Blizzard acquires ‘Spellbreak’ Studio Proletariat

Blizzard Entertainment has acquired Proletariat, the studio behind battle royale game Spellbreak, which features witches, wizards and a whole bunch of spells.

As reported earlier today (June 29), Spellbreak is being discontinued from 2023 onwards. The game, which only launched in 2020, will have development ceased immediately and the servers brought offline entirely in 2023. Proletariat released a statement that said “We are grateful to everyone in the game’s community for exploring the magical worlds and experiences we created together. Spellbreak was an ambitious project that saw our team push new boundaries in design and development and we are excited to continue to innovate as we create new titles in the future.”

Under the acquisition deal with Blizzard, Boston-based Proletariat’s team of 100 people will work on World of Warcraft, including the upcoming Dragonflight expansion. The acquisition by Blizzard marks the biggest one it has made to expand, and will help them hit timing and quality goals for Dragonflight and future expansions for World of Warcraft.

As reported by Venture Beat, Mike Ybarra, president of Blizzard Entertainment, said in a statement: “We are putting players at the forefront of everything we do, and we are working hard to both meet and exceed their expectations.” He continued, “Proletariat is a perfect fit for supporting Blizzard’s mission in bringing high-quality content to our players more often.”

Blizzard’s parent company, Activision Blizzard, is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft for over £56 billion ($68.5 billion), and has undergone close scrutiny following a series of allegations of harassment in the workplace. However an internal investigation of workplace misconduct within the company says “no widespread harassment” took place between September 2016 and December 2021.

In other news, Fntastic, the developer behind The Day Before, has defended its use of unpaid “volunteers”.