Following through on its previously announced plans to focus on its major IPs, according to Variety, Warner Bros. has restructured its WB Games division into four distinct divisions, each of which will focus on Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, and DC. As part of this move, the company has promoted studio heads to the position of senior vice president of their respective studios.
Yves Lachance has been promoted to senior vice president of development for Warner Bros Games Montreal, where the studio will work on games based on Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. NetherRealm, headed by vice president of development Shaun Himmerick, will continue to work on Mortal Kombat games. Warner Bros. Games New York, on the other hand, will be headed up by Steven Flenory as vice president of central tech and services, as well as central tech and services. The studio will focus on QA, user research, and customer service.
The trio will work directly under Warner Bros Discovery’s CEO of global streaming and games, J.B. Perrette. Internally, teams working on production and tech will report to Lachance and Himmerick. The publishing division at WB Games will continue to be under Perrette.
“Our company is home to some of the biggest franchises in the world, and we are optimizing our team structure to develop long-term franchise roadmaps to delight players and fans of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat and DC games,” Perrette said about the move. “We are very fortunate to have a strong stable of development and technology talent, and Yves, Shaun, and Steven are respected leaders with excellent track records in their areas of expertise. I’m looking forward to working closely with them and the team as we work to make the best games possible for our key franchises.”
Back in March, Warner Bros. had reaffirmed this plans to focus on its big four franchises in a letter to its shareholders. According to the company, it wants WB Games to “refocus our resources and capital on proven IP and games from proven, world-class studios.”
“As we have previously said, 2024 was a disappointing year for our Games business, and we have recently announced a restructuring plan to refocus our resources and capital on proven IP and games from proven, world-class studios,” wrote the company in the letter. “We are focusing our Games business around four tentpole franchises that have each generated over $1 billion in consumer sales in past years: Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, and DC – particularly top tier characters like Batman.”
Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav had first spoken about this plan to focus on Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, and DC back in November 2024. Talking about the company’s relatively bad year in the gaming market, Zaslav also spoke about how the gaming division at Warner Bros. will bounce back.
“We’re through some of the worst — and it hasn’t been pretty on the gaming business — but we have four games that are really powerful and have a real constituency that loves them, and we’re going to focus on those four primarily,” he said. “We’re going to go away from trying to launch 10, 12, 15, 20 different games. I think we have a real chance now with focus to have the gaming business be steadier.”
“We have four strong and profitable game franchises with loyal, global fans: Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC, in particular Batman. We are focusing our development efforts on those core franchises, with proven studios to improve our success ratio.”
