Blizzard is hiring for an 'open-world shooter' using Unreal Engine, which is more evidence that a new Starcraft game could be on its way
According to a recent job listing, Blizzard is cooking up a new game in an engine and a genre that none of its releases have used before. The studio is looking for a "Lead Designer, Innovation" to run development on a "AAA open-world shooter" without a name.
Right now, every Blizzard game except Hearthstone (made with Unity) were made with in-house engines, but this unnamed shooter will likely use Unreal Engine. The listing says the lead designer will need experience working with the popular engine for prototyping features.
On top of that, the job also requires "15 years of professional experience in game design or a related discipline", which tells me Blizzard wants someone who's probably done this kind of work before, possibly even more than once. Given the amount of layoffs the studio endured in the last few years, I'd imagine there are plenty of former Blizzard veterans out there who would fit the bill.
On Bluesky, Blizzard game designer Jeff Hamilton says the "fairly unique design role" will be part of his team, but his post sadly provides no clues on what the project even is—and neither does his LinkedIn page. My best guess is the new Starcraft third-person shooter mentioned in Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier's 2024 book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment.
Schreier's reporting said Blizzard was "incubating" the project under the helm of former Far Cry producer Dan Hay. The book doesn't mention a genre or even a timeframe for when it would be properly announced, but Blizzard is hosting a BlizzCon in September that could be where it'll show up. Windows Central reporter Jez Corden corroborated Schreier's reporting via his own sources in January, too.
Now before you get too excited, let's remember that Blizzard also spent six years on a survival game only to cancel it after a massive round of layoffs in 2024. It's possible this game—much like the infamous Starcraft: Ghost shooter that never was—might not see the light of day, especially when the videogame industry layoffs haven't really slowed down.
However, the time is ripe for Starcraft to come back. The last game in the series was released 11 years ago (unless you count the Nova Covert Ops campaign that came out 10 years ago). An open-world shooter is a big leap from an RTS, but I imagine Starcraft fans will take anything at this point.
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