If it makes you feel any better a lot of Actiblizz management has been shown the door or is going to be shown the door by March.
Jason Schreier (Bloomberg): Blizzard Cancels Big New Game After Six Years of Development
- Thread starter Shirke
- Start date
- News Microsoft Activision/Blizzard
If it makes you feel any better a lot of Actiblizz management has been shown the door or is going to be shown the door by March.
Executive management informs the strategy of the company and therefore decisions like "should we make or buy" fall squarely within their purview.
A Blizard AAA survival game could have been huge, but I feel like a 100 person instance was not needed and seemed very Battleground trendy.
It's a shame the developers couldn't scale back and just make a well made polished experience focusing on things that work well together.
It's a shame the developers couldn't scale back and just make a well made polished experience focusing on things that work well together.
It must be rough for a developer to spend so many of their years working on something only for it to be cancelled in the end.
They at least earned their salaries, but it's still a crushing feeling.
They at least earned their salaries, but it's still a crushing feeling.
There's a lot to say about Ubisoft, but they have flops like hyperscape, roller champions, and cancel 7 games in a fiscal…. And no layoffs
Most publishers or studios, from small to even much bigger ones, one flop or one cancelled project… entire teams gone in a snap
(Hope I didn't jinx it lol)
Most publishers or studios, from small to even much bigger ones, one flop or one cancelled project… entire teams gone in a snap
(Hope I didn't jinx it lol)
Those execs will be experienced developers themselves. Don't assume being an exec means they know nothing about making games.
We keep getting stories like this re: the engine situation, especially as these big studios rely so much more on contractors. It's really down to executive malfeasance. Really awful decisions. 343 is a mess because of them trying to have their cake and eat it to with using a difficult engine with high training requirements, while also relying mostly on temps.
There are a lot of people in top level positions in the games industry who have no business being there. It's a real issue with seeing "executive" as a job in and of itself, they're too divorced from the actual work being done and the actual products being made.
There are a lot of people in top level positions in the games industry who have no business being there. It's a real issue with seeing "executive" as a job in and of itself, they're too divorced from the actual work being done and the actual products being made.
Margins are much higher on proprietary engines than liscense ones… it's different than the old days where revenue just came up front and over a few months, and that was it, and you cut a check to Epic or whoever for their cut, and move on.
Now with recurring player investment, games as a service and years of defelopment and monetization… you can imagine the millions and millions lost building an ecosystem on someone else's tools.
Someone is going to have to pay for that, as costs rise on games and profits decline. You either make up those margins on tools or people…
So you see engine consolidate with internal tools and a few years of training and inefficiency, with the hope of moving talent to different projects using the new engine, on highly trained specialists now, etc.
Companies that do a lot of outsourcing or temp work struggle with this more than ones with big internal full time talent teams
they're gonna work on overwatch and Diablo And WoW forever, it's fixed
I think it's WoW Xpacs and a Diablo 4 Xpac for the forseeable future and that's it
6 years with a staff of about a 100 and still years away from release?! That's a lot of money burning. I completely understand it getting axed.
Blizzard was working on Titan for 7 years too, in the late 2000s/early 2010s, before they scrapped it and went with Overwatch.
They definitely have had management failures there over the years.
They definitely have had management failures there over the years.
Blizzard has been a giant managerial fuck up for the last 15 years between canceled games and managers being actual fucking pests. This game was 6 years in development and still years away from release. At a certain point you have to go, Blizzard in its current state cannot ship this game on time and support it after launch like it would need to to be profitable while also supporting 3 other live games. It's all a sunk cost
Palworld was a gamepass filler sequel by the studio whose previous game they signed up for the service that they lucked out on. Not some genius analytical genre trend prediction
Jason Schreier confirmed Blizzard has other unannounced games in development in one of the TV interviews today.
View: https://youtu.be/dYJnYy_wbm0?feature=shared
Around 2 minutes 35 seconds
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Soooo, what other new, non-sequel games are coming out from Blizzard that have been in development for 5 years or so….. ?
edit: oops I should read the post above me.
edit: oops I should read the post above me.
I don't think they take a decision like this lightly.
Furthermore, these type of games require support on the long term, further keeping resources from other games / new projects.
Blizzard has been heavily leaning on past successes for years now and a middling game would not do their brand or Xbox well.
Six years. Six years. That is an insane amount of time to develop and game and still be "years away" from being ready for release.
I think this one stings a bit more than Titan getting cancelled. The entire project sounds like it would have been amazing.
So it's just more Overwatch, Diablo 4, WoW, and Hearthstone for the next 5+ years at this point?
