[The Verge] Blizzard President Mike Ybarra Is Departing Microsoft, Unannounced Survival Game Has Been Cancelled

[BobbyWojak]

Willing to bet on it? Less than 12k concurrent daily peak in 2 months?

sure $20, bookmarked

 

[itsyoung!!]

sure $20, bookmarked

Done

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

universe, was in development for more than six years and outlasted many other Blizzard incubation projects. Now, the future of such efforts outside of existing franchises is uncertain.

Odyssey started in 2017 as a pitch from Craig Amai, a Blizzard veteran who worked on World of Warcraft. It was conceived as a survival game, like Minecraft and Rust, but with more polish and fewer bugs. In subsequent years, the team working on the game expanded, and it was announced publicly in 2022 as the company began hiring more staff.Despite the additional resources, the project struggled largely due to technical issues surrounding the engine, or the suite of tools and technology that developers use to construct a game, according to people familiar with the process. Odyssey was originally prototyped on the popular Unreal Engine, from Epic Games Inc., but Blizzard executives decided to switch, in part, because it wouldn't support their ambitions for vast maps supporting up to 100 players at once.

Blizzard instead directed the Odyssey team to use Synapse, an internal engine that the company had originally developed for mobile games and envisioned as something that would be shared across many of its projects. But that led to significant problems as the technology was slow to coalesce, and Odyssey's artists instead spent time prototyping content in the Unreal Engine that they knew would have to be discarded later, said the people.

When the Microsoft acquisition was finalized, some Blizzard staff were hopeful that they might be able to switch back to Unreal Engine rather than trying to finish the game on Synapse. In an interview at BlizzCon in November, Ybarra said that their new parent company would offer them the freedom to use the technology of their choice without having to go through the board of directors as in the past.

Despite the challenges, Odyssey appeared to be making progress. People who played early versions of the game enjoyed it and thought there was a lot of potential in the market for a survival game that hit Blizzard's bar for quality. Still, Odyssey was years away from completion. At one point, Blizzard was looking to expand the team to hundreds of people in hopes of targeting a 2026 release, but even that seemed overly optimistic to some developers.

Instead, the project was canceled as the company concluded that Synapse was not ready for production.

 

[itsyoung!!]

Lol @ this comparison

How is not comparable? Give exact details how its not comparable

 

[CoolinInTheCut]

How is not comparable? Give exact details how its not comparable

You're comparing a multiplayer game during its peak viral moment to single player games 3-4 years after launch.

Not only that, but you don't even have any data from the PS side to even make a comparison.

You're just showing everyone how much you hate Sony with nonsense arguments like a girl.

 

[itsyoung!!]

You're comparing a multiplayer game during its peak viral moment to single player games 3-4 years after launch.

Not only that, but you don't even have any data from the PS side to even make a comparison.

You're just showing everyone how much you hate Sony with nonsense arguments like a girl.

On the flip side, youre arguing that Horizon and Ghost had healthy playerbases months after release?

 

[The Mad Titan]

you’ve been saying the entire thread this is because of redundancies

But I thought the “cuts were due to redundancies”?



Thus if no merger, no redundancies for those positions at MS. Thus no need to make such drastic cuts.

Ths nikka stanned himself into a mobius loop

No y'all nikka get ultra dumb when put on y'all horse shoes.


The industry clearly in a bursting bubble, I told y'all this 2 years ago and you Bozo's had jokes then about me feeling this way because "Xbox has no triple A games"

Last year plenty of companies that didn't get consolidated or part of a merger had lays off, a lot if not most of these Companies were also profitable, but since folks want to be stupid let's take a look.

EA Lays Off Almost 800 People Weeks After Posting Huge Profits

'This is the most difficult part', says CEO of company with $7 billion in net revenue

kotaku.com

https://www.wsj.com/articles/unity-conducts-its-third-and-largest-round-of-layoffs-in-a-year-48fdafe1

https://x.com/JacobWolf/status/1615934008902225920?s=20

https://x.com/ethangach/status/1656315306791370752?s=20

Mass Layoffs at Cyberpunk 2077 Developer CD Projekt Prompt New Union Formation - IGN

A new Polish game developer union has formed following three rounds of layoffs at The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt.

www.ign.com

And that's just a few, there's still Sega, epic, deviation, telltale. I literally can go on and on.


Point is when a bubble burst you just have to be lucky and hope you don't get affected.

But y'all want to be dumb, and do this concern trolling or desperately try to catch me on some gotcha type trash yall not even thinking logically.


Essentially every single major third party publisher has hit thier employees with layoff. But you know what, maybe ABK would have been different and layoffs only happen because of the merger. Now I have zero doubt it wouldn't have been as many people, but lay off were coming and probably still are throughout ABK. But not just for them or any other company that consolidates.


Indie teams, and Double A studios have been laying off and closing just as crazy.


Do better

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

No y'all nikka get ultra dumb when put on y'all horse shoes.


The industry clearly in a bursting bubble, I told y'all this 2 years ago and you Bozo's had jokes then about me feeling this way because "Xbox has no triple A games"

Last year plenty of companies that didn't get consolidated or part of a merger had lays off, a lot if not most of these Companies were also profitable, but since folks want to be stupid let's take a look.

EA Lays Off Almost 800 People Weeks After Posting Huge Profits

'This is the most difficult part', says CEO of company with $7 billion in net revenue

kotaku.com

https://www.wsj.com/articles/unity-conducts-its-third-and-largest-round-of-layoffs-in-a-year-48fdafe1

https://x.com/JacobWolf/status/1615934008902225920?s=20

https://x.com/ethangach/status/1656315306791370752?s=20

Mass Layoffs at Cyberpunk 2077 Developer CD Projekt Prompt New Union Formation - IGN

A new Polish game developer union has formed following three rounds of layoffs at The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt.

www.ign.com

And that's just a few, there's still Sega, epic, deviation, telltale. I literally can go on and on.


Point is when a bubble burst you just have to be lucky and hope you don't get affected.

But y'all want to be dumb, and do this concern trolling or desperately try to catch me on some gotcha type trash yall not even thinking logically.


Essentially every single major third party publisher has hit thier employees with layoff. But you know what, maybe ABK would have been different and layoffs only happen because of the merger. Now I have zero doubt it wouldn't have been as many people, but lay off were coming and probably still are throughout ABK. But not just for them or any other company that consolidates.


Indie teams, and Double A studios have been laying off and closing just as crazy.


Do better

 

[The Mad Titan]

I'm a

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

 

[Deezay]

 

[Black Mamba]

MS: Destroy and Rebuild and Destroy.

For the fukking worse too

 

[daze23]

sounds like they wasted too much time switching engines with Odyssey, and it would have been too costly to get it back on track

 

[Diunx]

As a PC gamer since the early 00s I fukkinh loved Blizzard, but can't remember the last time I was excited for one of their games, its always some bullshyt.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

Sony stans:

“microsoft should let their devs do want they want to do.

Also sony stans:

“microsoft should step in and manage their studios so they don’t drop trash games.

Also sony stans…again:

“How dare microsoft cancel a game”


Maybe yall should just play some games instead of talking dumb shyt on the internet