From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

Type	Subsidiary of Activision Blizzard
Founded	1991 (as Silicon & Synapse)
Headquarters	Irvine, California, USA.[1]
Key people	Michael Morhaime (president and co-founder) Frank Pearce (vice president and co-founder) Rob Pardo (vice president) Chris Metzen (vice president of Creative Development)
Industry	Video games
Products	Warcraft series StarCraft series Diablo series
Owner(s)	Vivendi
Employees	4,600[2]
Parent	Activision Blizzard
Website	Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded in February 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce. Based in Irvine, California, the company originally concentrated primarily on the creation of game ports for other studios before beginning development of their own software in 1993 with the development of games like Rock N' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1994 the company became Blizzard Entertainment Inc before being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. Blizzard went on to create several successful PC games, including the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series, and the MMORPG World of Warcraft.

Blizzard Entertainment offers events to meet players and to announce games: the BlizzCon in California, United States, and the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in other countries.

History

Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine, CA

Blizzard Entertainment was founded by Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce as Silicon & Synapse in February 1991, a year after^[3] all three had received their bachelor's degrees from UCLA.^[3][4] In the early days the company focused on creating game ports for other studios. Ports include titles such as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I and Battle Chess II: Chinese Chess.^[5][6] In 1993, the company developed games like Rock N' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings (published by Interplay Productions). In 1994, the company briefly changed its name to Chaos Studios, before finally settling on Blizzard Entertainment after it was discovered that another company with the Chaos name already existed. That same year, they were acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates for under $10 million. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.

Blizzard 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 was part of the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi. In July 2008 Vivendi Games merged with Activision, using Blizzard's name in the resulting company, Activision Blizzard.

In 1996, Blizzard acquired Condor Games, which had been working on the game Diablo for Blizzard at the time. Condor was renamed Blizzard North, and has since developed hit games Diablo, Diablo II, and its expansion pack Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. Blizzard North was located in San Mateo, California; the company originated in Redwood City, California.

Blizzard launched their online gaming service Battle.net in January 1997 with the release of their action-RPG Diablo. In 2002, Blizzard was able to reacquire rights for three of its earlier Silicon & Synapse titles from Interplay Entertainment and re-release them under Game Boy Advance.^[7] In 2004, Blizzard opened European offices in the Paris suburb of Vélizy, Yvelines, France, responsible for the European in-game support of World of Warcraft. On November 23, 2004, Blizzard released World of Warcraft, its MMORPG offering. On May 16, 2005, Blizzard announced the acquisition of Swingin' Ape Studios, a console game developer which had been developing StarCraft: Ghost. The company was then merged into Blizzard's other teams after StarCraft: Ghost was 'postponed indefinitely'. On August 1, 2005, Blizzard announced the consolidation of Blizzard North into the headquarters at 131 Theory in UC Irvine's University Research Park in Irvine, California.

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.

Titles

• StarCraft II was officially announced as of May 19, 2007, at the Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea.
• Diablo III was officially announced as of June 28 , 2008 at the 2008 Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France.

Notable unreleased titles include Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, which was cancelled on May 22, 1998, Shattered Nations, and StarCraft: Ghost, which was "indefinitely postponed" on March 24, 2006 after being in development hell for much of its lifespan, and whose current status is in question. The company also has a history of declining to set release dates, choosing to instead take as much time as needed, generally saying a given product is "done when it's done."^[15]

Pax Imperia II was originally announced as a title to be published by Blizzard. Blizzard eventually dropped Pax Imperia II, though, when it decided it might be in conflict with their other space strategy project, the now-legendary StarCraft. THQ eventually contracted with Heliotrope and released the game in 1997 as Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that they will be producing a Warcraft live-action movie. The movie will be released by Legendary Pictures.^[16] They have recently announced that director Sam Raimi has agreed to direct the upcoming movie.

Blizzard recently trademarked the name 'Cataclysm' and have announced that this will be the name of the next expansion to the current: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.^[17]

Warden Client

Blizzard has made use of a special form of software known as the 'Warden Client'. The Warden client is known to be used with Blizzard's World of Warcraft online game, and the Terms of Service contain a clause consenting to the Warden software performing these scans while World of Warcraft is running.^[18]

The Warden client scans the process names, window titles, and a small portion of the code segment of running processes in order to determine whether any of these third-party programs are running. The goal of this is to detect and address players who may be attempting to cheat in the game. As World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online game, the actions of a few cheaters can greatly affect the experience of the rest of the game's community. This determination of third party programs is made by hashing the scanned strings and comparing the hashed value to a list of hashes assumed to correspond to cheat programs.^[19] The Warden scans all processes running on a computer, not just the World of Warcraft game, and could possibly run across what would be considered private information and other personally identifiable information. It is because of these peripheral scans that Warden has been accused of being spyware and has run afoul of controversy among privacy advocates.^[20][21][22]

