The announcement of Frost Giant Studios the other day marks the fourth new company founded by ex-Blizzard employees in recent years.
Between controversy, Blizzcon drama, Covid-19-related stress that’s impacted the whole industry, Blizzard has had a rough last couple of years, to say the least, even before taking into account all of the staff departures that have gone down. Let’s do a quick rundown, shall we?
In 2016 Rob Pardo, the former chief creative officer at Blizzard and lead designer of World of Warcraft, started Bonfire Studios. While Bonfire Studios has yet to announce its first game, Pardo has recently described it as “PC focused” for a “core audience.”
Joining Pardo in leaving Blizzard was lead level designer for Overwatch David Adams, Battle.net engineering team lead Matthew Versluys, and Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls director Joshua Mosqueira.
The initial investors for Bonfire Studios included Riot Games. Pardo credited the investment dollars for allowing Bonfire Studios to have the time to put together a team and prototype ideas heavily properly.
In 2018 Ben Brode, the former director of Hearthstone, left Blizzard to form Second Dinner alongside Hearthstone executive producer Hamilton Chu.
Second Dinner, which also consists of other former long time Blizzard employees such as technical artist Kyle Harrison, esports and Blizzcon program manager Nicki Broderick, senior concept artist Jomaro Kindred, Heartstone production director Yong Woo, and senior game producer of World of Warcraft & director of Creative Development Jason Stilwell, announced in 2019 that they would be working on a game within the Marvel universe.
Last month, former Blizzard president Mike Morhaime announced Dreamhaven. Dreamhaven is a new video game development company made up of two studios: Moonshot and Secret Door.
Moonshot is led by former Blizzard executive producer Jason Chayes, and the team includes former Hearthstone creative director Ben Thompson, and StarCraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm director Dustin Browder.
Secret Door is being led by former Hearthstone producer Chris Sigaty, Heroes of the Storm game director Alan Dabiri, and Hearthstone game director Eric Dodds.
There’s no word on what either Dreamhaven studio is working on right now, but their stated goal is to “build a home where creators are empowered and inspired to build unique experiences that bring players together in positive ways.”
Finally, and most recently, Frost Giant Studios was announced the other day. Frost Giant Studios was formed to make “the next great PC Real-Time Strategy Game.”
The team is being led by former StarCraft 2 production director Tim Morten, lead campaign designer of WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne Tim Campbell, and senior program manager at Blizzard esports Cara LaForge.
Other team members at Frost Giant Studios include former StarCraft 2 lead co-op designer Kevin Dong, lead artist of StarCraft 2 Jesse Brophy, and former lead designer of StarCraft 2 Ryan Schutter.
The announcement came shortly after Blizzard stated that StarCraft 2 would cease developing paid content, including skins and co-op commanders.
This is only a shortlist of former staff members who have left Blizzard in the last five years to join new studios led by other ex-Blizzard employees. This doesn’t come close to including everyone and is far from being an exhaustive list of all the talent that has left in recent years.
If you’re a fan of Blizzard’s classic franchises, such as WarCraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and most recently, Overwatch, you would be very justified in feeling concerned about their respective futures moving forward.
Of course, it would be unfair to write off Blizzard completely even after such a mass exodus of key personnel; there are still very talented and experienced people currently working there.
Still, when you combine all of these exits with recent public controversies such as the alarming Heartstone Hong Kong protest debacle and the woeful reveal of Diablo Immortal, it’s hard to feel overly positive about much of anything related to Blizzard right now.