It’s no secret that things have been rough for Blizzard Entertainment. In addition to controversy shrouding Diablo Immortal and the disappointment of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, we’ve heard reports about troubled development like cancelled second expansion for Diablo 3. The next Diablo was also shaping up too, but subsequently got cancelled, with a new concept currently in the works.
It seems that in addition to all of this, another project was in development for two years that’s been cancelled. This was revealed by former animator David Gibson on Twitter, who did some stellar work for Overwatch (particularly with the highlight intros). For his last day at Blizzard, he said, “Unfortunately you’ll never see what we made over the past 2 years – that’s gamedev, but we’ll always have Overwatch.”
Keep in mind that we don’t know how far along the project was. It could have easily been in pre-production for that long or deep in production. Regardless, it’s a worrying trend with the legendary developer especially when it confirmed that it had no major releases for 2019. We’ll have to wait and see what comes next, but at least Gibson has another job after leaving Blizzard.