Blizzard Job Ad Confirms ‘Upcoming Open-World Shooter’ Is in the Works — and All Signs Point to StarCraft

Blizzard is hiring for an “upcoming open-world shooter game,” a new job ad has revealed — and all signs point to it being a StarCraft FPS.

As spotted on reddit, on November 13 Blizzard posted a job ad for an Associate Design Director, Innovation on an unannounced game. The description goes into more detail:

As the Design Director of Innovation, you will be the vision holder and owner of key strategic innovations on an upcoming open-world shooter game. You stay current with the latest developments in both the indie and AAA space. David Bowie is quoted as saying “Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting” – the idea of innovating in the deep end excites you, balanced with a pragmatic desire to turn dreams into reality that players can get their hands on and enjoy.

That blurb confirms Blizzard’s plan to release an open-world shooter, but what is it? In September, it emerged that Blizzard was reportedly making a third attempt at developing a StarCraft shooter, with former Far Cry executive producer Dan Hay, who joined Blizzard in 2022, leading the charge.

The news came from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier while speaking to IGN’s Podcast Unlocked, below, about his new book, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. Hay’s StarCraft shooter is mentioned in the book, and IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey asked Schreier if it’s likely to actually come out.

“If it’s not canceled!” Schreier replied. “This is Blizzard after all. Their history with StarCraft shooters is not good.

“Yes, that is a project that as far as I know is in development, or at least as of the time that I wrote this book was in development. They are working on a StarCraft shooter, StarCraft is not dead at Blizzard.

“The goal of the book isn’t to get a bunch of scoops about upcoming things. That wasn’t the purpose of this book at all, it was very much to tell a story and focus on stuff that had happened. But this felt like such an interesting and useful nugget to include because it really just shows you that Blizzard cannot quit StarCraft shooters.”

That was a reference to Blizzard’s infamous attempt to release a StarCraft shooter in the past as part of a bid to expand the StarCraft franchise beyond its real-time strategy origins. StarCraft Ghost, announced in 2002, was going to be a tactical-action console game in which you played as a deadly Ghost operative in the employ of the Dominion, but it was canceled in 2006 after a series of delays.

A second attempt to make a StarCraft shooter, codenamed Ares, was canceled in 2019 so Blizzard could focus on Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2. Ares was reportedly “like Battlefield in the StarCraft universe,” but, like Ghost, fell by the wayside.

Hay joined Ubisoft in 2011 to work on Far Cry 3, then became executive producer for the Far Cry brand, shipping Far Cry Blood Dragon, Far Cry 4, and Far Cry Primal. Hay was creative director and executive producer on Far Cry 5 and executive director for Far Cry New Dawn and Far Cry 6 before joining Blizzard in 2022 as GM/VP.

Things are slowly ramping up for StarCraft. Blizzard recently released StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft 2: Campaign Collection on Game Pass, and announced a StarCraft crossover with Warcraft card game Hearthstone. It looks like Blizzard is gearing up for something even bigger, though. Like, open-world bigger.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].