Blizzard, the studio behind Overwatch, Diablo and World of Warcraft, is entering a new genre with the announcement who is working on a survival game. It looks like the project is in the early stages of development, so don’t expect a finished product (or even a flashy trailer) anytime soon, but it’s notable that the publisher is playing around with new mechanics and new worlds.
Blizzard’s job post about the survival game says it will be “a place full of heroes we haven’t met yet, stories yet to be told, and adventures yet to be lived. A vast realm of possibilities, waiting to be explored.” So yeah, they’re keeping things vague for now.
The studio confirmed a detail about the project: it will be available on “PC and console”. It’s hard to say whether the use of the singular “console” is prophetic – after all, Microsoft has just announced plans to buy Activision Blizzard, and the cross-platform future of its games is uncertain. Operating as a subsidiary of Microsoft, it’s possible that Blizzard will build a game just for Xbox consoles, leaving PlayStation and Switch gamers in the lurch.
It will likely be at least a year before we hear platform details and concrete information about the game, but Blizzard is looking to hire a handful of people in art, design, and engineering to fill the team.
Activision Blizzard is currently facing a lawsuit and multiple investigations into allegations of systemic gender discrimination and sexual harassment at the studio, where CEO Bobby Kotick has been at the helm for the past 30 years. A Blizzard employee went public with her experience, saying she was “subject to rude comments about [her] body, unwanted sexual advances, touched inappropriately, subjected to alcohol-infused team events and cube crawls, invited to have casual sex with [her] supervisors and surrounded by a culture of brotherhood that is harmful to women.”
Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra vowed last week to rebuild trust in the studio and establish “a safe, inclusive and creative work environment” as it transitions to Microsoft’s roster.
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