Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment, founded in February 1991 as Silicon & Synapse by University of California, Los Angeles graduates Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce, began life developing ports of other companies' games. Each founder put in roughly $10,000 to start the company; Morhaime borrowed his share interest-free from his grandmother. The original office sat in a business park near the University of California, Irvine. After changing its name to Chaos Studios in 1993, the company was acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates and renamed Blizzard Entertainment in 1994.

That same year, Blizzard released its first major original title, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, a real-time strategy game that launched a franchise and helped define a genre. In 1998, StarCraft sold 3 million copies within three months of release. The company continued expanding its portfolio with the Diablo series, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (2004), and later the team-based shooter Overwatch (2016). Blizzard also operates Battle.net, its proprietary online gaming service, and has ventured into mobile gaming with titles like Diablo Immortal.

The company became part of Activision Blizzard following the 2008 merger of Activision and Vivendi Games. In October 2023, Microsoft completed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, making Blizzard a subsidiary of Microsoft Gaming alongside Activision Publishing and King Digital Entertainment. As of 2025, Johanna Faries serves as president of Blizzard Entertainment. The company has faced significant controversies, including a 2021 lawsuit alleging workplace harassment and discrimination, which led to employee walkouts and changes in leadership. Despite these challenges, Blizzard's games maintain large, active player bases and continue to be major cultural forces in gaming. [edit]