A new StarCraft shooter's reportedly set to be revealed this year, possibly as a BlizzCon headliner

Right, so, Starcraft. A new shooter in the series is reportedly set to be revealed this year, possibly as the big headline act of Blizzcon in September.

The existence of such a secret shootery thing in the works at Blizzard was first reported by Jason Schreier last year, being one of the revelations to come out of his book on the publisher, titled Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment.

Well, now a report from Windows Central claims that said Starcraft shooter is “most likely” going to headline Blizzcon 2026, with Diablo 4 and World of Warcraft expansions expected to take the snowy stage alongside it.

That’s it in terms of details for this latest report, but Schreier’s reporting from last year did reveal that – at least as of the time of his book’s publication – long-time FarCry producer Dan Hay is heading up the project. Asked about like likelihood of this Starcraft shooter making it out into the wild by IGN around the same time, Schreier said the following:

If it’s not canceled. This is Blizzard after all. Their history with StarCraft shooters is not good. Yes, that is a project that as far as I know is in development, or at least as of the time that I wrote this book was in development. They are working on a StarCraft shooter, StarCraft is not dead at Blizzard.

He added that it “felt like such an interesting and useful nugget to include, because it really just shows you that Blizzard cannot quit StarCraft shooters, they just can’t say goodbye to them.” Indeed, as this’d be the third time acting as the charm for such a game. Nihilistic Software’s StarCraft GhostGhost was announced in 2002, put on hold in 2006, and later canned. Then, a shooter named codenamed Project Ares was reported to have been cancelled in 2019, with Blizzard’s focus pulled towards Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2.

As a young whippersnapper who’s never Starilly Crafted, I’ve got no strong feelings about any of this, but I do hope Edwin can be spared having to write more lines like “It’s been so long since the last Starcraft that all I can remember is that Zergs build on creep, the Protoss Void Ray is a glorified Xmas bauble, and Jim Curry went to space.”