Blizzard North was located in San Mateo, California.īlizzard launched their online gaming service in December 1996 with the release of their action-RPG Diablo. Condor was renamed Blizzard North, and has since developed hit games Diablo, Diablo II, and its expansion pack Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. In 1996, Blizzard acquired Condor Games, which had been working on the game Diablo for Blizzard at the time. Blizzard is now part of the VU Games group of Vivendi Universal. The company sold its consumer software operations, including Blizzard, to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. 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. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft.īlizzard has changed hands several times since then Davidson was acquired by a timeshare company called CUC International in 1996 CUC then merged with a hotel, real-estate, and car-rental franchiser called HFS Corporation to form Cendant Software, in 1997.

That same year, they were acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates for under USD$10 million. 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. The company developed games like Rock & Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings (published by Interplay Productions). Blizzard Entertainment was founded in February, 1991 as Silicon & Synapse by Mike Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce.

Blizzard stock after diablo immortal