Years after Blizzard ghosted
StarCraft: Ghost,
Kotaku reports hearing from "sources," about another cancelled shooter in
the
StarCraft universe. They say "three people familiar with goings-on at
the studio" inform them Blizzard has axed a first-person shooter codenamed
"Ares" where the player would have been a Terran marine tasked with annihilating
the Zerg. They say nobody will be fired as a result, since staff will be
reallocated to a pair of unannounced games,
Diablo IV and
Overwatch II.
They have an official response from the company, which sort of addresses the
cancellation, but does not confirm the Diablo/Overwatch part of this report.
They note they don't generally comment on such stories, except when they do:
We don’t generally comment on unannounced projects but we will say the
following:
We always have people working on different ideas behind the scenes – including
on multiple projects right now – but the reason we tend not to discuss them
publicly is because anything can happen over the course of development. As has
been the case at Blizzard numerous times in the past, there is always the
possibility that we’ll make the decision to not move forward on a given project.
Announcing something before we feel it’s ready stands the risk of creating a lot
of frustration and disappointment, both for our players and us, not to mention
distraction and added pressure for our development teams.
We pour our hearts and souls into this work, and as players ourselves, we know
how exciting it can be to see and know with certainty that a new project is
coming. Knowing that changes or disappointments can happen doesn’t make it any
less painful when we have to shelve a project or when an announcement doesn’t go
as planned. We always make decisions about these things, regardless of the
ultimate outcome or how things might be interpreted, based on our values, what
we believe makes sense for Blizzard, and what we hope our players will enjoy the
most. The work that goes into these projects – whether they ship or not – is
extraordinarily valuable. It often leads to great things and helps foster a
culture of experimentation here.
With all that said, we’re very much looking forward to revealing other things
we’re working on when the time is right.