Hearthstone boss Ben Brode leaves Blizzard Entertainment

Ben Brode has spent most of the last decade working on Blizzard Entertainment’s card battler Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, but for him, that work is now coming to an end. Brode announced today that he is leaving the publisher to start a new game studio even though that means leaving behind Blizzard’s on-campus Starbucks.

“I am very fortunate to be able to take a crazy risk right now in my life,” Brode wrote in a farewell message on Blizzard’s forums. “And I’m excited to be scrappy and a little scared. I’m going to help start a new company. We’ll probably make games, but we haven’t figured anything else out, yet. I’m looking forward to designing, programming, and actually creating things again.”