Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California, and a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. Originally founded in 1991, the company is best known for producing the highly influential massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft as well as the multi million-selling video game franchises Diablo, ''StarCraft, and Overwatch. The company also operates Battle.net, an online gaming service.
Founded as Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce. The company began development of their own software in 1993, with games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings, and changed its name to Chaos Studios, Inc. the same year, then to Blizzard Entertainment after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates in 1994; that year, the company released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, which would receive numerous sequels and led to the highly popular World of Warcraft. By the end of the decade, Blizzard also found success with the action role-playing game Diablo and strategy game StarCraft. The company became part of Vivendi Games in 1998, which would then merge with Activision in 2008, culminating in the inclusion of the Blizzard brand name in the title of the resulting holding company; Activision Blizzard became completely independent from Vivendi in 2013. Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in 2023, maintaining that the company will continue to operate as a separate business, while part of the larger Microsoft Gaming division; Blizzard Entertainment retains its function as the publisher of games developed by their studios.
Since 2005, Blizzard Entertainment has hosted annual gaming conventions for fans to meet and to promote their games, called BlizzCon, as well as a number of global events outside the United States. In the 2010s and 2020s, Blizzard has continued development of expansion packs for World of Warcraft, while also releasing StarCraft: Remastered, Diablo III and Diablo IV, as well as new material most notably the online multiplayer games Hearthstone, a collectible card game; Heroes of the Storm, a battle arena game; and Overwatch and Overwatch 2'', which are first-person shooters. Since 2018, the company's reputation has suffered from a series of poorly received games, controversies involving players and staff, and allegations of sexual harassment and other misconduct against leading Blizzard employees.
History
Founding (1991–1994)
Blizzard Entertainment was founded by Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce as Silicon & Synapse in February 1991, after all three had earned their bachelor's degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles the year prior.The name "Silicon & Synapse" was a high concept from the three founders, with "silicon" representing the building block of a computer, while "synapse" the building block of the brain. The initial logo was created by Stu Rose. To fund the company, each of them contributed about $10,000, Morhaime borrowing the sum interest-free from his grandmother. Their offices were established in a business park near the University of California, Irvine in Irvine, California.
During the first two years, the company focused on creating game ports for other studios. Interplay Productions' Brian Fargo was friends with Adham and had a 10% stake in Silicon & Synapse. Fargo provided the company with conversion contacts for the games Interplay was publishing, starting with Battle Chess. Other titles included Ports include titles such as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I and Battle Chess II: Chinese Chess. Fargo then enlisted Silicon & Synapse around 1991 to help develop RPM Racing that Interplay was preparing for the launch of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Fargo remained impressed with Silicon & Synapse's work, and provided them the ability to write their own games to be published by Interplay. The first two titles developed solely by the company were Rock n' Roll Racing, a sequel to RPM Racing, and The Lost Vikings inspired by Lemmings.
Around 1993, co-founder Adham told the other executives that he did not like the name "Silicon & Synapse" anymore, as outsiders were confusing the element silicon used in microchips with silicone polymer of breast implants. By the end of 1993, Adham changed the name to "Chaos Studios," reflecting on the haphazardness of their development processes.
Near this same time, the company started to explore options in publishing their own games, as their conversion contracts were not as lucrative for the company. Inspired by the multiplayer aspects of Westwood Studios' Dune II and the high fantasy setting of The Lord of the Rings, the company began work on what would become Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Adham saw this as a start of a series of interconnected titles, similar to the Gold Box series by Strategic Simulations. To support its development and keep the company afloat, the studio took several more conversion contracts, though the founders were going into debt to keep their twelve developers employed. Davidson & Associates, a company that published educational software and which had previously employed Silicon & Synapse for conversion contracts, made an offer to buy the company for $4 million. Interplay was negotiating to be the publisher for Warcraft, and Fargo cautioned Adham and Morhaime against selling the company. Adham and Morhiame rejected Davidson & Associates' initial offer, but the company came back with another offer of $6.75 million, assuring to the founders that they would have creative control over the games they developed. Adham and Morhaime accepted the offer in early 1994.
Shortly after the sale, they were contacted by a Florida company, Chaos Technologies, who claimed their trademark rights on the name "Chaos" and wanted the company to pay to keep the name. Not wanting to pay that sum, the executives decided to change the studio's name to "Ogre Studios" by April 1994. However, Davidson & Associates did not like this name, and forced the company to change it. According to Morhaime, Adham began running through a dictionary from the start, writing down any word that seemed interesting and passing it to the legal department to see if it had any complications. One of the first words they found to be interesting and cleared the legal check was "blizzard", leading them to change their name to "Blizzard Entertainment" by May 1994. Warcraft was released in November 1994, and within a year, helped to establish Blizzard among other development studios like Westwood.
Acquisition by Vivendi and ''World of Warcraft'' (1995–2007)
Blizzard Entertainment has changed hands several times since then. Davidson was acquired along with Sierra On-Line by a company called CUC International in 1996. CUC then merged with a hotel, real-estate, and car-rental franchiser called HFS Corporation to form Cendant in 1997. In 1998 it became apparent that CUC had engaged in accounting fraud for years before the merger. Cendant's stock lost 80% of its value over the next six months in the ensuing widely discussed accounting scandal. The company sold its consumer software operations, Sierra On-line to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. Blizzard, at this point numbering about 200 employees, became part of the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi.In 1996, Blizzard Entertainment acquired Condor Games of San Mateo, California, which had been working on the action role-playing game Diablo for Blizzard at the time, and was led by David Brevik and brothers Max and Erick Schaefer. Condor was renamed Blizzard North, with Blizzard's existing Irvine studios colloquially referred as Blizzard South. Diablo was released at the very start of 1997 alongside Battle.net, a matchmaking service for the game. Blizzard North developed the sequel Diablo II, and its expansion pack Lord of Destruction.
