Hasbro has made about $90 million by letting Larian make a D&D game
Wizards of the Coast parent company Hasbro announced lower-than-expected financial results today, but it did make good book on one front: The company said it's earned about $90 million dollars through its licensing deal with Larian for Baldur's Gate 3.
Hasbro said in its full-year financial report that its overall revenues declined 15%, due to a 19% drop in its consumer products segment and 31% decline in its entertainment segment. But the Wizards of the Coast and digital gaming segments were actually up 10%, "driven by [an] increase in licensed digital gaming revenue behind Baldur's Gate 3 from Larian Studios and Monopoly Go! from Scopely."
"Baldur's Gate had another healthy quarter," Hasbro chief financial officer Gina Goetter said in an investors call. "I think for the year in totality, Baldur's Gate was around $90 million of revenue."
We've said it before, but given that it's one of the bright spots in an otherwise unspectacular year for Hasbro, it bears repeating: Baldur's Gate 3 is a huge hit. The average concurrent player count over the past 30 days is nearly 131,000 and it remains in the top 10 most-played games on Steam, a remarkable accomplishment for a singleplayer-focused fantasy RPG that came out six months ago. It's also holding strong in Steam's top sellers list.
Baldur's Gate 3 also recently surpassed 500,000 user reviews on Steam (although the actual total is around 560,000), and still holds an "overwhelmingly positive" rating, with 96% of user reviews coming in as positive. Larian CEO Swen Vincke said on Twitter that seeing that sort of response from players "has been pure joy."
Goetter said revenues from Baldur's Gate 3 "will begin to taper down" through 2024, but Hasbro expects to continue making money from it for a long time to come. "Baldur's Gate 3 from our partners of Larian continues to win awards around the world and is one of the highest rated videogames of all time," CEO Chris Cocks said during the call. "We expect a long tail into 2024 and beyond for this mega hit."
There was no mention of a possible Baldur's Gate 4 during the call, but—no shock here—it sure sounds like more D&D-based videogames are on the way, albeit in the relatively distant future. Cocks said "videogames will clearly be a huge leg up on the D&D business," and that "Baldur's Gate 3 is just the first of several new videogames that will be coming out over the next five to 10 years that I think will continue to power that franchise."
As for Larian, it's already begun preliminary work on its next game, although there's no indication as to what it might be: Vincke said in January that "it's not what you think" and also warned that "it'll be quite some time" before Larian is ready to talk about it.