Moments ago, shocking revelations were made as a slew of announcements came out of Microsoft. First, almost 2000 employees are to be laid off; second, Blizzard’s President, Mike Ybarra, is leaving the company. Not only that but it was confirmed that Activision Blizzard’s unannounced survival game, which surfaced in ArtStation profiles last year, has been cancelled. It was said that teams working on that project, which will now never be revealed, will be shifted to work on other projects.
Not Taking Advantage
At present, survival games are seeing a huge boom. Most recently, the success of Pocket Pair’s Palworld has shown that open-world survival games (particularly those that mimic Pokémon) have immense power in the industry, pulling in millions of players with ease. The ongoing success of the likes of DayZ, the early access boons of Sons of the Forest, and the constant staying power of Escape from Tarkov all prove that gamers love survival element in their games.
Sadly, following a wave of layoffs at Microsoft that has impacted the firm’s gaming branches (including Activision and Bethesda), Activision Blizzard’s unrevealed survival game has been cancelled.
To date, we’ve seen nothing tangible about the survival game outside of references made on various profiles online, and ironically, the official cancellation of the project is the first time the existence of it has been confirmed – in a way.
In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, Xbox’s Matt Booty stressed that those working on the cancelled survival game will be moving on to other in-development projects at Activision Blizzard.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news about the Black Forest layoffs
