Blizzard's unnamed survival game had already been in development for over four years when it was announced in early 2022. The team doubled in size that year and was slated to grow even larger in 2023. Now, after more than six years of total development and positive reactions to the project from current and former Blizzard employees, the game has been canceled by Microsoft and the developers have lost their jobs.

"Along with many others on the Survival team, I have been fired from Blizzard," Matt London, the game's former associate narrative director, wrote on X today.

Other Blizzard survival game developers who announced their departure include senior concept artist Marby Kwong, designer Ates Bayrak, and senior software engineer Renato Iwashima, gameplay programmer Michael Dale, character technical artist Matheus Lima, VFX artist Rachel Quitevis, and producer Megan Embree, who worked at Blizzard for 13 years.

Director of Survival Games Craig Amai was also fired and he is now focused on helping the rest of his former survival games team get back on their feet. If you are looking for talent, the staff coming out of "Unannounced Survival Games" is of unusually high quality and I cannot recommend them highly enough," Amai wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

Blizzard's Survival Game was presented as a new world "unlike any Blizzard has created. Two pieces of concept art, the only material released, depicted a modern man in a fantasy realm with a floating castle visible in an overgrown forest, and a hooded forest ranger who would not look out of place on the League of Legends roster. This crossover of images suggested a "Chronicles of Narnia"-like premise.

The game was well received within Blizzard; when it was announced in January 2022, current and former Blizzard employees publicly praised the survival game team and project.

"This team is nuts and nice and the project is like. Ugh. Very cool," said Blizzard artist Melissa Kelly at the time.

"All I can say is that it absolutely rocks," said novelist and Blizzard author Christy Golden. 'It's so beautiful. I can't wait.

"This is a project that will have a huge impact on the industry," said Geoffrey Virtue, executive producer of Riot's Teamfight Tactics and former co-head of survival game projects at Blizzard.

Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who also left the company this week, said he played the game "for hours" after the 2022 announcement and was "incredibly excited about the team's vision and a whole new world for players to immerse themselves in together."

After the announcement, praise for the project on social media was so enthusiastic that some suspected Blizzard had encouraged employees to talk about it online. When we asked, Blizzard replied that this was not the case: "It is a talented team working on this game, and we are delighted to see the genuine enthusiasm for their work and the excitement of others who are willing to share it," a spokesperson said at the time.

The cancellation and layoffs at Survival Games are part of a workforce reduction of 1,900 people across Activision Blizzard and other Microsoft gaming companies.

According to a Bloomberg report, development of the survival game was slow, in part because the team switched from the Unreal Engine to an internal engine called Synapse.

Blizzard spokesman Andrew Reynolds said, "These are difficult decisions to make, but experimentation and risk-taking are part of Blizzard's history and creative process. Sometimes an idea will be reflected in another game, and in some cases, it will become its own game." Starting something completely new is one of the hardest things to do in the gaming industry, and we are immensely grateful to all the talented people behind this project."

Former Blizzard survival game developers are now facing an aspect of working in games that I have heard many developers lament before: in addition to the threat of being laid off, they are facing the threat of being laid off before they can release anything.

A common requirement found in game development job postings is the number of "shipped games," or games that have been released. For example, Blizzard's current job posting for a Lead Gameplay Engineer requires "at least one shipped title". The Blizzard survival game developer who was laid off this week not only has no shipped games on his resume, he can't even talk openly about what they were working on.

If you worked on a Blizzard survival game or have knowledge of one and would like to share details anonymously, please email our tips line at [email protected].