Wizards of the Coast expands video game capacity with new Montréal-based studio
No announced games as Hasbro positions second Canadian outfit to play support.
Hasbro is building another video game studio to assist with development on Dungeons & Dragons-related projects, along with other digital games. The appropriately (if uninspiringly) named Wizards of the Coast Studios Inc. will be physically located right next to the Montréal-based Invoke Studios and is planned to open in summer of 2026.
According to a press release from economic developer Montréal International, the studio hopes to create 200 new jobs over three years with Hasbro’s global play lead Dan Ayoub now also acting as studio head. Ayoub was named head of Dungeons & Dragons franchise back in July, replacing Jess Lanzillo after her departure for the revamped White Wolf.
Ayoub’s multiplying heads aside, WotC Studios Inc. will reportedly “focus on developing new content for the legendary Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) franchise and supporting Wizards of the Coast’s growing digital games portfolio.” Invoke Studios’ last project was 2021’s Dark Alliance, which received middling reviews and shut down its online servers in February of this year. Hasbro pledged to invest $1 billion in video game and digital development last year, and has backed that up with both licensed D&D games and new ventures. An unnamed action RPG is eventually coming from Giant Skull’s collection of Respawn and Sony Santa Monica veterans, and Archetype Entertainment is actively developing Exodus, an original science fiction video game that Hasbro has, uh… “supported” (scarequotes) with a tie-in tabletop RPG.
WotC Studios Inc. will likely exist to do exactly what the press release said: support all of the company’s various projects. Larger video game publishers often deploy in-house resources as support for third-party design teams. Sony Interactive Entertainment is the largest and most obvious example of this — they directly own and operate studios such as Naughty Dog (The Last of Us), Insomniac (Spider-Man), and the previously mentioned Santa Monica Studio (God of War). This is not always a good thing, as reporting around restrictive deadlines, crunch culture, and impossible financial expectations surrounding Marvel's Spider-Man 2 illustrate.
Rascal has reached out to Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast for more information.
There are a few other outfits in Hasbro’s portfolio — Atomic Arcade and Skeleton Key, though the latter’s project was reportedly axed in February — and they all amount to so many irons in the digital fire. Hasbro’s investors are hungry to recreate the colossal success of Baldur’s Gate 3, but the toy company has been sheepish to promise anything too soon during 2025’s quarterly earnings calls. Video game development is time-intensive, costly, and — recently — plagued by precarity. Both companies are betting big on a digital future for both of its tabletop games, and we’ve previously discussed president John Hight’s preference for running a video game publisher instead of a book maker.
Another possibility is that WotC Studios Inc. will exist to recreate or support Hasbro’s other big cash cow: mobile gaming. Monopoly Go! is developed by Scopely, which is in turn owned and operated by the Saudi-owned Savvy Games Group — an extension of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The mobile version of everyone’s least favorite board game raked in $5 billion in revenue over two years, according to Forbes, and is a constant topic of praise amongst CEO Chris Cocks and Hasbro’s various investors. Cynical as it may be, this new studio could end up developing mobile-based skinner boxes featuring Karlach’s face, Beholders, and all the other legally distinct aspects of D&D.
