Wizards of the Coast opens Montréal video game studio for Dungeons & Dragons

Hasbro opened its new development office, Wizards of the Coast Studios Inc., in downtown Montréal on 8 October 2026. The 35,518-square-foot site aims to house 200 staff by 2028 to develop digital video games for the Dungeons & Dragons franchise.

The ribbon-cutting rehashes an expansion first announced over a year ago. Both Montréal International and Investissement Québec published details of the studio in September 2025, promising an official opening in the summer of 2026. Hasbro missed that window by several months, repackaging the original recruitment targets as fresh corporate progress.

Wizards of the Coast Studios Montréal facility specifications

Shared quarters with Invoke Studios at Robert-Bourassa

Google Maps lists Wizards of the Coast Studios at 1001 Boulevard Robert-Bourassa, Invoke Studios’ established downtown address. Wizards of the Coast bought the team, originally called Tuque Games, in 2019 and rebranded it in 2022. Provincial economic documents confirm the new studio occupies office space directly adjoining Invoke’s floor plan.

Hasbro’s latest release glosses over how these two teams will interact. Invoke spent years working on an unannounced Unreal Engine 5 title set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe following the critical flop of 2021’s Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance. Hasbro has not clarified whether Wizards of the Coast Studios Inc. acts as an umbrella management group, an operational merger, or an independent production unit sharing the kitchen.

Dan Ayoub, Senior Vice President, Head of Dungeons & Dragons and Head of Wizards of the Coast Canada at Hasbro, said in a statement:

Montréal is where my own career in games began, so opening the doors of this studio means a great deal to me personally, and it means even more for what it represents for the future. This studio will grow to be the largest concentration of video game talent at Hasbro, built on one of the world’s deepest game development ecosystems. We’re here to create the next generation of digital game titles, and to do it with the incredible talent this city has to offer.”

Investissement Québec subsidies against prior staff reductions

The Montréal studio expansion relies on assistance from Montréal International and Investissement Québec International. Québec offers aggressive tax credits covering up to 37.5% of eligible labour costs for video game production, giving Hasbro a cheaper employment base than its headquarters in Renton, Washington.

That public funding softens the financial hit for Hasbro while highlighting a sharp corporate contradiction. The company laid off over 1,100 workers across 2023 and 2024, cutting deep into Wizards of the Coast tabletop and digital production teams in the United States. Hasbro is now rebuilding its digital workforce by hiring in a subsidised Canadian market and moving state-supported roles across the border.

The search for an internal digital hit

Hasbro wants to build its own digital software pipeline rather than rely on external licensing deals. While Larian Studios earned critical acclaim and hundreds of millions in retail sales with Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian walked away from the brand to build its own independent projects.

With earlier virtual tabletop experiments like Project Sigil already abandoned, Hasbro needs actual video games that generate recurring digital revenue. Placing 200 staff in downtown Montréal gives the company a base in a city with 15,000 game developers, but the publisher still needs to prove it can ship a successful first-party action title without external partners doing the heavy lifting.

Source: Hasbro PR.