Blizzard cancels survival recreation following layoffs – The Verge

By Andrew Webster, an leisure editor masking streaming, digital worlds, and each single Pokémon online game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 tales.
In 2022, Blizzard announced that it was making a survival game, which might’ve marked its first new property since Overwatch debuted in 2016. Now, as part of a recent round of layoffs at Microsoft, the sport has been canceled.
This morning, Microsoft laid off 1,900 workers in its gaming divisions. The cuts primarily hit employees at Activision Blizzard — which Microsoft acquired in October for $68.7 billion — although some staff at its ZeniMax and Xbox divisions have been impacted as properly. (The announcement adopted comparable cuts at League of Legends developer Riot Video games, which cut more than 500 jobs earlier this week, a part of an ongoing trend of layoffs in the gaming industry.)
“Right this moment’s actions have an effect on a number of groups inside Blizzard, together with improvement groups, shared service organizations and company features,” Matt Booty, head of Xbox Studios, mentioned in a word to employees. “As a part of this focus, Blizzard is ending improvement on its survival recreation venture and shall be shifting a number of the folks engaged on it to considered one of a number of promising new initiatives Blizzard has within the early phases of improvement.”
As a part of the announcement, Booty additionally confirmed that Blizzard president Mike Ybarra shall be leaving the corporate, as is chief design officer Allen Adham.
Whereas few particulars, together with a reputation, have been revealed for the survival recreation, it was notable as a uncommon new franchise from Blizzard, which primarily focuses on its core manufacturers of Diablo, Warcraft, Overwatch, and StarCraft.
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