Report: Blizzard began making, then canceled, a StarCraft first-person shooter

Enlarge (credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

On Wednesday, a vague tweet from a Blizzard game developer hinted at a canceled game project that fans would “never see,” then announced his departure from the company. As questions started flying over what that game was, Kotaku super-reporter Jason Schreier showed up one day later with the scoop: the canceled game, which had been in development for two years, was a first-person shooter set in the StarCraft universe.

In addition to citing “three people familiar with goings-on,” Schreier received a lengthy official response from Blizzard on Thursday that did not deny the game’s existence and cancellation. It reads, in part: “As has been the case at Blizzard numerous times in the past, there is always the possibility that we’ll make the decision to not move forward on a given project.”

This project, which Schreier says was codenamed “Ares” within Blizzard, began as a Battlefield-like campaign against the series’ Zerg aliens whose initial prototypes put players in control of a “Terran marine.” The Schreier report says that the team had planned to put players in control of Zerg aliens, as well—but the fact that such content was only hinted at, as opposed to being internally playable, may point to how far along the game had gotten.