After the January exit of former Warner Bros. Games Chief David Haddad, the company is currently restructuring in a franchise-focused shift similar to the changes at the larger Warner Bros. Discovery and the relatively recent reorganization of their film and television studios. Warner Bros. Games parent company Warner Bros. Discovery stated earlier this month that they intended on splitting into two separate companies with individual leadership. These two companies are WBD Global Networks which will be run by CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, and WBD Streaming & Studios which will be led by CEO David Zaslay, with the WB Games studios falling into the Streaming & Studios company.
The division and restructuring of the company are expected sometime by the middle of 2026 and whether or not this decision has been made in an effort to negate the necessity for an overall leader or if the company is still seeking a replacement for Haddad is unknown at present. Regardless of their motivation, WB is moving forward with the company split and tapping industry veterans to take the helm of each individual development and publishing division that are based around popular franchises within their catalogue.
Under the new evolution of Warner Bros. Games development, the tech and production leadership structure will feature WB Games Montréal’s studio head Yves Lachance as Senior Vice President of Development, who will be overseeing the dev teams that are working on the Game of Thrones and Harry Potter games. NetherRealm studio head Shaun Himmerick has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Development overseeing the teams working on any DC games as well as the Mortal Kombat series. Steven Flenory, the studio chief of Games New York will be Senior Vice President of Central Tech & Services in overseeing publishing and game technology, quality assurance, customer service, and user research.
All three of these SVPs will be reporting directly to Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO of Global Streaming and Games, J.B. Perette. The WB Games publishing division will also continue being overseen by Perette who had this to say in a recent statement:
“Our company is home to some of the biggest franchises in the world, and we are optimizing our team structure to develop long-term franchise roadmaps to delight players and fans of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat and DC games,”
“We are very fortunate to have a strong stable of development and technology talent, and Yves, Shaun and Steven are respected leaders with excellent track records in their areas of expertise. I’m looking forward to working closely with them and the team as we work to make the best games possible for our key franchises.”
This restructuring will hopefully allow for individualized leadership styles and protocols and will provide for a greater depth of focus and consideration when developing these beloved franchises. In recent years, many of WB’s gaming studio releases have been met with critical and commercial failure due to a recurring reliance on live-service models and an overwhelming amount of post-release paid content, as well as many rushed titles not having time to be properly polished before released, leaving a great deal of fans of the franchises with a sour taste in their mouth when speaking about Warner Bros.
I believe that breaking the company up into multiple divisions dedicated to specific franchises will have an overall positive impact on the quality of the games produced, as well as the quality of work for their developers. If all goes as planned and the new members of leadership properly manage their staff and keep the focus on product quality rather than quick profit, then this shift should be good for both the company and their fan base, and if we’re really lucky we’ll see a return to form from some of their previous hits.
Are you looking forward to more Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC games? Do you think WB is making the right decision with this division? What would you like to see from them next? Let us know what you think over on the Discord.
