Yesterday noticed 1,900 Microsoft staff get laid off, and a high-profile cancellation of Blizzard’s subsequent challenge, codenamed Odyssey.
The survival MMO, first unveiled in 2022, was scrapped after six years of growth. And a brand new report from Bloomberg claims its chief failing stemmed from the engine it was working on.
Odyssey was pitched in 2017 and prototyped on Epic’s Unreal Engine. However it could not deal with maps with as much as 100 simultaneous gamers, so the crew needed to swap to the studio’s proprietary Synapse engine.
Synapse is used solely for Blizzard’s cellular video games, although, which led to “important issues.” As a result of its expertise was gradual, Odyssey artists prototyped in Unreal, realizing it’d get scrapped regardless.
When Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard, crew members hoped it’d justify a pivot again to Unreal. Bloomberg mentioned Odyssey progress continued regardless of setbacks, and had stable early impressions.
Likewise, the crew hoped to develop in measurement (by the “a whole lot”) so Odyssey may launch in 2026. That appeared “overly optimistic” to some, and the challenge was killed after Synapse was deemed unfit for manufacturing.
Odyssey’s crew, very similar to the MMO, is nicely and really lifeless
In an announcement to Bloomberg, Blizzard defined famous how creating a completely new property “is among the many hardest issues to do in [games]. We’re immensely grateful to all the gifted individuals who supported the challenge.”
Past being a survival recreation, Odyssey’s different promoting level was it being Blizzard’s first unique IP since Overwatch. Its crew featured Dan Hay, who beforehand labored on the survival-lite Far Cry video games.
On account of its cancellation, the Odyssey crew has been laid off. A number of took a moment on social media to mourn the sport that would’ve been.
These from that crew and nonetheless at Blizzard will likely be shifted to different “new tasks Blizzard has within the early levels of growth.”
