In recent years, there's been a migration of talent from Blizzard Entertainment into several new studios. Two of them are Frost Giant Studios, founded by World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2 veterans Tim Campbell and Tim Morten, and Dreamhaven, founded by Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime. Now Frost Giant and Dreamhaven are partnering, bringing together Blizzard veterans across companies to work on an Unreal Engine 5-powered real-time strategy game.
That Frost Giant was working on a real-time strategy game is no surprise. That was announced some time ago, alongside the public announcement of Frost Giant's existence. What's new is that Frost Giant will be working with Dreamhaven, employing the studio's "valuable experience" as development moves forward. Dreamhaven will work as consultants on the project, providing feedback, playtesting, and supporting the RTS' production even while not actively participating.
The RTS remains Frost Giant's project. Dreamhaven is only partnering to provide support for Frost Giant's ongoing development. This type of partnership is incredibly rare, or at least rare in terms of being publicly announced. But one of Dreamhaven's established goals is to "empower creators," so partnering with studios that may not be directly under the Dreamhaven banner may be part of Dreamhaven's mission. Perhaps Frost Giant is just the first studio Dreamhaven plans to partner with, or perhaps this is a special case since Frost Giant is led by Blizzard veterans itself.
Dreamhaven itself appears to be structuring itself in a similar fashion, forming two individual studios underneath the Dreamhaven banner which will each have its own project. Those two studios are Moonshot and Secret Door, each helmed by a trio of ex-Blizzard developers from leadership roles for games including Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, and other titles. Neither studio has confirmed what kind of game they're working on, but the opportunity for collaboration is clear.
There's been some speculation that one of Dreamhaven's studios could be working on an RTS, too. It's unlikely the teams would partner with Frost Giant if that were the case, as the games would be competitive. Yet there's clearly still some passion for the genre at Dreamhaven.
As exciting as the partnership between Dreamhaven and Frost Giant may be, there's still no new information regarding the RTS project itself. The team only announced the project in April, so it's certain to have a lengthy development cycle ahead of it before the game is ready to be revealed, let alone released. Still, for classic Blizzard and RTS fans, there's even more reason be excited about now.
Frost Giant's RTS is currently in development for PC.