Recently, Microsoft Xbox announced that it will lay off 1,900 people in its game department. Blizzard's survival game "Odyssey" has also been axed, and some developers will be transferred to new projects. "Odyssey" had been in development for six years when it was canceled, and its development team continued to grow in size. Current and former Blizzard employees were full of praise for the work. They think this game is so cool and will definitely blow people away. So beautiful, can’t wait to play. It is even believed that the work will have a major impact on the gaming industry.
Unfortunately, Odyssey has now been canceled by Microsoft and the developer has lost his job.
Former deputy narrative director Matt London tweeted: "I have been fired from Blizzard, along with many people on the development team." Including director Craig Amai, senior concept artist Marby Kwong, designer Ates Bayrak, senior software engineer Renato Iwashima, visual effects artist Rachel Quitevis, producer Megan Embree, etc. were all kicked out.
Bloomberg believes that the cancellation of "Odyssey" was due to problems with the game engine. The developers originally planned to use Unreal Engine to develop the game, but executives asked them to use Blizzard's internally built engine, the Synapse engine, which was originally designed for mobile game development and performed only mediocrely. This also led to the eventual cancellation of Odyssey because the Synapse engine was simply not ready for production.
"Odyssey" is an ambitious open-world survival game with a team of about 100 people working on it. Due to technical and engine issues, stakeholder unease, and constant release delays, Odyssey ended before it was officially announced.