I think this one stings a bit more than Titan getting cancelled. The entire project sounds like it would have been amazing.
So it's just more Overwatch, Diablo 4, WoW, and Hearthstone for the next 5+ years at this point?
They should have sticked with UEQ from the start. Releasing on UE and having a smooth development from the start is still better than such pirouettes that led to nothing.
6 years lost in vain. A huge shame.
6 years lost in vain. A huge shame.
Blizzard dev cycles are typically on the longer side, and it's always been justified because their games sell very well and have long tails. But since Activision took over, they seem to want to get the same sales magic, only faster, and monetized forever with microtransactions.
I'm not saying Blizzard can't possibly get more efficient, but they previously had a "when it's done" mentality, and now it's a "when the execs say it's done" mentality.
It is legitimately insane that they were prototyping in Unreal and then forced to port everything over to their new engine. Like in no universe was that a reasonable plan, even for a company with the resources Blizzard has.
I've seen some people speculate that the execs didn't want to use Unreal because they'd have to pay the 5%, but 1) A company like Blizzard signs a "partnership" with Epic and doesn't actually pay 5%, and 2) The process they wanted was significantly more expensive than that 5%.
I'm not saying Blizzard can't possibly get more efficient, but they previously had a "when it's done" mentality, and now it's a "when the execs say it's done" mentality.
It is legitimately insane that they were prototyping in Unreal and then forced to port everything over to their new engine. Like in no universe was that a reasonable plan, even for a company with the resources Blizzard has.
I've seen some people speculate that the execs didn't want to use Unreal because they'd have to pay the 5%, but 1) A company like Blizzard signs a "partnership" with Epic and doesn't actually pay 5%, and 2) The process they wanted was significantly more expensive than that 5%.
God, that's so heartbreaking. I feel so bad for the team :(
In my time with this industry, I've seen many a game get quietly cancelled, and teams let go, and it fucking sucks every single time.
Some of the team may be able to be rolled onto other internal projects, or if the studio is part of a larger corporation, transferred to a "sister" studio, but not everyone is able to be moved to something else.
This project sounds like it was genuinely promising, but mismanagement and poor decisions led to its downfall. Sometimes a lot of ego in this industry will sink a project, and it's infuriating, because, as part of leadership, it is your job to set aside ego and balance what's best for the team and your project. Bullheadedly moving forward with your "grand vision" for the project, despite being informed what is and isn't working, is beyond frustrating, and leads to others hurting because of it.
I believe I've told this anecdote before, but a long, long time ago, I was working for a publisher that had one of their studios working on a licensed game. The game was actually pretty well received by the players, because they were fans of the IP, and the game was fun. The problem, was that the game just wasn't making enough money. So one of the main leads on the projects attempted to rework the business model of the game to generate more profit, and some of the producers tried to reason with them that those changes would not be received well, and would piss off players, and ultimately hurt the game.
But the lead was adamant that their vision would work, and that the game would gain new fans (despite it being an IP that, while beloved, had a pretty limited reach in terms of gaining new generations interested in the title), so who cares if the current player base got screwed over. So their rework was implemented, and, as was warned, the community was furious, and player numbers dropped, the review scores tanked, and, ultimately, the IP owner pulled the license, and the game was scuttled. All because this person in a position of power couldn't set aside their pride and ego. And, as you'd expect, because the project was dead, and no money was being generated, people were laid off.
Making video games is a collaborative effort. There's absolutely no place for pride and ego in this industry, yet it is common. More than just your livelihood is at stake in this industry. The whole point is to work together to make this kickass game, and compromise when the unpredictability of game development rears its head. Being adaptable, and open to new ideas and input from your team mates is so fucking vital.
Sorry, this story just makes me so sad and angry, because I feel like it could have been avoided had leadership been more open to alternative solutions to the problems they were facing, whether that be reducing the scope of the game to accommodate the new engine, or reaching out to Epic to see if there was a way to work with them to get UE4 working for a game with such a potentially large player count (and, from what I've gotten from this thread, that's exactly what ended up happening with PUBG, which paved the way for Fortnite, and changes to UE4 to accommodate that scale of game).
I hope everyone on the Odyssey team is able to land on their feet and find new work.
In my time with this industry, I've seen many a game get quietly cancelled, and teams let go, and it fucking sucks every single time.
Some of the team may be able to be rolled onto other internal projects, or if the studio is part of a larger corporation, transferred to a "sister" studio, but not everyone is able to be moved to something else.
