Sent： 22/03/2008
From： Michael Morhaime
To： Blizzard PR； Blizzard Dev； WWi08； Founders Group；
CC： Rod A. Rigole； Paul Maglione； Bobby Kotick； Bruce Hack； Frank Pearce； Rob
Pardo； Jeffrey Kaplan；
Dear All.
As many of you are already aware， last night we have decided to pull the plug on StarCraft 2.
In this letter， I’d like to share with you all exactly how and why this decisin was made.
We are well aware that many of you will not take this decision lightly， especially considering the bitter aftertaste of StarCraft Ghost， and the disproportional resources dedicated to the WarCraft franchise.
Prior to making this decision， I have personally sat down with Sales and Marketing， QA personnel， developers and artists， progamers and a few community managers. None have provided an answer which could support a different decision. Not a single person was able to justify StarCraft 2‘s existence.
World of WarCraft is our 800 lb gorilla.No MMORPG， RTS or FPS game can leave anything more than a dent in Blizzard！ssubscriber count. Every single person that reads this letter has a family that benefits from
World of WarCraft’s existenc and its utter dominance as the most commercially successful game of all time.
The only thing that can hurt World of WarCraft‘s subscriber base， is another Blizard game. We do not expect any other company in the world to be able to subtract as much as 300，000 subscribers from WoW‘s numbers.
How much will StarCraft 2’s release cost Blizzard Entertainment？The safest estimates are around 5% of World of WarCraft’s subscriber bas.500，000 users will leave World of Warcraft， taking ，000，000 worth of yearly subscriber fees with them.
Do we believe StarCraft 2 would have been successful？ Yes. But only as long as we are looking at the small picture. My responsibilities towards Activision， Vivendi， shareholders and Blizzard‘s own employees and their families， prevented me from taking any other course.
