Streamers Mike “shroud” Grzesiek and Chris “Sacriel” Ball have teamed up with developer Splash Damage to create an “AAA open-world survival game” codenamed Project Astrid. The group announced the new project on Thursday, with Splash Damage creative director Lance Winter calling Grzesiek and Ball “core members of our development team.”
“Chris and I have refined a vision for the future in the survival genre and with Splash Damage we are going to build it,” Grzesiek said in a statement. “We want to build the best survival game ever, and with Sacriel’s brain and Splash Damage’s team, I know we can do it.”
Grzesiek is a longtime esports player and has competed professionally in games Counter-Strike: Global Offensive And valorant. He also streams to a huge audience: 10.5 million followers on Twitch and 6.8 million subscribers on YouTube. Ball is a streaming veteran, with over 10 years of experience on Twitch playing survival-focused games like DayZ, PUBGAnd Escape from Tarkov. It should come as no surprise that Project Astrid is pitched as a “game that streamers and gamers love to play.”
Splash Damage is a seasoned studio that has cut its teeth on multiplayer fare Wolfenstein: enemy territory And Enemy Territory: Quake Warsand made more recently Edge And Gears tactics. The studio’s most recently announced project is the online action game Transformers: Reactivate.
A release date and platforms for it Project Astrid were not announced.
Shroud and Sacriel’s announcement is the latest in a growing trend of content creators making the leap into game development and publishing. Other examples include the esports organization 100 Thieves, run by Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, who announced the game Project X last year; YouTuber Jason “Dunkey” Gastrow, who publishes games under the label Big mode; and dr. Disrespect, whose studio Midnight Society makes the game dead drop.
