This morning, there were some big headlines when Microsoft reportedly cut down 1,900 jobs within their gaming division. That was surprising but also disheartening news as we continue this layoff trend. 2023 saw several jobs being cut and studios closing down. It’s not looking much better as we head into 2024, as again, a whopping 1,900 jobs will soon be vacant. This comes right after Microsoft acquired the Activision Blizzard deal. For $69 billion dollars, Microsoft added a massive catalog of games into their collection along with new resources for future game productions. But already, these layoffs are seeing the effects on game cancellations. One of which is reportedly Odyssey.
Thanks to The Verge, we’re learning today that Microsoft has apparently killed off the survival game Blizzard has been working on. This game was still a bit of a mystery; we’ve seen reports in the past that this survival game was set up with a visual style of Overwatch. Fans were interested to see just how this game would unfold when Blizzard was ready to showcase it. But those of you hopeful to see Odyssey appear in the marketplace will be let down today. A new report has come out from The Verge revealing that Blizzard has killed off the project.
This also comes after the announcement that Mike Ybarra, the president of Blizzard, has decided to leave the company. We expect to hear plenty of other individuals commenting on their time ending at the various studios Microsoft now has control of. But in particular, when it comes to the Survival Odyssey title from Blizzard, it’s noted from the publication that these developers who were attached to the game are being placed on other various projects within Blizzard.
It’s not stated what projects, in particular, are being worked on. However, it’s noted that these are at least promising projects under Blizzard that are all in the early stages of development. So don’t expect to hear anything on these games for a good while. Again, it’s certainly frustrating to hear that so many jobs are being cut down within the game industry. We’re hopeful that this trend of closures and job losses will end soon, but there are still some looming threats out there, including Piranha Bytes and Bungie. For now, we’ll just have to monitor and see what studios were hit the hardest and what this could mean for some of the already unveiled game projects that are still under development.
