Blizzard's first studio buy in 15 years: Proletariat — and Spellbreak shuts down

Proletariat is a Boston game studio founded in 2012; Blizzard is the publisher of World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch.

Buying a live-service, Twitch-native studio beats hiring piecemeal — its staff could ship WoW content faster as the Dragonflight expansion ramps.

Proletariat was founded in 2012, launched its first game World Zombination on mobile in 2015, and also built Twitch-integrated games that let viewers interact and play with their favourite streamers. Spellbreak, launched in 2020, was its attempt to break into battle royale.

After more than four years, Spellbreak's novelty did not translate to financial success — 'Spellbreak was not able to break through and reach a sustainable place where we could continue to invest in it in the way we had dreamed of,' CEO Seth Sivak wrote in a Reddit post. Blizzard, itself in the middle of a pending Microsoft acquisition, had been working with Proletariat since May; it announced the deal on June 29, 2022 and confirmed it closed on July 1 — its first new studio in more than 15 years.

Spellbreak's servers were set to shut down in early 2023; Proletariat's staff were transitioning to the World of Warcraft team as Blizzard ramped production on the Dragonflight expansion.

Blizzard needed content velocity on World of Warcraft, and Dragonflight was already ramping with Proletariat's help since May.

Proletariat brought live-service operations and Twitch-integrated experience — modern skills for keeping a 18-year-old MMO fresh.

For Proletariat, Spellbreak's novelty never became a sustainable business; the acquisition preserved the team's trajectory.

It was Blizzard's first new studio acquisition in over 15 years, a shift from building exclusively in-house.

For a studio whose bet never reached sustainability, a strategic acquirer is the graceful exit: the team ships on, the game does not.

As of July 1, 2022, the deal was closed, Proletariat's staff were moving to the World of Warcraft team for Dragonflight, and Spellbreak's servers were scheduled to go dark in early 2023. Deal terms were not disclosed, and Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard remained pending.