By Mark Seavy

Licensing has become a priority for videogame developers.

And while brand licensing has long been part of the strategy for videogame publishers like Nintendo, Sony, Activision Blizzard (now Microsoft), Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Capcom, and others, this is a relatively new development for the designers themselves.

The interest has in large part been powered by the recent spate of television series inspired by videogames. This includes Bethesda Games Studio’s Fallout, CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher and Cyberpunk: Edgerunner, and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us. The TV series based on these titles expand the world of the games rather than being strictly tied to the stories covered in the gameplay.

That approach has proved successful in drawing in audiences beyond dedicated gamers and contrasts with a raft of videogame-inspired movies several years ago (including Warcraft: The Beginning, Assassin’s Creed, and the sixth installment of the Resident Evil franchise) that struggled at the box office.

It’s clear videogame developers took notice of the success of these recent TV shows, with several developers and publishers discussing the strategy at Licensing Expo in Las Vegas. The “Video Games: Driving Billions to Play” keynote at the tradeshow provided insights into the growing strategy of incorporating content plans into the creation of new games and how that affects consumer products programs.

CD Projekt, for example, paired the 2022 release of the 1.6 version of the Cyberpunk 2077 game with the release of the Cyberpunk: Edgerunner series on Netflix. Since then, merchandise has become “more than half of what we do now,” said Nick McWorter, Director of Global Licensing at CD Projekt.

“Licensing is a priority now and it is about making content that ties back to the videogames world, but also creates a different lane for people to enjoy it,” McWorter said. “There will continue to be engagement at all levels and [videogame] IPs are really becoming more mainstream. Fallout and The Last of Us are now pop culture IPs—it’s not just the hardcore gamers that play the titles for hours. There are more ways for people to engage with the games now and we want to have different ways to explore them.”

This openness to licensing from the developer perspective wasn’t always the case. Minecraft Chief Content Officer Vu Bui once saw little need for licensing and downplayed its importance.

“Licensing is a small portion of our business, and we want to keep it that way,” Bui told The Guardian newspaper shortly before a keynote speech at Brand Licensing Europe in 2014. “We’re a games studio, and I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. People do want to have something physical in their life when they’re not in front of a screen. And when we make merchandise, we’re thinking about making something for the people who want it and love it, not just as a source of revenues.”

A change of heart was evident at last week’s Licensing Expo, where Minecraft took booth space on the showroom floor. A Minecraft movie, which Bui first mentioned in 2014, is set to hit the big screen via Warner Bros. Discovery on April 4th, 2025. Minecraft now has an extensive licensing program with plans to expand further in the food & beverage and electronics categories, said Federico San Martin, Senior Director of Consumer Products at Minecraft. In fact, Higround recently introduced a limited-edition Minecraft keyboard.

“It is a natural extension of a franchise and a Minecraft story,” San Martin said. “The movie is not an origin story but rather an area that complements the franchise. It is an extension of where we are going as an IP. Right now, there is a movie, but we [also] have things coming up in consumer products and experiential.”

Developers’ growing focus on extending videogames beyond the confines of videogame consoles, PCs, and smartphones to target multiple product categories and content formats is part of what licensing executives have dubbed a trend towards “transmedia.”

For example, Nintendo has several parks based on its IPs, the second film inspired by the horror game Five Nights at Freddy’s is due in 2025, Rovio opened a café inspired by the Angry Birds brand in New York, and the streaming series Knuckles, based on a character from Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, was released on Paramount+ on April 26th. Sega also hired former Disney and Scopely executive Justin Scarpone earlier this year to serve as EVP and Head of the newly formed Global Transmedia Group.

“There is not a better time in Hollywood for games than right now,” said Maya Rogers, CEO of The Tetris Company, which last year released its first movie, a biographical film about the race to license and patent Tetris. “You have creators who grew up with the games who are sitting in positions where they can make the shows and put the time and quality behind it. And platforms are putting the capital they need against the property.”