Blizzard plans to acquire Proletariat from Spellbreak Studios to enhance World of Warcraft.

Blizzard Entertainment said it plans to acquire Spellbreak maker Proletariat to strengthen staff in the large-scale multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. [Updated: 7:59 a.m. Pacific time on 6/29/22 with intent to acquire]..

The deal will make Boston-based proletariat part of Blizzard, and a team of 100 will begin developing World of Warcraft, including the planned expansion of Dragon Flight later this year. Spellbreak, a battle royale game where wizards and witches cast spells on each other, is at sunset. (The company announced this news yesterday.)

This move is Blizzard’s largest acquisition (at least in the last decade) to expand its studio. The mission in this case is to increase World of Warcraft personnel to meet expansion quality and timing goals. The terms of this transaction have not been disclosed.

Blizzard’s parent company, Activision Blizzard, also integrated its long-standing Activision studio, Vicarious Visions, into Blizzard and worked on the Diablo franchise in January 2021. Acquired Swinging Ape in 2005. Rather, Blizzard itself became quite messy in the early days, before landing on Activision Blizzard in 2008. Proletariat has been working with Blizzard since May.

In a (corrected) statement, Blizzard Entertainment President Mike Ybarra said, “We put players at the forefront of everything we do to meet and exceed their expectations. I’m working hard. ” “It’s important to take care of the team when it comes to caring for the players. Give the team space to explore more creative opportunities within the project while securing resources to create experiences that the community loves. Proletariat is great for supporting Blizzard’s mission to provide players with high quality content more often. “

Blizzard has a difficult time doing this, as its parent, Activision Blizzard, is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft for $ 68.5 billion. Blizzard Entertainment is also a key division under investigation by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing in large-scale sexual harassment and discrimination proceedings against Activision Blizzard.

Dealing with past challenges

In an interview with GamesBeat, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft general manager John Hight admitted that supporting Shadowlands last year was difficult and created a significant gap between WoW content updates. Fans have always wanted more and the team is growing, but hiring has been difficult.

We asked Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak if the company hesitated to trade because of the weakening reputation of Blizzard, a recent hit. I mentioned the investigation of sexism, criticism of the spread of Shadowlands, the withdrawal of many well-known developers, and the loss of other talents.

“We had a very open and transparent conversation about this,” Sivak said. “And I think the Blizzard team has recognized some of the challenges they faced. In some of the early conversations, they continued to improve their culture and create a great place for developers to work. We talked about how we see it. “

He added. “It was encouraging. Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done to keep creating a great place for developers to work. But we are very happy and happy with the direction of the team. was doing.”

Heit said it was “catastrophic” to hear what happened after overcoming the turmoil of the past year. But he said the company is changing its culture and it’s “completed, not one.”

He said. “You have to change your culture. You need to make sure it’s more inclusive in our workplace right now. People who make WoW and people who play WoW are good enough. You need to make sure that it is supported. “

Regarding the deal with Microsoft, Shibak said he wasn’t sure what the consequences would be, but he’s excited about the company’s direction. Asked if the company is working on a new game, Sivak said the focus so far is to help build WoW. Heit said the goal is to have access to not only talented teams, but also experienced senior leadership teams.

How the transaction was put together

“As you probably know, people in World of Warcraft have a greedy desire for content,” says Hight. “And last year we saw that we needed to increase the amount of content we could create and the frequency with which we could get it into the hands of our players.”

Towards the end of last year, the company began looking for other opportunities besides hiring more people in its in-house studio. It searched for external partners and was on the short list because proletariat was a well-known game studio.

“The first conversation with Seth returned in December,” Height said. “I was really impressed with him, and the team felt he had a lot of common values ​​and a lot of knowledge about World of Warcraft. The team told us. Had the ability to perform stylized art and work in the medieval fantasy we love, and they had a lot of fans, so it continued from their discussion. “

Sivak said the company is also looking for what to do next. He said he believes the team has evolved as a studio and the opportunity to work on World of Warcraft fulfills its mission to provide excellent multiplayer games. They started talking more seriously in the last few months.

“The opportunity to expand the world of Azeroth for our players really excited us,” Sivak said.

According to Height, the industry integration gives Blizzard some exciting opportunities as it has studios working on WoW on both coasts and may have access to new sources of talent. Of course, the pandemic makes it difficult to hire people in some ways, and Proletariat hasn’t worked in the Boston office yet. Blizzard itself has options, including working in the office.

Hight said the company ships multiple expansion packs with remote employees and has options for hybrid environments.

“This is one of the reasons that made this decision easier to start collaborating with proletariat, because proletariat has a large remote workforce,” said Heit.

Sivak said: “When we saw where the next chapter in proletariat would be, this opportunity meant we could accelerate what we wanted to do. It’s really great to be able to work for the World of Warcraft audience. , The level of ambition for where both teams want to adopt World of Warcraft is very exciting to us. “

Heit said some of the proletariat works will appear in the Dragon Flight Expansion Pack. And proletariat joins the Boston staff.

Proletariat was founded in 2012 by industry veterans of Insomniac, Harmonix, and Turbine. The team has experience building MMORPGs, especially including former lead designers from Asheron’s Call, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online. At Proletariat, the team has been running live games for nearly a decade, most recently in the fall of 2020 with the release of Spellbreak, a cross-platform action spellcasting battle royale game.

However, Sivak admitted that while the game got good reviews, it didn’t reach “escape velocity” in terms of increasing the number of users to justify its continued existence. The company recently had relatively few game updates.

“Spellbreak was an important success. It felt like it provided something really fresh in the battle royale genre,” says Sivak. “There is a lot of competition in the area, competing with some of the world’s largest games. We couldn’t get the escape velocity needed to keep expanding.”

Proletariat began working with the World of Warcraft development team in May and is fully
It has been integrated into Blizzard Entertainment in the coming months.

“The really exciting part is what we’re about to build,” says Sivak. “That was our real selling point and the level of ambition for what we wanted to do in World of Warcraft.”

[Updated: 7:59 a.m. on 6/29/22. Article was corrected to say Blizzard has the intent to acquire Proletariat. Blizzard also amended the statement from Mike Ybarra and we have updated that. We originally intended to run this story when the deal was announced, but the deal has not yet closed]..