D&D developer says it's "not looking to sell" amid reported discussions with Baldur's Gate 3 studio shareholders

(Image credit: Larian)

D&D developer says it is "not looking to sell" amid reports of a planned sale to Baldur's Gate 3 studio shareholders.

Reports from Chinese financial news outlet Pandaily stated that current D&D owner Hasbro was looking to sell the rights to the tabletop game following a year of losses. The report claims that Hasbro approached Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian to discuss a potential purchase, but that the studio, lacking the money to make such a substantial acquisition, referred Hasbro to Tencent.

Tencent is a Chinese mega-publisher that owns slices of multiple studios across the world. Most notable is its 100% ownership of League of Legends studio Riot Games, but it also has a 30% slice of Larian, albeit no direct control over the studio, or its work on either the Baldur's Gate series or its original Divinity franchise.

In a statement issued to Dicebreaker, however, D&D developer Wizards of the Coast said that "we regularly talk to Tencent and enjoy multiple partnerships with them across a number of our IPs. We don't make a habit of commenting on internet rumors, but to be clear: we are not looking to sell our D&D IP."

There's always a chance that the corporate aims of Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast don't entirely align, but the developer's statement is pretty definitive. Larian also seems like a peculiar target for the ownership of D&D as a brand - while there's obvious tabletop DNA running throughout the studio, it's only worked directly with the D&D brand once, and there's no guarantee that it will return to The Forgotten Realms in the short term - as much as we might all want Baldur's Gate 3 DLC, Larian and Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke has made it clear that he's still in the pretty early stages of planning out his next project.

Whether or not D&D ends up with new corporate overloads probably won't affect our list of the best board games.

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.