Odyssey, Blizzard's survival game, canceled after more than 6 years of development

The year 2024 and the final stretch of the fiscal year in the video game industry present big curves, and the massive layoffs announced by Xbox have affected one of the games that Blizzard had in development: Odyssey. This is the survival game that the Irvine, California company was making, a game that was more than six years in the making and was announced in 2022, but of which only concept art was shown. The game was not close to being released, so Blizzard’s decision was forceful, a cancellation confirmed shortly after Microsoft’s purchase of the company was made official.

Blizzard is no stranger to canceling big projects, are you familiar with Starcraft: Ghost and Project Titan? Both titles were highly anticipated at the time. The former was an action game based on the popular real-time strategy saga starring Nova and set four years after Brood War, the expansion to the original Starcraft, while Project Titan was a canceled MMORPG that would eventually become Overwatch. Unfortunately for many players, Odyssey has suffered the same fate as those projects, and we will have to wait and see if all the work done over the years will end up being used for another project, thus not wasting all the effort put into what was supposed to be the company’s survival game.

Microsoft continues the trend of massive layoffs in the video game industry

We are living the final stretch of the fiscal year in the video game industry, which is proving to be quite an odyssey for thousands of professionals. Mass layoffs in several prestigious companies, highlighting in recent days some of the importance of Riot Games and Microsoft, with the latter announcing the dismissal of up to 1,900 Xbox workers. A trend that is becoming common in the industry, and in the case of Microsoft the person responsible for giving the news was Phil Spencer, confirming the reduction of staff in the gaming division.

Among the layoffs are some big names, such as Mike Ybarra and Allen Adham. The former is the current president of Blizzard, while the latter is an executive producer and founder of Blizzard. Both are leaving the company following the purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, which will soon have to appoint a new president for Blizzard.