After Battleborn, 2K Is Having Another Stab at the Hero Shooter Genre With Project Ethos

ign.com:

2K has teased the full reveal of Project Ethos, a third-person roguelike hero shooter in development at 31st Union.

31st Union and boss Michael Condrey flagged a reveal at 9am PT / 5pm UK today, October 17, on Twitch. The Twitch channel in question mentions a game called Project Ethos, which is described as a “third-person roguelike hero shooter.”

It’s time!
10.17 9:00 AM PT | 5pm GMT+1#jointheevolutionhttps://t.co/IZvt2JHGQp

That’s all we have for now. 31st Union is the San Francisco-based, 2K-owned studio established as 2K Silicon Valley back in 2019 before a name change a year later. It was set up by ex-Sledgehammer Games co-founder Michael Condrey, who before working on Call of Duty was one of the chief developers of EA’s Dead Space series at Visceral Games.

Project Ethos launches into the ultra competitive hero shooter market at a time when it has already claimed a number of high-profile casualties. Rocksteady’s troubled Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League flopped to the tune of $200 million, and Sony’s Concord has gone down as one of the most disastrous launches in PlayStation history. 2K and parent company Take-Two will of course be hoping to avoid a similar fate when Project Ethos comes out.

This isn’t 2K’s first stab at a hero shooter, of course. It published Gearbox’s ill-fated Battleborn in May 2016, but it ultimately crumbled under the overwhelming dominance of Blizzard’s Overwatch. Battleborn eventually went dark in January 2021.

For Take-Two, Project Ethos is but one of a number of games it has in the works, including Firaxis’ Civilization 7, Ken Levine's new game, Judas, Gearbox’s Borderlands 4, Hangar 13’s Mafia: The Old Country, Cloud Chamber’s BioShock sequel, and the big one, Rockstar’s GTA 6.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.