Blizzard Reportedly Receiving New StarCraft Game Pitches From Well-Known Korean Developers

Blizzard is reportedly receiving a number of pitches for new StarCraft video games from Korean studios.

In an article brought to the internet’s attention by X / Twitter account @KoreaXboxnews, Asia Today listed four Korean companies who are reportedly competing with each other to develop new games based on the StarCraft IP and secure publishing rights: NCSoft, Nexon, Netmarble, and Krafton. Apparently some of these companies have traveled to Blizzard’s headquarters in Irvine, California, to make their pitches.

NCSoft, which is behind the Lineage and Guild Wars MMOs, is said to have pitched a StarCraft RPG of some kind (an MMORPG?). Nexon, maker of The First Descendant, has pitched a “unique” use of the StarCraft IP. Netmarble (Solo Leveling: Arise, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad) is hoping to make a StarCraft mobile game. And Krafton, the company behind battle royale PUBG and The Sims competitor inZOI, wants to make a StarCraft game “based on its own development capabilities.”

Of course, video game companies pitch other video game companies all the time when it comes to securing publishing rights and development contracts. And it may be the case that nothing mentioned here goes anywhere. But StarCraft fans will certainly take note of Blizzard’s reported interest in doing… something to expand the much-loved sci-fi universe, given how long it’s been since the last game in the franchise came out. Activision Blizzard declined to comment when contacted by IGN.

It’s worth remembering that in September, it emerged that Blizzard was 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 recent 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.

More recently, in November, Blizzard was spotted hiring for an “upcoming open-world shooter game,” with all signs pointing to it being a StarCraft FPS.

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.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.