The Warden's reliability in correctly discerning legitimate vs illegitimate actions was called into question when a large scale incident happened when many Linux users were banned after an update to Warden caused it to incorrectly detect Cedega as a cheat program.^[23] Blizzard issued a statement claiming they had correctly identified and restored all accounts and credited them with 20 days play.^[24]

The Warden is not the first time Blizzard Entertainment has been accused of attempting to inspect customers' computers. In 1998 Blizzard Entertainment had a class action lawsuit filed against them for "unlawful business practices" for the action of collecting data from a user's computer without their permission.^[25]

Legal disputes

FreeCraft

On June 20, 2003, Blizzard issued a cease and desist letter to the developers of an open source clone of the Warcraft engine called FreeCraft, claiming trademark infringement. This hobby project had the same gameplay and characters as Warcraft II, but came with different graphics and music.

As well as a similar name, FreeCraft enabled gamers to use Warcraft II graphics, provided they had the Warcraft II CD. The programmers of the clone shut down their site without challenge. Soon after that the developers regrouped to continue the work by the name of Stratagus.^[26]

World of Warcraft Private Server Complications

On December 5, 2008 Blizzard issued a cease and desist letter to many administrators of high population World of Warcraft private servers (essentially slightly altered hosting servers of the actual World of Warcraft game, that players do not have to pay for). Blizzard used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to influence many private servers to fully shut down and cease to exist.^[27] Private or free servers sometimes charge a fee for providing players with in game items such as Epic sets of armor, weapons and gold. Some skills, abilities and quests aren't fully functional, creating a sizable gap in functionality between the official and private servers. Despite this action, thousands of these servers still exist.

Founder Electronics infringement lawsuit

In 2007-08-14, Beijing University Founder Electronics Co., Ltd. sued Blizzard Entertainment Limited for copyright infringement claiming 100 million yuan in damages. The lawsuit alleged the Chinese edition of World of Warcraft reproduced a number of Chinese typefaces made by Founder Electronics without permission.^[28]

MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

On July 14, 2008, the U.S. District of Arizona ruled on the case MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. The Court found that MDY was liable for copyright infringement since users of its Glider bot program were breaking Blizzard's End User License Agreement and Terms of Use.^[29]

Blizzard Account

Blizzard released its Blizzard Account system in 2009. This service allows people who have purchased Blizzard Products (particularly StarCraft, Diablo II, and WarCraft III and their expansions), to download games they have purchased, without needing the CD. Soon, it will store a player's "Blizzard Level" (similar to a Gamerscore), when World of Warcraft's Achievement Points get added to the system, and expanded with future Blizzard titles, like StarCraft II and Diablo III.^[30]

Most recently, Blizz Drink has stated that all current World of Warcraft accounts will have to switch over to "Battle.net Accounts" by November 11, 2009. Failure to do so will prevent the user from logging in until the switch has occurred. Players that do this or have already switched to a "Blizzard Account" are being given a free in game penguin pet.^[31]

Companies created by former employees

Over the years, some former Blizzard employees have moved on and established gaming companies of their own:

• Flagship Studios,^[32] creators of Hellgate: London, also worked on Mythos.
• ArenaNet,^[33] creators of the Guild Wars franchise.
• Ready at Dawn Studios,^[34] creators of Daxter, God of War: Chains of Olympus and an Ōkami port for the Wii.
• Red 5 Studios,^[35] currently working on a yet to be announced next generation MMOG.
• Castaway Entertainment,^[36] currently in a state of financial crisis, ceased working on a game similar to the Diablo series, Djinn.
• Click Entertainment,^[37] creators of Throne of Darkness.
• Carbine Studios,^[38] currently working on a yet to be announced massively multiplayer title.
• Turpitude Design,^[39] founded by Stieg Hedlund.
• Hyboreal Games,^[40] founded by Michio Okamura.
• Runic Games,^[41] founded by Travis Baldree, Erich Schaefer, and Max Schaefer; creators of Torchlight.
• Undead Labs, founded by Jeff Strain. Currently working on a Zombie MMO for consoles.

