MMO specialist website Massively claims that, according to a "tipster", Blizzard's John Staats has been laid off. Who is John Staats? Only the senior level designer of the company's next big MMO, the successor to World of Warcraft.
Staats (pictured), who has worked for Blizzard for a decade, been described as a "hero of the WoW dev team" and whose credits involve every single World of Warcraft raid dungeon, Blackrock Mountain and Booty Bay, was obviously a big part of the team working on Titan, the codename for Blizzard's next massively-multiplayer game.
Of course, he still may be a big part of the team; we've contacted Blizzard for confirmation, and will update if we hear back.
Rumor: Senior Titan designer laid off by Blizzard [Massively]
(Top photo by Ifurita Oni | Flickr)
You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at plunkett@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.