Blizzard reportedly partnering with Arc Raiders owner Nexon to revive StarCraft as a shooter

A new report suggests Blizzard has partnered with Korean gaming giant Nexon - owner of Arc Raiders and The Finals studio Embark - to create a shooter of some kind based on the StarCraft brand.

The report, published on Korean site dnews and picked up by Resetera, heard from "industry sources" that Nexon signed a "cooperation contact" last year with Blizzard "for content development related to the StarCraft IP". Nexon has reportedly set up a dedicated team for the project and is housing it in its shooting division, suggesting the game is a shooter. Not much is known beyond that, apart from famed StarCraft modder Choi Jun-ho has apparently been hired to guide the team.

This news follows suspicions from earlier this year that Blizzard is preparing a StarCraft-related announcement for BlizzCon this year, in September. Those reports in turn follow talk from last year that Blizzard is working on a StarCraft shooter. Respected reporter Jason Schreier, who'd written an insider-based book about Blizzard's history, told IGN that, "They are working on a StarCraft shooter. StarCraft is not dead at Blizzard." Former Far Cry man Dan Hay is apparently in charge.

If this is true, it will be Blizzard's third known attempt to make a StarCraft shooter. The first attempt, StarCraft Ghost, was public and was cancelled almost exactly 20 years ago. The second attempt was never announced but was said to be codenamed Ares and cancelled in 2019.

This wouldn't be the first time Blizzard has partnered with another company to adapt one of its major gaming brands. Relatively recently, Blizzard partnered with Chinese gaming giant NetEase to produce mobile game Diablo Immortal, which - even after a falling out between the two companies - remains a key part of the company's Diablo vision. Could Blizzard be doing something similar with Nexon?

Perhaps a more pertinent question is: if this is true, what kind of game will this be? Blizzard games are fundamentally about people playing together - it's one of the company's core tenets - so multiplayer will almost certainly feature in some way. But Overwatch is a futuristic multiplayer shooter too, so if this is true, how do you make a StarCraft shooter different enough to live alongside it?

Nexon is the Korean company that famously owns Arc Raiders studio Embark, but which also produced The First Berserker: Khazan last year, and Dave the Diver in 2023. It also runs a number of online games including Sudden Attack and MapleStory.