Hasbro’s ambitious plan to expand into video games appears to have hit an expensive snag, as the company has recorded a $56 million impairment charge related to its video games portfolio for 2028 and beyond, according to its second-quarter earnings results. For the uninitiated, an impairment charge is a sudden loss of value for an asset, making it worth far less than what a company originally paid for it.
“Over the last several quarters, we have reviewed our portfolio and updated our plans for Hasbro’s digital future,” Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said to shareholders. “That work included canceling several games scheduled for release in 2028 and beyond and recording a $56 million non-cash write-down this quarter for related capitalized costs. The write-down reflects the standard we are applying to the portfolio. We are focusing our digital investment behind the franchises, platforms, and partners where we see the clearest upside and where Hasbro has the strongest right to win.”
According to Cocks, Hasbro will have four priorities going forward for its video game projects–focus, cost discipline, ownable platforms, and partnership. The plan includes a new focus on “trading card games and role-playing games,” a decrease in total digital spend, prioritizing its own IP, and finding the right partners for these projects. Cocks cited Scopely as a prime example, as the studio’s work on Monopoly Go is expected to exceed a lifetime revenue of $8 billion later this year.
While Hasbro had big video game plans lined up, recent years have seen the company scale back and cancel several of its projects. It hasn’t detailed exactly which games got cut, but it did mention that sci-fi adventure Exodus and its Dungeons & Dragons game Warlock are still scheduled to launch in 2027. While Atomic Arcade–the studio behind a new GI Joe game featuring fan-favorite character Snake Eyes–had layoffs earlier this year, Hasbro said that the developer’s project still remains in development.
“The digital strategy is straightforward. We are taking lower-conviction-projects out of the portfolio, reducing our annual spend base and concentrating investment behind the places where Hasbro has the best chance to build durable digital franchises: Magic, D&D, owned platforms, partner-led economics, and a concentrated number of high-conviction owned titles,” Cocks added.
Hasbro initially announced that it had formed six new internal studios in 2022, but since then, there have been some big changes behind the scenes. Baldur’s Gate 3 and Monopoly Go were early hits for Hasbro, but in 2023, five of its game projects were canceled, and there were sweeping layoffs throughout its newly formed video game division. In 2024, head of digital product development Dan Ayoub said that Hasbro had invested $1 billion across its Invoke, Archtype, Skeleton Key, and Atomic Arcade game studios, and in 2026, Ayoub told The Game Business that not a single one of those projects was designed to be a game-as-a-service title.
In May, Hasbro confirmed that the single-player action-adventure title set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons and being developed by Giant Skull–the studio founded by Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and God of War 3 director Stig Asmussen–had been canceled.