Blizzard Survival Game Cancelled

Blizzard Survival Game Cancelled after 6+ years of development.

Update January 2024 – Sadly this is the final update, as according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier the game, know as Odyssey, has been cut with the latest round of layoffs at Microsoft. Obviously, if anything changes in future we’ll reignite this article.

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1750530048132878577

You can read the original article about the game and it’s updates below.

Update – October 2022 – well, it looks like the staff ramp-up is well underway. Blizzard is now really getting into the hiring mood for this new title. For now, the focus appears to be two-fold: Engineering and Art.

Engineering Roles:

Lead Netcode Engineer
Senior Software Engineer, Core Gameplay
Senior Software Engineer, Asset System
Software Engineer, Gameplay Combat
Software Engineer, Content Systems
Software Engineer, AI
Software Engineer, Graphics
Senior Software Engineer, Server
Senior Software Engineer, Features
Engine Systems Engineer

Art positions:

Senior Art Director
Senior Art Manager
Environment and Character concept artists
VFX Artist (associate to Senior)
Gameplay & Creature Animators
Lead Artists, Buildings
Lead Artists, Point of Interest
Lead Artists, Props and Interactives

A lot of these roles are also looking for multiple people in each position. It’s been around 9-months since we last heard from Blizzard about this title, so it’s good to get a small update.

Blizzard Survival Game, an FPS?

Based on a number of job postings, it looks like Blizzard is going with a first-person perspective for this title. Based on the postings and genre, we imagine we’re looking at a high fantasy Survival FPS in a multiplayer environment. Maybe we’ll see a fantasy Rust. Now, a lot of people are throwing the word MMO about in regard to this title; for us, we think that might be a step too far. At most, this will be an MMO like Destiny, but we think we’ll see this title be more like Rust or ARK.

Whatever it is, it’ll be an important title for Blizzard, and maybe Microsoft if that takeover is approved. The last new IP from Blizzard was Overwatch. And while that title hasn’t always had the most incredible history, it is a good game, so much so it got a sequel late in 2022.

Below is from the original story in January 2022

While their recent acquisition by Microsoft isn’t approved yet, Blizzard has chosen to announce a future project. The project was teased last week by Mike Ybarra, who said:

“A couple awesome product reviews last week – really proud of the team’s focus on our players. Another this week, then 2 more last week of January. Can’t wait until we can share with all of you”

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It’s obviously early days for the project, with Blizzard putting out feelers for new staff. We know that the game will come to PC and Console and that it will be “full of heroes we have yet to meet”. Survival is a fairly broad term for a game, so it might be something akin to Rust, or it could be more like Minecraft. It’s clearly very early days, and knowing Blizzard, it will be a long time until we see any sort of gameplay.

The game will be Blizzard’s first new IP since 2016 once it finally comes out. Overwatch itself was Blizzard’s first new IP in 17 years, so seeing a new one drop within 10 years of Overwatch is impressive. Now we just await what the other project Mike teased was. With WoW’s patch 9.2 coming soon, and an expansion expected, a lot of WoW fans will be hoping the project is WoW related.

Staffing up

The project is clearly a long way off and judging by the job recruitment page, it’s certainly a big project. With jobs in Art, Design, and Engineering, it looks like this might be a fresh team within Blizzard. Famously, each of Blizzard’s teams focuses on a one-genre at a time. Team 2 for MMOs, Team 1 for RTS titles etc. So this new team is likely to be a new “survival” team rather than an existing one.