Blizzard Entertainment

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 developing its own software in 1993, releasing titles such as Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. That same year, it changed its name to Chaos Studios, Inc. and in 1994, following its acquisition by distributor Davidson & Associates, it was renamed Blizzard Entertainment. In 1994, 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 (1997) and strategy game StarCraft (1998). 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 Xbox division; Blizzard Entertainment retains its function as the publisher of games developed by its studios.

Since 2005, Blizzard Entertainment has hosted annual gaming conventions for fans to meet and to promote its 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 (the most recent being 2026's Midnight), while also releasing StarCraft: Remastered (2017), Diablo III (2012) and Diablo IV (2023), 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 (equivalent to $14.7 million in 2025), 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, it was contacted by a Florida company, Chaos Technologies, who claimed its trademark rights on the name "Chaos" and wanted the company to pay US$100,000 (equivalent to $217,220 in 2025) 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 (which included Blizzard) 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 (ARPG) 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 (2000), and its expansion pack Lord of Destruction (2001).

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 (MMORPG) 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 US$1 billion 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".

Vivendi merger with Activision and continued growth (2008–2017)

Up through 2006, Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision, had been working to rebound the company from near-bankruptcy, and had established a number of new studios. However, Activision lacked anything in the MMO market. Kotick saw that World of Warcraft was bringing in over US$1.1 billion a year in subscription fees, and began approaching Vivendi's CEO Jean-Bernard Lévy about potential acquisition of their struggling Vivendi Games division, which included Blizzard Entertainment. Lévy was open to a merger, but would only allow it if he controlled the majority of the combined company, knowing the value of World of Warcraft to Kotick. Among those Kotick spoke to for advice included Blizzard's Morhaime, who told Kotick that they had begun establishing lucrative in-roads into the Chinese market. Kotick accepted Lévy's deal, with the deal approved by shareholders in December 2007. By July 2008, the merger was complete, with Vivendi Games effectively dissolved except for Blizzard Entertainment, and the new company was named Activision Blizzard.

Blizzard established a distribution agreement with the Chinese company NetEase in August 2008 to publish Blizzard's games in China. The deal focused on StarCraft II which was gaining popularity as an esport within southeast Asia, as well as for other Blizzard games with the exception of World of Warcraft, still being handled by The9. The two companies established the Shanghai EaseNet Network Technology for managing the games within China. Blizzard and The9 prepared to launch the World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King, but the expansion came under scrutiny by China's content regulation board, the General Administration of Press and Publication, which rejected publication of it within China in March 2009, even with preliminary modifications made by The9 to clear it. Rumors of Blizzard's dissatisfaction with The9 from this and other previous complications with World of Warcraft came to a head when, in April 2009, Blizzard announced it was terminating its contract with The9, and transferred operation of World of Warcraft in China to NetEase.

They released an improved version of Battle.net (Battle.net 2.0) in March 2009 which included improved matchmaking, storefront features, and better support for all of Blizzard's existing titles particularly World of Warcraft.

Having peaked at 12 million monthly subscriptions in 2010, World of Warcraft subscriptions sunk to 6.8 million in 2014, the lowest number since the end of 2006, prior to The Burning Crusade expansion. However, World of Warcraft is still the world's most-subscribed MMORPG, and holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG by subscribers. In 2008, Blizzard was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for the creation of World of Warcraft. Mike Morhaime accepted the award.

Following the merger, Blizzard found it was relying on its well-established properties, but at the same time, the industry was experiencing a shift towards indie games. Blizzard established a few small teams within the company to work on developing new concepts based on the indie development approach that it could potentially use. One of these teams quickly came onto the idea of a collectible card game based on the Warcraft narrative universe, which ultimately became Hearthstone, released as a free-to-play title in March 2014. Hearthstone reached over 25 million players by the end of 2014, and exceeded 100 million players by 2018.

