Blizzard’s new survival game has been cancelled amid layoffs

Blizzard has recently cancelled one of its largest projects, the survival game codenamed Odyssey. The announcement came as part of a reorganisation of Microsoft's game studios, resulting in 1,900 layoffs, or 8% of the gaming division's workforce.

According to Bloomberg, the game was designed as a survival game similar to Minecraft and Rust, but aiming to be more polished and with fewer bugs. The game was developed for almost six years, outlasting many previous Blizzard incubation projects. Blizzard spokesman Andrew Reynolds said in a statement that the game's development had ended to reroute resources to other projects that have more potential, including new projects Blizzard has in its early stages.

Blizzard has largely focused on its established IPs (Warcraft and Diablo). However, during Odyssey's development, the company made a significant investment, assembling a team of more than 100 people to work on the game. Even so, reported technical challenges with the engine made developing such an ambitious title very difficult.

Initially developed using Unreal Engine, Blizzard officials chose to switch to Synapse, an internal engine that the corporation had initially built for mobile games and envisioned as something that could be used across other projects. Reportedly, switching to Synapse was mooted because this engine would support up to 100 players. However, development using Blizzard's engine was going slowly, leading Odyssey's artists to keep using Unreal Engine, knowing their work would be scrapped later.

The Microsoft deal was finalised, and several Blizzard employees hoped they could return to Unreal Engine rather than attempt to complete the game on Synapse. Despite the hurdles, Odyssey looked to be making progress, and people who played early versions of the game appreciated it and saw a lot of commercial potential for a survival game that met Blizzard's quality standards. Nonetheless, Odyssey remained years away from completion. Blizzard planned to extend the team to hundreds of people to meet the 2026 release date, but developers thought it was too optimistic. In the end, the game was cancelled.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: Were you interested in Blizzard's survival game? Do you think Blizzard should have continued to develop Odyssey, or by the time it would be ready for launch, interest in survival games would have been lost?

Become a Patron!