Just one week after a new trailer for the upcoming Mass Effect-alike Exodus was unveiled at The Game Awards, a Bloomberg report says James Ohlen, the head of developer Archetype Entertainment, has stepped down.
The change comes as part of what appears to be a shakeup of gaming efforts at Hasbro, which has brought in industry veteran Paul Della Bitta to head up Wizards of the Coast’s Digital Ventures division. Della Bitta spent 10 years across two stints at Blizzard, as well as two years as general manager of Riot Games in North America. More recently, he was a co-founder of Dreamhaven, the developer and publisher headed up by former Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime.
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But it’s the departure of Ohlen that strikes me as the most notable development here, at least from a gamer’s perspective. A 22-year BioWare veteran with lead design and director credits on everything from the original Baldur’s Gate to Anthem, Ohlen took the wheel of a then-unnamed new development studio at Wizards of the Coast in 2019; Exodus, the studio’s first project, was revealed at The Game Awards in 2023. But just two years later, Ohlen is out.
“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 vice president of corporate communications Abby Hodes told Bloomberg. Hodes said Ohlen had “asked to shift his creative focus” to tabletop games, and will remain with Hasbro as a creative consultant.
Good for Ohlen if he feels like he’s done his bit, but there’s a lot of time left before Exodus actually ships: It’s currently targeting a release sometime in early 2027, more than a year from now. That’s a lot of time for “polishing and tuning,” and also what I would think is when you’d really want your studio chief to be on top of things.
I’ve reached out to Archetype Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast for comment and will update if I receive a reply.
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