In case you somehow missed it, Proletariat, the company behind the magical battle royale video game Spellbreak, said yesterday that it would stop developing the title and shut down its servers in the first quarter of 2023.
Given that the developer didn’t appear to have anything else planned, the timing would have seemed a little strange to some. Now that Proletariat has been acquired by Blizzard to work on World of Warcraft, the second shoe has officially dropped.
The Proletariat team has been collaborating with the World of Warcraft team since May, according to VentureBeat, and some of the team’s contributions will be seen in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the upcoming expansion that was announced in April 2022 and is scheduled to go on sale before the end of the year. The acquisition’s precise terms are still a secret.
“We are putting players at the forefront of everything we do, and we are working hard to both meet and exceed their expectations,” said Mike Ybarra, president of Blizzard Entertainment, as part of a statement shared by VentureBeat. “A big part of caring for our teams is 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. The proletariat is a perfect fit for supporting Blizzard’s mission in bringing high-quality content to our players more often.”
According to the report, Blizzard started looking for external partners to help with World of Warcraft content at the end of last year, and Proletariat was on the shortlist. “My first conversation with Seth [Sivak, CEO of Proletariat,] was back in December,” said John Hight, World of Warcraft general manager for Blizzard, to VentureBeat. “I was impressed with him. And then the team felt like he had a lot of shared values and had a lot of knowledge of World of Warcraft. The team could do stylized art, which we do, and work within me
As previously mentioned, Spellbreak will formally end early in 2019. According to the article, Proletariat, the developer, has been collaborating with Blizzard Entertainment and the World of Warcraft team since May and will be fully incorporated into the business over the next months. Before the year is out World of Warcraft: Dragonflight’s upcoming expansion is anticipated to arrive.
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