Rumor: Blizzard May Reveal a StarCraft Shooter at BlizzCon 2026

by

According to a new report by Jez Corden of Windows Central, Blizzard is developing a StarCraft shooter played from a third-person perspective, and we might see it announced later this year. This news follows earlier rumors from 2024 that Dan Hay, who previously worked as an executive producer on Far Cry, is heading up the project.

Blizzard Entertainment has a well-known history of struggling with spin-off shooter games based on the StarCraft universe. The first attempt, StarCraft: Ghost, was announced in 2002 and would have put players in the role of Nova, a Terran special operative, in a stealth-action game. After years of delays and setbacks, Blizzard put the project on hold, but didn’t officially cancel it until 2014. A second StarCraft shooter, internally known as ‘Ares,’ also faced cancellation in 2019. Reports suggest this was to free up developers to work on Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4. According to industry insider Jason Schreier, another reason for the cancellation of StarCraft: Ares was its gameplay being too similar to Battlefield, which Activision, Blizzard’s parent company, saw as competition to its Call of Duty franchise.

The Long-Rumored StarCraft Shooter Could Be Revealed at BlizzCon 2026

On January 7, 2026, Jez Corden of Windows Central published a report predicting what Xbox has planned for this year and beyond. The report, titled “Xbox in 2026 — What to expect from Team Green this year, and beyond,” shares Corden’s thoughts based on industry news and information from his sources. It discusses both confirmed upcoming games like Fable and Gears of War: E-Day, as well as potential projects currently circulating as rumors and leaks, including remakes of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

About a third of the way into a recent report by Jez Corden, he shares his predictions for BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard’s yearly convention which started in 2005. Corden believes we’ll see new expansions for Diablo 4, the 12th World of Warcraft expansion titled ‘The Last Titan,’ and significant updates to both Overwatch and Hearthstone. He also suggests that new mobile games for Overwatch and Warcraft could be unveiled at the event.

The most interesting part of James Corden’s recent discussion about Blizzard’s plans is the strong possibility that StarCraft will be the main focus of this year’s BlizzCon. Specifically, it sounds like the long-awaited StarCraft shooter will be a major reveal. This isn’t a new idea – Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier mentioned the project in his book PLAY NICE: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment back in September 2024, noting that Dan Hay, formerly of Far Cry, was leading the development. Corden reported on January 7th that his sources have confirmed these rumors. It’s worth noting that Schreier originally referred to the game simply as a “shooter,” while Corden specifies it’s a “third-person shooter.”

As a big Blizzard fan, I was really interested to hear that Dan Hay, who joined the company in 2022, was initially working on a survival game. Sadly, that project was canceled in January 2024, quite a while before Jason Schreier’s book came out. Now, there’s been a lot of talk about a potential StarCraft shooter, and honestly, it would make a lot of sense for Blizzard to reveal something at BlizzCon 2026 if it’s real. StarCraft hasn’t had a major release since StarCraft Remastered back in 2017, and the last full game in the series is almost 16 years old at this point – it’s definitely time for something new!

Read More

2026-01-08 00:06