Dan Hay will lead the development of Blizzard’s upcoming survival game. Prior to joining Blizzard, Hay worked at Ubisoft, where he left last year. In addition, the company reports that the Blizzcon fair will return next year.
Blizzard head Mike Ybarra announced Hay’s position in his last blog post of this year. Hays was the executive producer of Far Cry 3, 4 and 5 at Ubisoft. The team under the former Ubisoft developer has doubled in the past year, according to Ybarra. When the game was announced in January 2022, Blizzard immediately posted vacancies for the development team.
The game is not based on any existing Blizzard franchise. The game will therefore not build on the existing worlds of Warcraft, Overwatch or Diablo, which Blizzard has expanded in recent decades. Furthermore, no further details are known about the game, such as a release date or a name. Blizzard does say that the game will appear for consoles and PC.
Furthermore, Ybarra briefly mentions that the Blizzcon fair will take place again next year. More information about this will be available at the beginning of 2023. Blizzcon has been canceled for the past three years. In 2020, the fair could not take place due to the corona pandemic. Blizzcon was set to run as a digital event the following year, but was canceled after the company was accused by multiple former and current employees of facilitating a “culture of sexual harassment” in the workplace. The event was also canceled this year because Blizzard wanted to “overhaul the fair and put more effort into supporting its development teams and employees.”