The survival game that Blizzard Entertainment had unofficially announced for 2022 was apparently shelved during its six-year production cycle due to engine problems, according to a recent Bloomberg story. This revelation comes after the announcement yesterday that Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and Xbox are among the companies that Microsoft is cutting off 1,900 workers. In addition, we heard that the aforementioned survival game had been scrapped and that Blizzard president Mike Ybarra was leaving the business.
Blizzard, meanwhile, didn’t fully address the reason behind the cancellation of the game that it had only announced precisely two years earlier. The game’s technology, which was initially prototyped using Epic Games’ Unreal technology, was the subject of development difficulties, as detailed in a recent story from Bloomberg. “Blizzard executives decided to switch, in part, because it wouldn’t support their ambitions for vast maps supporting up to 100 players at once.”
Bloomberg claims over cancellations
Bloomberg claims that the developers of this game, which was once known as Odyssey, changed to Blizzard’s proprietary engine Synapse, which was first created for mobile games and “envisioned as something that would be shared across many of its projects.” According to reports, this caused serious issues with Odyssey’s development. It seems that the Activision Blizzard team had anticipated that its new owners, Microsoft, would let them return to Unreal Engine after Microsoft bought the company last year for an astounding $69 billion. But that transition did not occur.
Those who played early versions of the game expressed enjoyment and noted its potential in a world where survival games are as popular as they are, Bloomberg reports, noting that despite engine issues, the game’s development progressed. The early access survival game Palworld, which is titled “Pokémon With Guns,” sold almost 8 million downloads on Steam in just six days this week. However, this figure does not account for those who used Xbox and PC Game Pass.
According to Bloomberg, Blizzard was hoping to add more members to the Odyssey team in order to meet its release date objective of 2026 for the survival game. However, “even that seemed overly optimistic to some developers.” Furthermore, the once-exciting Blizzard game has been canceled and, as far as we know officially, development is over.
After Activision Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft, some Odyssey developers thought they would be able to return to Unreal Engine to complete the project. At one point, Blizzard even planned to increase hiring in order to release the game by 2026. However, the project was ultimately shelved when the company decided Synapse was not ready for production.
Blizzard Spokesperson statement
Blizzard spokesperson Andrew Reynolds stated, “As difficult as these decisions are to make, experimentation and taking risks are part of Blizzard’s history and the creative process.” “Ideas find their way into games, sometimes even becoming their own games. One of the hardest things to achieve in gaming is to start from scratch, therefore we are really appreciative of all the creative individuals that helped with the project.”
