The dissolution of the team working on “Project Odyssey” is a hard blow for many Blizzard employees. Their work could now be a “stain” on their resume.
A total of 1,900 employees were laid off at Microsoft in the gaming sector, especially affecting Xbox and Activision Blizzard – including Blizzard president Mike Ybarra. Following the merger of Activision Blizzard and Microsoft, not only are positions being cut that are now duplicated, but also many employees who have been working on a new survival game Odyssey
at Blizzard have been laid off. It is particularly hard for these employees now. The project was not only extremely popular internally but also consumed many years of life that are now essentially non-existent on their resumes.
What was known about the survival game? Relatively little was known. There were only two pieces of artwork published for the survival game under the project name “Odyssey.” Additionally, about two years ago, there was a major call for more developers to get involved in the ambitious project.
It is also known that development was progressing slowly but steadily. One point that often came up was the switch from Unreal Engine to the proprietary engine “Synapse” to support larger maps with up to 100 players simultaneously. This internally led to some issues where developers implemented ideas in Unreal Engine despite already knowing that the work would have to be redone later in the Synapse engine (via bloomberg.com).
normal peopleinto a fantasy world.
The project was popular at Blizzard: A noticeable point was that the project was extremely popular internally at Blizzard. Most who had the chance to test the game in its early stages described it as “beautiful” and that it had the potential to “shake up the gaming landscape.” These praises for the team and the game were voiced even at a time when the sexism scandal at Blizzard overshadowed everything else – Odyssey seemed to hold a very high status among the developers (via PCGamer.com).
Mike Ybarra also praised the project in glowing terms:
Was the market oversaturated? An argument that keeps circulating in forums and the community is the alleged oversaturation of the survival market, where new games supposedly cannot establish themselves. However, this seems to be a shortsighted view. After all, games like the young Palworld show that such games still have great appeal. Additionally, Project Odyssey certainly would not have been completed before 2026 – likely much later. The gaming landscape and the currently popular games could be completely different by then.
Developers left with “nothing”
Many developers who have exclusively worked on Project Odyssey for the past few years and were now laid off are facing an even greater problem. For a developer’s resume, it is important to show which published games one has already contributed to when applying.
Having worked on a project for 6 years that was never completed does not look good – especially when the project was directly buried without the public knowing many details about it. It is likely that they must remain silent about a large part of the project, leaving them with nothing to show.
While both Mike Ybarra and the heads of Project Odyssey are trying to provide their now former employees with recommendations and connections, leaving the company after 6 years without a published game is likely to have a negative impact.
What exactly Project Odyssey was, what the gameplay was supposed to look like, and what details were conceived, we will probably never find out.
At least a few employees have apparently been reassigned to other projects.
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