BlizzCon also featured the StarCraft franchise, and the plans for its future came as a big surprise.
Dan Hay, Blizzard’s general manager and vice president, as well as the former head of Ubisoft Montreal, took the stage. He helped shape the IP from Far Cry 3 through Far Cry 6, including his time as creative director on Far Cry 5. He revealed that he had tried to join Blizzard in his youth but was turned down. Two decades later, he received a call offering him the opportunity to assemble a team and help revive the studio’s long-dormant sci-fi series.
Hay’s involvement adds an interesting twist to the project’s alleged development history. He joined Blizzard several years ago and was publicly identified in 2022 as the lead on the studio’s then-unannounced survival game. This game was later referred to internally as “Odyssey.” The project was canceled in January 2024 amid Microsoft’s widespread layoffs in the gaming industry. Subsequent reports have linked Hay to the development of the StarCraft shooter. However, his comments at BlizzCon suggest that the series may have been in development long before the game was announced.
Blizzard has not clarified the exact sequence of events, such as whether Hay was originally hired with StarCraft in mind before taking over Odyssey, if development of the shooter began after the survival game was canceled, or if the ideas overlapped internally. For now, the only certainty is that Hay is leading the newly announced project. It is an open-world shooter, marking a significant departure from the real-time strategy framework that has defined StarCraft since the original game’s release in 1998.
Blizzard has attempted to expand the universe beyond RTS games before, most notably with the canceled StarCraft: Ghost. However, it appears that this new project is their first serious attempt to transition the series into a large-scale shooter format. Hay’s background aligns well with this direction; in Far Cry, he oversaw the blending of vast environments, system-level gameplay, scripted missions, and player-driven chaos. Nothing is known yet about the target platforms, setting, main character, multiplayer plans, or monetization strategy. Blizzard hasn’t even given the game an official title yet.
The only concrete release information was also the most surprising: according to Blizzard, the game will be ready by 2030. This is a significantly longer wait than many had anticipated, especially since there have been frequent rumors about the project since 2024. Nevertheless, this distant timeframe suggests that Blizzard is willing to give Hay’s team time to create the ambitious StarCraft revival experience the studio expects.
Source: WCCFTech
