StarCraft Open-World Shooter Revealed With Cinematic Trailer, but It Won’t Release for a Long Time
After a ton of rumors and a false start from decades ago, Blizzard Entertainment has finally announced a StarCraft shooter. This shooter is simply called StarCraft and was revealed with a cinematic trailer that contained no gameplay.
StarCraft didn’t get an exact release date, but this open-world first-person shooter will be coming out sometime in 2030. Platforms were not announced, but it will undoubtedly at least come to PC. Whether or not it comes to PlayStation consoles is up to speculation, especially since Xbox has recommitted to making console exclusives.
StarCraft has been rumored for years. Blizzard had courted Far Cry veteran Dan Hay in 2022, and then it was reported in 2024 that he was leading a StarCraft shooter. A few months after that report, Blizzard was hiring for an “upcoming open-world shooter game” that sounded like it could be connected to StarCraft.
It was then reported in 2026 that Blizzard was also working with Nexon on a StarCraft shooter. Nexon was one of four South Korean companies that were reportedly trying to pitch a new StarCraft game to Blizzard in 2025. It was unclear if Hay’s project and Nexon’s were one in the same or different entities. However, it seemed unlikely that these were the same game, since they were coming from companies on different continents.
Blizzard Has Repeatedly Tried to Make a StarCraft Shooter
This is not the first time Blizzard has tried to put out a shooter in the StarCraft universe. StarCraft: Ghost was the most famous attempt at putting the strategy series into this new genre. This third-person shooter staring the Zero Suit Samus-like character Nova was officially announced in 2002 before being put on “indefinite hold” in 2006. Blizzard confirmed the obvious in 2014 that Ghost had been canned. Since it was officially shown, there is plenty of footage to sift through, although most of it is of rather blurry and low res. A build of it eventually leaked out in 2020.
And while not as public of an affair as Ghost, Blizzard tried to make another shooter in the StarCraft franchise that was codenamed Ares. According to a Kotaku report, Ares was reportedly a Battlefield-like game with StarCraft elements that was canceled in 2019 after two years in development in order to focus more on Overwatch and Diablo. Players could play as both Terran and Zerg characters and sources noted development was going slowly but that it looked solid. Unlike Ghost, footage of Ares never came out.
This makes StarCraft the third (or fourth or fifth, if some of the aforementioned projects are indeed different) known time Blizzard has tried to make a shooter out of StarCraft. And it remains to be seen if the third time is the charm.
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