extraordinary year. Our gaming brands, including Dungeons and Dragons, continue to attract great partners as we execute our plan to grow our digital games portfolio through licensing and development. Our collaboration with Starbreeze is a prime illustration of this strategy. Given their impressive games and passion for Dungeons and Dragons, we are confident they will create an experience that will delight fans worldwide.”

This announcement is interesting when considering Starbreeze’s other projects, notably Payday 3. The co-op heist shooter launched in September to a mixed response and recently received new features and Legacy Heists. It’s also prepping for its first major story DLC Syntax Error. Whether Project Baxter will also fall under the team’s purview remains to be seen. Stay tuned for more details and updates in the meantime.

According to the earnings report, Wizards of the Coast revenues for both digital and license gaming rose by 133 percent year-over-year. In a two-month period ending on October 1, the company made $133.1 million in revenue from digital and licensed gaming. It is worth noting that these earnings include Dungeons & Dragons products, as well as Magic: The Gathering.

Hasbro itself attributes the growth in revenue to two main releases: Baldur’s Gate 3 and Monopoly Go!. Baldur’s Gate 3 itself apparently made roughly $63 million for Wizards of the Coast.

“Our third quarter results highlight the strength of Hasbro’s diversified toy and game portfolio and the progress we have made on our transformation,” said Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks. “Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming delivered a standout performance across strength in Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, particularly the blockbuster August release of Baldur’s Gate 3.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on PC and PS5. The game is also making its way on to Xbox Series X/S, with developer Larian stating that it hopes to release the game on Xbox before the end of the year.

This opens the door for a number of potentially big announcements. We could see something for Baldur’s Gate 3, which is currently in early access for Steam and Google Stadia. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2 was also teased by Black Isle Studios as coming “sooner” than many thought. Perhaps it will receive a release date for current-gen consoles and PC.

Regardless of what’s in store, Wizards of the Coast does promise a “few surprises.” Hopefully, these will be on the scale of new gameplay for Baldur’s Gate 3 and not, say, something like Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance. Stay tuned for more details and announcements on the day of the Direct.