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Blizzard trademarks Overwatch, is hiring for unannounced project

Diablo, Hearthstone, StarCraft and World of Warcraft developer Blizzard may have something entirely new in the works.

blizzard

Blizzard has filed a trademark for something called Overwatch, hitting all the usual game and gaming-related categories.

Interestingly, Blizzard's recruiting page makes mention of an unannounced game title, which may be related.

Traditionally, Blizzard has devoted all its resources to large teams working on iterations of its key franchises, but that seems to be changing. Blizzard has made multiple comments recently about breaking off smaller teams to work on new kinds of games with a faster turnover, as in this Gamasutra interview discussing Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, its collectible card game.

"We started up a new development team because we kind of recognised that we needed to have this ability to be more experimental, experiment with different types of games than what we were doing with our big, core franchises," Jason Chayes said.

As PlayerAttack points out, Overwatch has a military ring to it, and some personnel changes at Blizzard in recent months may give a few clues as to what it's up to; Diablo 3 director Jay Wilson left the dungeon crawler for something new, and former Turtle Rock CEO Mike Booth joined Blizzard in 2013, specifically to work on a smaller project.

Just a reminder that Blizzard has been working on a second MMO for donkey's now, although Titan has been put on the backburner for a serious reboot.

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Overwatch

PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch

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About the Author
Brenna Hillier avatar

Brenna Hillier

Contributor

Based in Australia and having come from a lengthy career in the Aussie games media, Brenna worked as VG247's remote Deputy Editor for several years, covering news and events from the other side of the planet to the rest of the team. After leaving VG247, Brenna retired from games media and crossed over to development, working as a writer on several video games.

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