Warcraft Rumble is shifting into life-support mode following the latest round of layoffs at Microsoft, which appears to be targeting about 4% of the company’s workforce, or around 9000 employees.
In a post on Blizzard’s blog, the studio announced that the team behind Warcraft Rumble would “continue supporting Rumble with updates focused on regular, systemic in-game events and bug fixes, but no new content. ” An email sent to staff by Blizzard president Johanna Faires about the layoffs, which was received and reported on by Aftermath, reads, “As part of these changes, we made the difficult decision to shift to a scaled down, live ops-only phase of development for Warcraft Rumble, similar to our current approach with games like StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm.”
Warcraft Rumble, a mobile tower defense game based on Blizzard’s popular Warcraft series, was released back in 2023 after nine years in development.According to this latest announcement though, Rumble “struggled to find its footing,” and despite feedback from the community and changes implemented by the team, the efforts weren’t enough to set the game on “a path to sustainability.”
As part of the cuts at Blizzard, Aftermath reports that the number of impacted employees could be “as high as 100.” While many are being let go, others are being moved onto other projects at Blizzard, though some of these teams are also facing losses among the restructuring.
These changes to Warcraft Rumble are reflective of the ongoing layoffs at multiple Microsoft divisions, especially under Xbox.
It has been reported that an MMO from Zenimax Online Studios, the developers behind Elder Scrolls Online, has also been cancelled. The Initiative, a studio founded by Xbox to lead development on a now-cancelled Perfect Dark reboot, is being shut down and Everwild, an ambitious game from Sea of Thieves’ developer Rare, has also been canceled amidst these cuts.
Both projects had lengthy and troubled developments, with Perfect Dark eventually being partially outsourced to Crystal Dynamics for support. News around Everwild, which was announced back in 2019, quickly went cold, and after years of silence around the project, reports of the game’s development, as well as key studio departures, came out suggesting the title was being rebooted before ultimately getting axed.
The full impact of these layoffs is still being gauged as news slowly trickles out from the affected teams under Xbox’s banner.
