Mike Morhaime, co-founder and former president of Blizzard Entertainment, has revealed his next project. Earlier today, Morhaime announced Dreamhaven, a new game company that brings together Blizzard veterans, and two development studios, Moonshot Games and Secret Door.

These studios borrow considerable talent from Blizzard. In addition to Morhaime, CEO of the new company, and his wife Amy (head of operations), Moonshot Games includes former Hearthstone leader Jason Chayes, creative director Ben Thompson, and former Starcraft II and Heroes of the Storm director Dustin Browder. Chris Sigaty, studio head of The Secret Door, has worked on Hearthstone, StarCraft II, and HotS as executive producer, while colleagues Alan Dabiri and Eric Dodds have experience on major Blizzard titles. Alan Dabiri and Eric Dodds have worked on major Blizzard titles. His colleagues Alan Dabiri and Eric Dodds also have experience on major Blizzard titles.

Dreamhaven says it aims to "reshape the studio model" by "taking chances that most big publishers won't take," which may explain the bold opening of having two different development teams: Moonshot and Secret Door neither reveal specifics about what they are currently working on, but the latter's emphasis on the importance of the social experience in the game and its recruitment of server engineers certainly seems to indicate a focus on the multiplayer experience.

Morhaime spent 27 years at Blizzard before leaving the company in 2018, and many of the new team members have spent a significant portion of their careers there. In recent years, there have been reports that Blizzard's new partner, Activision, has been pushing to make more games at lower costs, resulting in massive cutbacks. Dreamhaven did not mention specific reasons for the move, but industry insider and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said on Twitter that "many left because of Activision's growing influence on Blizzard's culture and processes."

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Morhaime told Venturebeat that Dreamhaven is currently focused on building the company's values and allowing the team to control decision-making. Unfortunately, this is likely to mean that we won't be hearing much from either studio for the foreseeable future, but given that this is all coming from the man who built one of the most successful gaming companies in the world, Dreamhaven can probably take as much time as it needs.