Why did Blizzard cancel Odyssey, its survival game? Report reveals

2024 is shaping up to be one of the years with the most layoffs in the video game industry, and today Microsoft contributed to the cause with over 1900 of them. One of the affected companies was Blizzard, as it not only saw job cuts but also the departure of executives and a cancellation. The survival title they were working on will not exist, and a report reveals the reason behind this decision.

Blizzard canceled Odyssey, an ambitious survival game. Why?

In the context of the layoffs that took place in Microsoft's gaming business, Jason Schreier, a journalist from Bloomberg, shared information about the cancellation of Odyssey, a survival game that was in development at Blizzard. According to the information, Odyssey started its development in 2017 with a proposal that would combine elements from Minecraft and Rust.

The concept took shape, had support from Blizzard, and the company's decision was to back the project with more resources. However, the report reveals that the problem originated at the technical level and due to management decisions. In this regard, it is mentioned that Odyssey started in Unreal Engine, but Blizzard's leaders insisted that the game and its maps should support up to 100 players, something that posed difficulties with the graphics engine and the design of the video game.

Odyssey started in Unreal Engine, but Blizzard decided to change the engine and ruined the project

The response from Blizzard's executives was to offer Synapse, a graphics engine used for mobile games. Unfortunately, the Odyssey project did not withstand the transition from one engine to another; problems increased, the project stagnated, and uncertainty set in.

Regarding this, Jason Schreier points out that the Odyssey development team hoped that the new management under Mike Ybarra, along with the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard, would lead to authorization to return to Unreal Engine. This did not happen, and the project was deemed non-viable to continue, resulting in its cancellation.

Stay tuned here, at LEVEL UP.

Source