Another small internal team began work around 2008 on a new intellectual property known as Titan, a more contemporary or near-future MMORPG that would have co-existed alongside World of Warcraft. The project gained more visibility in 2010 as a result of some information leaks. Blizzard continued to speak on Titan's development over the next few years, with over 100 people within Blizzard working on the project. However, Titan's development was troubled, and, internally, in May 2013, Blizzard cancelled the project (publicly reporting this in 2014), and reassigned most of the staff but left about 40 people, led by Jeff Kaplan, to either come up with a fresh idea within a few weeks or have their team reassigned to Blizzard's other departments. The small team came upon the idea of a team-based multiplayer shooter game, reusing many of the assets from Titan but set in a new near-future narrative. The new project was greenlit by Blizzard and became known as Overwatch, which was released in May 2016. Overwatch became the fourth main intellectual property of Blizzard, following Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo.

In addition to Hearthstone and Overwatch, Blizzard Entertainment continued to produce sequels and expansions to its established properties during this period, including StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (2010) and Diablo III (2012). Their major crossover title, Heroes of the Storm, was released as a MOBA game in 2015. The game featured various characters from Blizzard's franchises as playable heroes, as well as different battlegrounds based on Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, and Overwatch universes. In the late 2010s, Blizzard released StarCraft: Remastered (2017) and Warcraft III: Reforged (2020), remastered versions of the original StarCraft and Warcraft III, respectively.

The May 2016 release of Overwatch was highly successful, and was the highest-selling game on PC for 2016. Several traditional esport events had been established within the year of Overwatch's release, such as the Overwatch World Cup, but Blizzard continued to expand this and announced the first esports professional league, the Overwatch League at the 2016 BlizzCon event. The company purchased a studio at The Burbank Studios in Burbank, California, that it converted into a dedicated esports venue, Blizzard Arena, to be used for the Overwatch League and other events. The inaugural season of the Overwatch League launched on January 10, 2018, with 12 global teams playing. By the second season in 2019 it had expanded the League to 20 teams, and with its third season in 2020, it will have these teams traveling across the globe in a transitional home/away-style format.

In 2012, Blizzard Entertainment had 4,700 employees, with offices across 11 cities including Austin, Texas, and countries around the globe. As of June 2015, the company's headquarters in Irvine, California had 2,622 employees.

Change of leadership (2018–2022)

By 2018, a rift had developed between Kotick and Morhaime on how Blizzard should continue developing its games, with Morhaime wanting to allow the developers the freedom to experiment while Kotick was focused on generating profit. Morhaime had considered resigning in 2017 but Kotick convinced him to stay on. Morhaime announced his plans to step down as the company president and CEO On October 3, 2018, while remaining an advisor to the company. Morhaime stated publicly that he felt it was time for someone else to lead Blizzard, but those close to him said he had become tired of the conflicts with Kotick. Morhaime formally left on April 7, 2019, and was replaced by J. Allen Brack, the executive producer on World of Warcraft.

In February 2019, Kotick announced a company-wide layoff of 8% of Activision Blizzard staff, around 800 total positions, due to lower revenues in 2018; this included a significant portion of Blizzard Entertainment, which had rising head count over the years. Blizzard was planning for the announcement of Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 at the 2019 Blizzcon, and to keep the company focused, two other projects, codenamed Ares and Orion, were cancelled.

Frank Pearce announced he would be stepping down as Blizzard's Chief Development Officer on July 19, 2019, though will remain in an advisory role similar to Morhaime. Michael Chu, lead writer on many of Blizzard's franchises including Diablo, Warcraft, and Overwatch, announced he was leaving the company after 20 years in March 2020.

On January 22, 2021, Activision transferred Vicarious Visions over to Blizzard Entertainment, stating that the Vicarious Visions team had better opportunity for long-term support for Blizzard. Vicarious had been working with Blizzard for about two years prior to this announcement on the planned remaster of Diablo II, Diablo II: Resurrected, and according to Brack, it made sense to incorporate Vicarious into Blizzard for ongoing support of the game and for other Diablo games including Diablo IV. Vicarious was completely merged into Blizzard by April 12, 2022, thereby being renamed Blizzard Albany.

In celebration of the company's 30th anniversary, Blizzard Entertainment released a compilation called Blizzard Arcade Collection in February 2021, for various video game platforms. The collection includes its three classic video games: The Lost Vikings, Rock n' Roll Racing, and Blackthorne, each of which containing additional upgrades and numerous modern features.

