Blizzard Entertainment to Purchase Spellbreak Studio, Reallocate Devs to Warcraft

Blizzard Entertainment is looking to purchase Proletariat, the studio behind the battle royale game Spellbreak, and reallocated its staff to help work on World of Warcraft.

According to a blog post published yesterday, June 28, the 100-strong studio based in Boston, Mass. has also decided to end the development of Spellbreak "as early as 2023" as a result. In the post, they described the game as an "ambitious project that saw our team push new boundaries in design and development and we are excited to continue to innovate as we create new titles in the future." Proletariat has been working with Blizzard since this May 2022.

"Thank you to the millions of players who have joined us in the Hollow Lands since 2018; it’s been an amazing journey." The team wrote.

Blizzard to Acquire Proletariat in an Effort to Grow its Warcraft Team

"A critical part of taking care of players is taking care of our teams—making sure we have the resources to produce experiences our communities will love while giving our teams space to explore even more creative opportunities within their projects." said Mike Ybarra, President of Blizzard, in a statement published by Venturebeat, "Proletariat is a perfect fit for supporting Blizzard’s mission in bringing high-quality content to our players more often."

When speaking with Venturebeat's Dean Takahashi, Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak seemed optimistic about the merger despite Blizzard's recent reputation regarding litigation against it for its toxic "frat-like" workplace culture. Sivak described an "open and transparent conversation" where Blizzard "recognized some of the challenges they’ve had."

"In some of the earliest conversations, we discussed just how they were looking at continuing to improve the culture and continuing to make a great place for developers to work," he said, "That was encouraging. Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done...But we were pretty happy and satisfied with the direction that teams are going."

While the company has essentially found itself not guilty of negligence that allegedly might have contributed to the cultivation of that culture, it's understandable that developers may have some reservations about working with them — especially in the wake of the US Supreme Court decisions handed down earlier this month. Hopefully, this means a change is truly happening inside the walls of Blizzard's campus.