Following the success of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Blizzard began development on a science fiction-themed RTS, StarCraft, and released the title in March 1998. The title was the top-selling PC game for the year, and led to further growth of the Battle.net service and the use of the game for esports. Around 2000, Blizzard engaged with Nihilistic Software to work on a version of StarCraft for home consoles for Blizzard. Nihilisitic was co-founded by Robert Huebner, who had worked on StarCraft and other games while a Blizzard employee before leaving to found the studio. The game, StarCraft: Ghost, was a stealth-oriented game compared to the RTS features of StarCraft, and was a major feature of the 2002 Tokyo Game Show. However, over the next few years, the game entered development hell with conflicts between Nihilisitic and Blizzard on its direction. Blizzard ordered Nihilistic to stop work on StarCraft: Ghost in July 2004, and instead brought on Swingin' Ape Studios, a third-party studio that had just successfully released Metal Arms: Glitch in the System in 2003, to reboot the development of Ghost. Blizzard fully acquired Swingin' Ape Studios in May 2005 to continue on Ghost. However, while the game was scheduled to be released in 2005, it was targeted at the consoles of the sixth generation, such as the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox, while the industry was transitioning to the seventh generation. Blizzard decided to cancel Ghost rather than extend its development period to work on the newer consoles.
Blizzard started to work on a sequel to the Warcraft II in early 1998, which was announced as a "role-playing strategy" game. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, the third title set in the Warcraft fictional universe, was released in July 2002. Warcraft III has inspired many future games, having the influence on real-time strategy and multiplayer online battle arena genre. Many of the characters, locations and concepts introduced in Warcraft III and its expansion went on to play major roles in numerous future Blizzard's titles.
In 2002, Blizzard was able to reacquire rights for three of its earlier Silicon & Synapse titles, The Lost Vikings, Rock n' Roll Racing and Blackthorne, from Interplay Entertainment and re-release them for the Game Boy Advance handheld console.
Around 2003, Blizzard North was working on Diablo III as well as planned science-fiction-based version dubbed Starblo. Amid rumors that Vivendi was looking to sell its gaming division around 2003, Blizzard North's leadership, consisting of Brevik, the Schaefers, and Bill Roper, asked Blizzard to provide their studio protections from the potential sale, or else they would resign. After several rounds of tense communications, the four gave their resignations to Blizzard's management on June 30, 2003. As part of this, a significant portion of Blizzard North's staff were laid off, additional work on Starblo was terminated and the remaining team focused on Diablo III. Blizzard's management made the decision August 2005 to consolidate Blizzard North into Blizzard Entertainment, relocating staff to the main Blizzard offices in Irvine.
In 2004, Blizzard opened European offices in the Paris suburb of Vélizy, Yvelines, France.
Blizzard began work on World of Warcraft near the end of 1999, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the Warcraft franchise, with gameplay inspired by EverQuest. The game was publicly announced in September 2001. The excitement by the media for World of Warcraft led to significant growth with Team 2 from forty to the hundreds, as well as a large amount of crunch development to complete the game. In January 2004, Adham announced he was leaving the company from being burnt out over his work on World of Warcraft, transferring management to Morhaime. World of Warcraft was released on November 23, 2004, in North America, and on February 11, 2005, in Europe. By December 2004, the game was the fastest-selling PC game in the United States, and by March 2005, had reached 1.5 million subscribers worldwide. Blizzard partnered with Chinese publisher The9 to publish and distribute World of Warcraft in China, as foreign companies could not directly publish into the country themselves. World of Warcraft launched in China in June 2005. By the end of 2007, World of Warcraft was considered a global phenomenon, having reached over 9 million subscribers and exceeded in revenue since its release. In April 2008, World of Warcraft was estimated to hold 62 percent of the MMORPG subscription market.
With the success of World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment organized the first BlizzCon fan convention in October 2005 held at the Anaheim Convention Center. The inaugural event drew about 6,000 people and became an annual event which Blizzard uses to announce new games, expansions, and content for its properties.
Blizzard's staff quadrupled from around 400 employees in 2004 to 1600 by 2006 to provide more resources to World of Warcraft and its various expansions. To deal with its growing staff, Blizzard moved their headquarters from the UCI Research Park campus to a newly constructed 240,000-square foot campus in Irvine that was formerly occupied by Broadcom and before that by AST Research; the former Research Park site was taken over by Linksys. Blizzard's new base was completed by March 2008; the city named the primary street on this campus as 1 Blizzard Way to honor the company. The campus includes a twelve-foot tall bronze statue of a Warcraft orc riding a wolf, with plaques surrounding it representing the eight company values by that point, "Gameplay First", "Commit to Quality", "Play Nice; Play Fair", "Embrace Your Inner Geek", "Learn & Grow", "Every Voice Matters", "Think Globally", and "Lead Responsibly".