See also

	Los Angeles portal
	Companies portal

• BlizzCon
• Blizzard North

References

External links

Company and corporate

• Blizzard's website
• Blizzard UK's website
• Battle.Net website
• 2008 Worldwide Invitational
• Frostmourne Replica Sword

The Bnetd case

• "Blizzard's official statement on battle.net emulators". Archived from the original on 2007-10-24. http://web.archive.org/web/20071024202100/http://www.battle.net/support/emulationfaq.shtml. 
• A rebuttal to Blizzard's official emulation statement
• Yale LawMeme's analysis of the case
• EFF page on case

From StrategyWiki, the free strategy guide and walkthrough wiki

Blizzard Entertainment
Founded	1991
Located	Irvine, California
Website	http://blizzard.com/
Wikipedia has more about this subject: Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment is a division of Vivendi Games (originally Havas Interactive). Founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse in Irvine, California by Allen Adham, current president Michael Morhaime, and current senior vice president Frank Pearce. Blizzard has developed games for DOS, Macintosh, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Windows NT and Mac OS platforms.

Blizzard North

Blizzard North was the Northern-California division of Blizzard Entertainment, known for the Diablo series. The studio was originally based in Redwood City, and then moved a short distance away to San Mateo, with Blizzard proper being based in Irvine (in southern California).

History

Blizzard North was originally an independent company. It was established in 1993 under the name Condor, founded by Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik. The company was purchased and renamed by Blizzard about six months before the release of their hit PC game, Diablo, in 1996. Diablo proved to be incredibly successful, and the still-more successful sequel Diablo II was released in 2000. An expansion pack followed the year after.

By June of 2003 two new games were in production. However on June 30, 2003, several key employees left Blizzard North to form the new companies Flagship Studios (8 moved there) and Castaway Entertainment (9 moved there). The Blizzard North exodus continued on with around 30 employees leaving the company in total.

The resignations were partly due to a conflict with Blizzard Entertainment's owner, Vivendi, and partly due to employees wishing to start something new. Back at Blizzard North, however, they would have a common effect; of the two unannounced games that were in production at the time, one was now forced to be canceled. Blizzard Entertainment has since said the canceled game was a "Blizzard North kind of game".

On August 1, 2005, Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North, saying that remaining employees were moving to its head offices to resume work on an unannounced project. A few employees from the Diablo team, including Eric Sexton, Michio Okamura and Steven Woo, organized to launch a new company, Hyboreal Games, which later became U.I. Pacific and is working on a new online game.^[1]

A few months after the closure of Blizzard North, Bill Roper, Erich Schaefer and his brother Max Schaefer co-founded Flagship Studios which now is developing Mythos and Hellgate: London.

References

From Wikia Gaming, your source for walkthroughs, games, guides, and more!

Blizzard Entertainment
Type	Private
Founded	1991
Headquarters	Irvine, CA, U.S., Velizy, Yvelines, France
Products	The Warcraft series The StarCraft series The Diablo series
Parent Company	N/A
Website	http://www.blizzard.com

Blizzard is a Popular gaming company based out of Irvine, California. Creators of the popular Warcraft series, Diablo Series and StarCraft Series and of the popular Battle.net online gaming service. They started as Silicon & Synapse in 1991, and released a couple of titles for the SNES and Genesis. The game that would make them a major developer did not come until 1994, where after changing their name to Blizzard Entertainment, they released an RTS game called Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. The Warcraft series is now one of the most successful franchises in the industry.

Their games today are primarily for the PC, with a new division entitled Blizzard Console focusing on games for home consoles.

Blizzcon

Titles

• The Lost Vikings (1992) - platform game
• Rock & Roll Racing (1993) - racing game
• Blackthorne (1994) - fantasy platform game
• The Death and Return of Superman (1994) - side-scrolling beat 'em up
• Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (1994) - fantasy real-time strategy game
• Justice League Task Force (1995) - one-on-one fighting game
• The Lost Vikings II (1995) - platform game
• Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995) - fantasy real-time strategy game
• Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal (1996) - expansion pack
• Diablo (1996) - action-oriented computer role-playing game
• StarCraft (1998) - science fiction real-time strategy game
• StarCraft: Brood War (1998) - expansion pack
• Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans (Unreleased) - Canceled fantasy adventure game
• Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition (1999) - upgraded version of WarCraft II
• Diablo II (2000) - action-oriented RPG
• Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (2001) - expansion pack
• Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002) - fantasy real-time strategy game
• Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (2003) - expansion pack
• World of Warcraft (2004) - MMORPG set in the Warcraft universe
• StarCraft: Ghost (Canceled) - science fiction third-person action game
• StarCraft II (In production) - sequel to StarCraft
• Diablo III (In production) - sequel to Diablo

External Links

• www.blizzard.com - The official website.
• www.battle.net - The Battle.net website.