Lego is starting to bring its game development in-house, key exec says

The Lego Group is bringing its video game development efforts in-house.

The Danish toymaking giant has lent its name to decades of video game products, but the vast majority of these have been developed in collaboration with third-party studios and not by Lego itself.

Now, the firm behind the globally successful building kits has said it wants to start to bring video game development in-house, though it’s unclear if this spells the end of Lego’s collaborative efforts with other game makers.

“We can say, as long as we’re under the Lego brand, we can cover experiences for kids of all ages, digital or physical. [Games development in-house] is something we’re building up,” Niels Christiansen, Lego’s chief executive, told the Financial Times.

Lego’s most significant video game project at the moment is its long-standing collaboration with Epic Games. Fortnite introduced a Lego mode last year, and since then it has grown into one of the game’s most popular verticals. The game, which is a crafting and survival mode as opposed to Fortnite’s battle royale mode, features Lego minifigure versions of hundreds of Fortnite skins.

Many game fans will associate Lego video games with the TT Games series of Lego adventure games that have been released over the last two decades.

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While these games have largely ceased being developed by TT, rumours persist of a new Lego Harry Potter title that would cover the entire franchise in the same style as Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga, which was a commercial and critical hit for the studio.

Outside of those games, Lego has partnered with 2K on a racing game, 2K Drive, which was released last year. VGC understands that this game was planned to be the first in a series of Lego sports games, including a Lego football game.

While the Lego football game has yet to officially surface, Lego sets based on the game have appeared online, suggesting that the game is still in development.