Blizzard Entertainment is a company which develops and publishes
games for personal computers, on both Windows and Macintosh based
operating systems. Since the release of WarCraft in 1994, Blizzard
has created several of the most popular and highly acclaimed computer
games in the world. With the creation of Diablo in 1997, Blizzard
also announced Battle.net, which allowed multiple players to engage
simultaneiously through the internet. Each series Blizzard has
created has been known to be highly addicting, from the beginnings
of WarCraft to its successors WarCraft II, WarCraft III, the Diablo
series, StarCraft, and numerous "expansion sets" for each, players
across have spent countless hours and many have spent hundreds,
if not thousands of dollars simply to play these games and advanced
their skills and characters.
Blizzard Entertainment was founded as Silicon & Synapse in 1991 by Mike Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce. The
company developed games like Rock & Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings
(published by Interplay Productions). The company changed their name to Chaos studios in 1994 but finally changed their name to Blizzard after learning that another company by the name of Chaos existed. Blizzard was
acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates for under USD$10
million. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough
hit Warcraft.
After a few splits and business deals, Blizzard eventually became part of the part of the
VU Games group of Vivendi Universal.
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 is located in San Mateo, California.
Blizzard launched Battle.net in 1997 with the release of Diablo, and released a Battle.net version of Warcraft II as well.
On May 16, 2005, Blizzard announced the acquisition of Swingin'
Ape, a console game maker, which is now Blizzard Console, currently
working on Starcraft: Ghost.
On August 1, 2005, Blizzard announced the consolidation of Blizzard
North into the headquarters in Irvine, California.
Source: Wikipedia
