In a recent Activision Blizzard financial report, it appears that the StarCraft game series may be put on hold indefinitely. While StarCraft has garnered its own dedicated fanbase of players across the world, it's a bit of an outlier amongst Blizzard's other IP like Diablo, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was the last RTS released by Blizzard in 2010, and considering the genre is already a niche endeavor for many gamers, it's unsurprising that the other aforementioned titles are able to keep up a more steady stream of players coming in and out.
Back in June, a canceled StarCraft first-person shooter was revealed to be in the works at Blizzard for some time. This would've been the series' first foray into another genre. As of this writing, not much is known about the canceled StarCraft title other than the fact that its cancellation was due to the team shifting development focus more toward Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2. It also might've been odd having two Blizzard first-person shooters competing with one another. The developer has, for the most part, kept each of its IPs dedicated to one genre, the only outlier being the Warcraft series.
The financial report was first picked up by Kotaku's very own Jason Schreier. In it, Activision mentions the success of titles like Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Diablo. The development teams over at Blizzard will be expanded to focus on delivering a healthy amount of content at a quicker pace for these titles. No mention of StarCraft can be seen in the report.
Activision is no stranger to controversial acquisitions. At the start of the year, prolific first-person shooter developer Bungie split from Activision taking the Destiny IP with them. It was revealed that Activision had an agreement put in place where Bungie would provide a new game every two years with DLC to follow on off years. Obviously, this agreement was not fulfilled and proved to hamper the Destiny IP. Since Blizzard was acquired by Activision the company once known for delivering some of gaming's best titles has been hit with massive layoffs, executive shakeups, and game cancellations.
It doesn't seem all too surprising that many fans believe Blizzard has lost their way. After being picked up by Activision, the developer has been better known for controversial stories as opposed to being a development force to be reckoned with. While the StarCraft series may be put on hold for the time being, fans of the series are used to waiting long periods of time. The gap between StarCraft and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was around 12 years. Time will only tell what's next for the series but in the meantime, Blizzard has plenty of exciting content coming down the pipeline that fans can still look forward to.
Source: Activision