Payday developer is working on a co-op, live service Dungeons & Dragons video game

Hot on the heels of Baldur’s Gate 3 and its meteoric success, the studio behind the Payday series has announced an upcoming video game set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons.

Starbreeze Entertainment announced Project Baxter (an internal name) in a December 4th press release, saying that it has licensed the D&D intellectual property from Wizards of the Coast and is currently aiming for a 2026 release date. Project Baxter will “carry the signature Starbreeze game cornerstones of co-operative multiplayer, lifetime commitment through a Games as a Service-model, community engagement and a larger than life experience,” the release said.

Starbreeze will act as publisher on top of development duties using Unreal Engine 5 - the most recent and powerful engine will be the core of dozens of upcoming titles such as The Witcher 4, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl and Senua's Saga: Hellblade II. The studio currently anticipates launching on all major platforms (XBox, Playstation and PC) with cross-platform play included.

“It is hard to imagine a better pairing than Dungeons & Dragons® and Starbreeze – both with their foundation in cooperative and community driven experiences, ‘play it your way’ and infinite replayability,” said Tobias Sjögren, Starbreeze CEO. “Development of the game is in full swing, and we are excited to deliver an amazing Dungeons & Dragons action-adventure in 2026.”

“Dungeons and Dragons is having an extraordinary year,” said Eugene Evans, SVP Digital Strategy and Licensing at Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. “Our gaming brands, including Dungeons & Dragons, continue to attract great partners as we execute our plan to grow our digital games portfolio through licensing and development. Our collaboration with Starbreeze is a prime illustration of this strategy. Given their impressive games and passion for Dungeons & Dragons, we are confident that they will create an experience that will delight fans worldwide.”

Hasbro executed the first stages of this aforementioned plan several years ago, but the results were middling - Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance transmuted the IP’s fantasy fun into muddling toil. That didn’t stop WotC CEO Cynthia Williams from highlighting further digital ventures as a key method for monetising the D&D brand.

Prior to the roaring and somewhat surprising success of Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3, Wizards of the Coast had cancelled five ongoing video game projects, signalling a general lack of commitment in developing D&D video games in-house. Instead, the Hasbro-owned company has gone the route of tabletop peer Games Workshop - lincense that IP out to as many contracted studios as possible and hope one of the lines snag a fat, Baldur’s Gate 3-sized fish.

Two pieces of concept art shared with the announcement show a medieval-ish city abutting a castle in the distance, along with character art of a battle wizard toting a glowing staff and spell tome. The vibe certainly fits D&D’s high fantasy pastiche, but the gameplay remains a bit of a mystery. Will we be looting royal coffers via heists, where the druid sprouts vines up to a side access and the wizard blasts open the vault door while the bard soothes the, er… court hostages?

Starbreeze’s Payday 3 launched in September but stumbled thanks to a bevy of matchmaking software issues, communication issues and delayed patches to fix the initial bugs. The third entry in the popular multiplay co-op series was eventually deemed a success, but that black spot apparently limited its ongoing popualrity.