According to reports, Blizzard has acquired Proletariat, the Boston-based studio behind the magic casting battle royale title, Spellbreak. The studio will become part of Blizzard and work on World of Warcraft, including beefing up development on the Dragonflight expansion that will be released later this year.
With a big expansion set to be out sometime in the next six months, this acquisition gives Blizzard another team to get things done and on-target for the release. According to a report over at VentureBeat, Proletariat has been working with Blizzard since last month.
Spellbreak, a battle royale game where you play as witches and wizards to sling spells and strategically play out battlemage tactics, will be shutting down in early 2023. The announcement was made on the Spellbreak site, with the promise “to continue to innovate as we create new titles in the future”. It seems that this future is now in the hands of Blizzard, where the team will help keep WoW content on target.
Blizzard’s Mike Ybarra, in a release, outlines just what the Proletariat acquisition means for the future of WoW:
“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. Proletariat is a perfect fit for supporting Blizzard’s mission in bringing high-quality content to our players more often”.
Proletariat’s CEO Seth Sivak, said in a release that “ There is a lot of competition in that area, where you are competing with some of the biggest games in the world. We just couldn’t get the escape velocity necessary for us to continue to expand it.” Spellbreak has been running since 2018, and development has come to an end.
This acquisition is notable, since Blizzard tends to build up teams from in-house or to pull from company teams overall as when they put Vicarious Visions on the Diablo franchise.
