Updated 6/29. It's been a rollercoaster 24 hours for the Boston, Massachusetts based development studio known as Proletariat, Inc. After four years, the studios' magic-based battle royale title Spellbreak is being shut down. The studio didn't give any reasons as to why their online game was coming to an end early in 2023, though many have speculated that keeping the servers running for a low population of players was no longer cost-effective.
As disappointing as the news was for fans, many began to wonder what was next for the studio. Although players have the rest of the year to get their fill of magic-based combat, its likely they didn't expect to get an answer as to what's next for Proletariat less than 24 hours later. As it turns out, the studio is joining one of the biggest studios in the world thanks to a surprising announcement that broke early this morning.
While not officially stated as of yet from either Blizzard or Proletariat, GamesBeat writer Dean Takahashi reveals that the two studios appear to be joining forces. According to the news, Blizzard Entertainment intends to acquire Proletariat for an as of yet unknown sum of money. The deal itself will likely be the biggest acquisition that Blizzard has made in at least 10 years, with the last external studio being added was Swinging Ape in 2005. Vicarious VIsions, an internal Activision studio, was folded into Blizzard to help work on the Diablo franchise a few years ago, though that came well after Activision and Blizzard merged together.
Since the news broke earlier, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has issued a statement on the news:
We are putting players at the forefront of everything we do, and we are working hard to both meet and exceed their expectations. 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. Proletariat will be a perfect fit for supporting Blizzard’s mission in bringing high-quality content to our players more often.
The move may not be too surprising to some fans though as Proletariat has been helping Blizzard since May. However, now that Proletariat seems to be officially joining Blizzard, the 100-person team will be added to the World of Warcraft side of things. With the expanded staff, Blizzard is hoping that the quality and timing goals for upcoming expansions will be easier to hit, reducing the time between content updates to keep players engaged.
The team at Proletariat will likely be busy as World of Warcraft's ninth expansion is looking to launch sometime later this year. Dragonflight, announced earlier this year, not only gives players new story content to play through, a new continent to explore, as well as ridable dragons, it also adds a brand new playable race and class. As expected, the Dracthyr is a dragon-based humanoid, capable of shifting forms between a human or draconic form in battle. In addition, the Evoker class appears to be a hybrid class capable of using destructive dragon-based magic as well as support spells to help allies.
Source: GamesBeat
