In a scenario that’s oddly familiar for StarCraft fans, according to Kotaku, sources have told them that Blizzard has dropped the axe on a StarCraft-based shooter described as “like Battlefield in the StarCraft universe.”
Codenamed “Ares”, the project had been in development for two years, and was far enough along that developers had built prototypes that allowed players as a Terran Marine to attack Zergs. The project hadn’t even been announced/acknowledged by Blizzard, but was reportedly coming along slowly, and “looking quite good”.
This echoes the much-publicized 2002 shooter, StarCraft: Ghost, which had been in development for a number of years until Blizzard put it on indefinite hold, before cancelling the game entirely in 2004.
In what might be a coincidence, senior animator at Blizzard David Gibson tweeted that he was leaving Blizzard after four years, two years of which were spent on a project that “you’ll never see.”
The reasoning for the cancellation this time was to allocate more resources towards developing Diablo 4, as well as Overwatch 2. It’s a small consolation for Blizzard (and Diablo) fans, but the potential for StarCraft universe games that exist beyond the real-time strategy genre sadly remains untapped.