Activision Blizzard has announced its purchase of the studio Proletariat, confirming that the employees will be helping the development of one of the publisher’s most popular IPs, World of Warcraft.
Proletariat is the studio which released Spellbreak, a free-to-play FPS battle royale based around the theme of magic. Unlike other battle royale games, such as Fortnite, there are no guns. Instead, players can fire elemental spells, levitate, teleport, or turn invisible. Following the acquisition, Proletariat announced that the game would be closed down sometime in early 2023.
As reported by VentureBeat, the 100 employees currently at the studio will become part of Blizzard and will work on World of Warcraft including the Dragonflight expansion. This is the largest acquisition Blizzard has made within the last decade, as the company tries to increase its workforce in order to improve the expansion’s quality, while sticking to previously decided developmental deadlines.
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Activision Blizzard’s stock and player base has plummeted over the past few years due to numerous abuse allegations levied against the company. The publisher itself blamed the loss in profits on recent Call of Duty titles failing to meet its standards of quality, and delays in Blizzard’s release schedule. The only studio under the publisher which has met its predicted targets was King, creator of Candy Crush Saga.
In order to improve the company’s prospects, Activision folded studio Vicarious Visions, developer of the Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy, into Blizzard, in order to increase progress on the Diablo franchise. Within this series, the studio is currently developing Diablo 4, and free-to-play Diablo Immortal, a mobile game which has been heavily criticized for its predatory microtransaction practices.
Blizzard usually releases a large expansion for World of Warcraft every two years, in order to maintain the interest of its online player base. As the last expansion, Shadowlands, was released in 2020, Blizzard is expected to release Dragonflight by the end of this year. However, currently there is no release date announced for the additional content.
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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