Wizards of the Coast has hired Blizzard veteran Paul Della Bitta to head up its Digital Ventures games arm.
Bloomberg reports that he will report to the Hasbro-owned company’s president, John Hight. Bitta spent over a decade at Blizzard across two separate stints. He has also held roles at Superplay, Molten Games and Riot, before co-founding Dreamhaven, where he led the company’s publishing business.
Meanwhile, James Ohlen, the co-founder of Wizards of the Coasts’ Archetype Entertainment is stepping aside. He is still going to be a creative consultant for the company and had been asked to “shift his creative focus” to tabletop RPGs.
“At this stage, James felt his work on the game was complete and that the polishing and tuning were in great hands with the team,” Hasbro’s VP of corporate communications, Abby Hodes, said.
Ohlen joined Wizards of the Coast in 2019, having retired from BioWare the year before. The company announced Archetype in January 2020. The studio announced its debut project, Exodus, at The Game Awards 2023; at this year’s show, it was revealed that the title would be launching in early 2027.
Archetype’s other co-founder and GM, Chad Robertson, has described Exodus as “the tip of the spear” for Hasbro’s move into AAA games.
“Exodus was established such that it could be not just a base for video games, but a bunch of other things as well,” he said of the project’s intellectual property.
Hasbro has long coveted a place in the AAA space; last year, the company told GamesIndustry.biz that it had $1 billion invested in in-development projects.
At The Game Awards 2025, Wizards of the Coast also announced Warlock: Dungeons and Dragons from Invoke Studios. That title is set to launch in 2027, too.
