Former Blizzard developers found Frost Giant Studios

Two former Blizzard developers have set up a new studio, Frost Giant Studios, which will focus on developing real-time strategy games.

The studio is founded by Tim Morten and Tim Campbell, who both have experience in the real-time strategy genre from their time at Blizzard. Morten was production director on StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, while Campbell was lead campaign designer for Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne.

The California-based team has 8 employees, all of whom worked at Blizzard, and four contractors.

The studio has raised $4.7M in seed funding, led by Bitkraft Ventures – with participation from 1 Up Ventures, GC Tracker, Riot Games, and Griffin Gaming Partners.

The pair will use the money “to begin building a prototype for gameplay, conduct consumer research, and expand operations.”

That’s according to a chat with VentureBeat, where Morten addressed the motivation behind the decision to leave Blizzard and found a new studio.

“In order to build another brand-new RTS, it felt like the opportunity to do it externally was too good to pass up. But I think all of us had a lot of love for Blizzard that made it a difficult decision to go this route,” Morten said.

“I knew that it was time for me to move on from Blizzard, and I saw I was in parallel exploring if it was possible to raise funding for a new RTS. It’s incredible to me how that funding ecosystem for games has grown and continues to flourish.”