This project sounds like it was genuinely promising, but mismanagement and poor decisions led to its downfall. Sometimes a lot of ego in this industry will sink a project, and it's infuriating, because, as part of leadership, it is your job to set aside ego and balance what's best for the team and your project. Bullheadedly moving forward with your "grand vision" for the project, despite being informed what is and isn't working, is beyond frustrating, and leads to others hurting because of it.
I believe I've told this anecdote before, but a long, long time ago, I was working for a publisher that had one of their studios working on a licensed game. The game was actually pretty well received by the players, because they were fans of the IP, and the game was fun. The problem, was that the game just wasn't making enough money. So one of the main leads on the projects attempted to rework the business model of the game to generate more profit, and some of the producers tried to reason with them that those changes would not be received well, and would piss off players, and ultimately hurt the game.
But the lead was adamant that their vision would work, and that the game would gain new fans (despite it being an IP that, while beloved, had a pretty limited reach in terms of gaining new generations interested in the title), so who cares if the current player base got screwed over. So their rework was implemented, and, as was warned, the community was furious, and player numbers dropped, the review scores tanked, and, ultimately, the IP owner pulled the license, and the game was scuttled. All because this person in a position of power couldn't set aside their pride and ego. And, as you'd expect, because the project was dead, and no money was being generated, people were laid off.
Making video games is a collaborative effort. There's absolutely no place for pride and ego in this industry, yet it is common. More than just your livelihood is at stake in this industry. The whole point is to work together to make this kickass game, and compromise when the unpredictability of game development rears its head. Being adaptable, and open to new ideas and input from your team mates is so fucking vital.
Sorry, this story just makes me so sad and angry, because I feel like it could have been avoided had leadership been more open to alternative solutions to the problems they were facing, whether that be reducing the scope of the game to accommodate the new engine, or reaching out to Epic to see if there was a way to work with them to get UE4 working for a game with such a potentially large player count (and, from what I've gotten from this thread, that's exactly what ended up happening with PUBG, which paved the way for Fortnite, and changes to UE4 to accommodate that scale of game).
I hope everyone on the Odyssey team is able to land on their feet and find new work.
Recipe for disaster no doubt.
Sucks as it seemed the team was really proud of it too.
But at six years and an optimistic date of 2026...at some point you gotta cut off the limb and not get trapped in sunk cost fallacy.
I've seen it played out in my own projects division many times.
Nah.
They were prob promoted.
What a waste. And we will never know anything about it. Maybe they will repurpose some of the concepts/art for their existing games/franchises.
This sucks. I think Blizzard is finally just dead in my eyes. I always knew, from the day they announced they were merging with Activision, that they would be the little brother that got bullied in the merger and it would kill the company. It has taken longer than I thought, but we have finally arrived at the end of the line.
A survival game from Blizzard with polish like their previous great franchises would have been something that could have stoked the fire at the company and been a beacon of light to the next generation of Blizzard workers… what a shame it's all going to be thrown away.
A survival game from Blizzard with polish like their previous great franchises would have been something that could have stoked the fire at the company and been a beacon of light to the next generation of Blizzard workers… what a shame it's all going to be thrown away.
Great reporting from Jason as usual, shame they were not given the opportunity to try and make the game in unreal like they wanted if the main problem holding back development was the mobile engine they were stuck on.
I know sunk cost fallacy and all that but if the main problem was an engine imposed on them by Activision Blizzard higher ups they could have been given the opportunity to use Unreal for a while and see how did the project progress as a result for a year or two once Microsoft took over before deciding to cancel it.
I know sunk cost fallacy and all that but if the main problem was an engine imposed on them by Activision Blizzard higher ups they could have been given the opportunity to use Unreal for a while and see how did the project progress as a result for a year or two once Microsoft took over before deciding to cancel it.
Makes no sense to flat out can it, should have released what was playable in an early access state to see the public's interest in it before just outright canning that much work.
Yeah they should have just used UE for this. Blizzard has enough custom in house engines.
Lots of Ubisoft studios are located in countries that are not the United States and have actual labor laws. Ubisoft itself is not an American company, they have a different mindset.
I am really hoping for some leaks with screenshots and gameplay videos. Would love to see what they had cooking there
With the way the industry is going I can see a number of games that are having development problems just getting cancelled. One game I would not be surprised if it got cancelled is Perfect Dark, its years since we have seen anything and is the team helping with it not releasing a Tomb Raider game first.
Likely because they dont want to lose potentially millions to Epic engine licensing
Just because you're using UE doesn't mean you'll have smooth development. Take a look at how long Rocksteady is making their new game.
They control the purse strings and I assume like most industries you design and build with a budget in mind.