Project Baxter, the D&D based cooperative game announced in December 2023 by Starbreeze, has been canceled by the Swedish game developer. The news was shared this morning by Starbreeze, which is 'refocusing' on its owned IP, PAYDAY, according to CEO Adolf Kristjansson:
I want to sincerely thank the Baxter team for their passion and creativity, and express appreciation to Wizards of the Coast for their support. Though we have made the decision to not continue forward with this project, we are proud of what was achieved in Baxter, and those contributions will carry forward into PAYDAY and the future of Starbreeze. By concentrating our efforts on PAYDAY, we give Starbreeze and all our employees the best chance to succeed.
Project Baxter was slated to launch in 2026, but it was still in the pre-production phase in February 2024, which made us skeptical at the time. The decision to discontinue this D&D game might have been a mix of problems with the project and the desire to fix the PAYDAY franchise, which has suffered due to the poor reception of the third installment and, more recently, due to the controversy surrounding the new PAYDAY 2 subscription and the simultaneous (now reverted) price increase of the Infamous Collection DLC bundle. This cancellation comes with a write-off of a $27 million investment for the game and the decision to fire around 44 employees between internal developers and external contractors.
Perhaps at some point, we'll get a glimpse of footage of Project Baxter to see what could have been. It happened in June with the canceled D&D open-world RPG that was in development at Hidden Path.
As a Dungeons and Dragons fan, I hope no more games attached to the franchise get canceled. There's still a healthy lineup on the way, between Demeo x DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Battlemarked (out in 2025), a new game from Invoke (the studio behind Dark Alliance), and an action/adventure game in development at Giant Skull. Last month, the president of Wizards of the Coast confided that he'd love to see a new D&D MMORPG, though he also suggested it won't be happening any time soon, if at all.
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