Activision Blizzard has moved its Vicarious Visions studio from the Activision side of the business to the Blizzard side.
The publisher today told GamesIndustry.biz that effective today, it is merging Vicarious Visions into Blizzard Entertainment.
Going forward, the Vicarious Visions team of about 200 people will be employees of Blizzard and “fully dedicated to existing Blizzard games and initiatives,” which means the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 studio will no longer be creating games as the lead developer.
Vicarious Visions merged into Blizzard | GamesIndustry.biz
They’re already owned by Activision, they’re just being moved from the Activision side to the Blizzard side
Problem is that they’re no longer going to be making their own games, they made one of the best remakes ever with THPS 1+2 and now they’re going to make Overwatch skins …what da fuck…means we’re probably not getting THPS 3+4 and worst of all not getting THUG 1+2
So, this happened. The team at Blizzard which has given me the best gaming memories ever has been dismantled. The glorious team behind Warcraft, Starcraft and Heroes of the Storm. Gone.
This for me is the last nail in the coffin for Blizzard. As a strategy game enthusiast Blizzard is kinda irrelevant to me now.
I think this is less about how Vicarious Visions performed and more about that Blizzard needs more manpower. They got a lot on their plates. Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, WoW expansions, Diablo mobile game, probably more that we don’t know about.
It’s a bummer. I’m glad no one lost their job at VV though. And they are gonna be working on huge, great games. (No, not just “Overwatch skins”, don’t be absurd)
This indeed. Would love a THPS3/4 remaster. Every other week we play the lastest remake with two friends. We can finish both games under two hours now. And could be quicker if we stayed sober, I admit
I hope once/if the acquisition goes through Phil can sit down with each of these teams and see what they want to do and give them the freedom to build their studios back up as an individual developer like VV. Freeing up all of these “COD or Blizz” support studios to go back to doing their own things is a much better use of time to me personally than getting COD out faster or the next Blizz game out.
For the shareholders is makes sense, for gamers like ourselves it doesn’t. I do hope the same though. With Microsoft’s backing these studios can go back to making games they want and not be sent into the meat grinder that is yearly COD development to squeeze every last penny out of players with barebones, unfinished, microtransaction filled multiplayer and BR.
I’d much rather have a new Tony Hawk22, a new Crash23, a new IP24 then COD somewhere in there later, than have Cod22, Cod23, and Cod24 and nothing else.