Activision Blizzard was the subject of a lawsuit from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing in July 2021, asserting that for several years the management within Blizzard as well as Activision promoted a "frat boy" atmosphere that allowed and encouraged sexual misconduct towards female employees and discrimination in hiring practices. The lawsuit drew a large response from employees and groups outside of Activision Blizzard. In the wake of these events, Brack, one of the few individuals directly named in the suit, announced he was leaving Blizzard to "pursue new opportunities", and will be replaced by co-leads Jen Oneal, the lead of Vicarious Visions and the first woman in a leadership role for the company, and Mike Ybarra, a Blizzard executive vice president. Oneal announced in November 2021 that she would be leaving the company by the end of 2021, leaving Ybarra as the sole leader of Blizzard.

As a result of the California lawsuit and of delays and release issues with its more recent games, Activision Blizzard's stock faced severe pressure. Subsequently, Microsoft seized the opportunity to become one of the largest video game companies in the world and announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard and its subsidiaries, including Blizzard, for $68.7 billion in January 2022. This exchange marks the largest acquisition in tech history, surpassing the $67 billion Dell-EMC merger from 2016. The deal closed on October 13, 2023, and Activision Blizzard moved into the Microsoft Gaming division.

Blizzard acquired Proletariat, the developers of Spellbreak, in June 2022 as to help support World of Warcraft. The 100-employee studio remained in Boston but will shutter Spellbreak as it moves onto Warcraft.

Challenges with NetEase and Microsoft acquisition (2022–present)

Ahead of its license renewal in January 2023, Blizzard (via Activision Blizzard) and NetEase stated in November 2022 that it had been unable to come to an agreement on the renewal terms for its license, and thus most Blizzard games will cease operations in China in January 2023 until the situation can be resolved. According to a report by The New York Times, several factors influenced Activision Blizzard's decision to terminate the agreement, which included stronger demands made by the Chinese government to know of Activision Blizzard's internal business matters, NetEase's desire to license the games directly rather than run the license through a joint venture, and Activision Blizzard's concerns that NetEase was trying to start its own ventures, including the $100 million payment towards Bungie in 2018. NetEase was further concerned about the impact of the pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. Activision Blizzard stated it was looking to other Chinese firms as replacements for NetEase as to restore its games in China.

By April 2024, Blizzard, with Microsoft's help, and NetEase had agreed to new publishing terms, with plans to bring back Blizzard's games to China by mid-2024, maintaining all prior game ownership from the original publishing deal. Under this new deal, NetEase also will be able to bring games to the Xbox platform.

Following completion of the acquisition, Microsoft announced it was laying off 1,900 staff from Microsoft Gaming on January 25, 2024. Alongside this, Blizzard President Mike Ybarra and Chief Design Officer Allen Adham announced they would be leaving the company. Further, the planned survival game from Blizzard was canceled. On January 29, 2024, Johanna Faries, the former general manager of the Call of Duty series, was named Blizzard Entertainment's new president, taking office on February 5.

Following the unionization success of Raven Software's Game Workers Alliance (GWA) union for quality assurance (QA) testers, the 20-member QA team of Blizzard Albany announced a unionization drive in July 2022 as GWA Albany. The vote passed (14–0).

On July 24, 2024, 500 artists, designers, engineers, producers, and quality assurance testers who work on World of Warcraft voted to unionize under the Communications Workers of America. The same day, 60 QA testers at Blizzard's Austin office, who work on various games including Diablo IV and Hearthstone, also voted to unionize and formed the union "Texas Blizzard QA United-CWA." The following year, in May 2025, the members of Blizzard Team 4, who work on the game Overwatch 2, also unionized with the Communications Workers of America, with nearly 200 game developers forming the wall-to-wall union "Overwatch Gamemakers Guild-CWA." In August 2025, Blizzard's Story and Franchise Development team announced it has unionized with the CWA. Later that month, 450 Diablo designers, engineers, artists, and support staff unionized across Irvine, California, Albany, New York, and Austin, Texas.