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12 Feb 15
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Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles,[2] Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce, and is currently a subsidiary of American company Activision Blizzard. 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 and later by Vivendi. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Blizzard went on to create several successful video games, including the Warcraft sequels, StarCraft, and Diablo series, and the MMORPG World of Warcraft. Their most recent projects include Diablo III, World of Warcraft's fifth expansion, Warlords of Draenor, and the first expansion of StarCraft II, Heart of the Swarm.
On July 9, 2008, Activision officially merged with Vivendi Games, culminating in the inclusion of the Blizzard brand name in the title of the resulting holding company.[3] On July 25, 2013, Activision Blizzard announced the purchase of 429 million shares from owner Vivendi. As a result, Activision Blizzard became an independent company.[4] 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, such as Paris, France and Seoul, South Korea.
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Silicon & Synapse
(1991–1994)
Chaos Studios
(1994)Founded 1991 as Silicon & Synapse
1994 as Chaos Studios
1994 as Blizzard EntertainmentHeadquarters Irvine, California, United States -
Blizzard Entertainment was founded by Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce as Silicon & Synapse on February 8, 1991, a year after[2] all three had received their bachelor's degrees from UCLA.[2][5] 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.[6][7] In 1993, the company developed games such as Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings (published by Interplay Productions).
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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.[10] 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 video 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 2007, Blizzard moved their headquarters to 16215 Alton Parkway in Irvine, California.
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Currently, Blizzard has three main franchises in the gaming industry: Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft. Multiple games have been released for each of these game series, and other media based around the intellectual property for each franchise. Numerous books have been written to expand the story for each series, along with media such as comics and collectible card games. Blizzard Entertainment announced in 2006 that they will be producing a Warcraft live-action movie. The movie is currently in development, financed and produced by Legendary Pictures, Atlas Entertainment and Film4, and will be distributed by Universal Picture
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26 Nov 14
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Type Subsidiary of Activision Blizzard Industry Video games Predecessors Silicon & Synapse
(1991–1994)
Chaos Studios
(1994)Founded 1991 as Silicon & Synapse
1994 as Chaos Studios
1994 as Blizzard Entertainment -
Michael Morhaime (president and co-founder)
Frank Pearce (vice president and co-founder)
Chris Metzen (senior vice president of Story and Franchise Development)
Allen Adham (former president and co-founder)
Samwise Didier (Art Director) -
The Warden client scans a small portion of the code segment of running processes in order to determine whether any third-party programs are running. The goal of this is to detect and address players who may be attempting to run unsigned code or third party programs in the game. 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 banned third party programs
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Blizzard announced that they were changing the way their forums worked to require that users identify themselves with their real name.[45][46] The reaction from the community was overwhelmingly negative with multiple game magazines calling the change "foolhardy"[47] and an "Epic Fail".[48] It resulted in a significant user response on the Blizzard forums, including one thread on the issue reaching over 11,000 replies.
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Some technology media outlets suggested that displaying real names through Real ID is a good idea and would benefit both Battle.net and the Blizzard community.[55] But others were worried that Blizzard were opening their fans up to real-life dangers such as stalking, harassment, and employment issues, since a simple Internet search by someone's employer can reveal their online activities
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Blizzard initially responded to some of the concerns by saying that the changes would not be retroactive to previous posts, that parents could set up the system so that minors cannot post, and that posting to the forums is optional.[59] However, due to the huge negative response, Blizzard President Michael Morhaime issued a statement rescinding the plan to use real names on Blizzard's forums for the time being
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18 Aug 14
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19 Jul 14
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Blizzard Entertainment
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22 Mar 12
Sean RobertsJust a tally (not entirely sure how accurate it is, but according to wiki blizzard has over 4600 employees.
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over 4,600 (As of 2009)[2]
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24 Nov 09
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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 of 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.
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02 Mar 08
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Despite offers from the bnetd developers to integrate Blizzard's CD key checking system into bnetd, Blizzard claims that the public availability of any such software package facilitates piracy, and moved to have the bnetd project shut down under provisions of the DMCA.[citation needed] As this case is one of the first major test cases for the DMCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation became involved, for a while negotiations were ongoing to resolve the case without a trial. The negotiations failed however, and Blizzard won the case on all counts: the defendants were ruled to have breached both StarCraft's End User License Agreement (EULA) and the Terms of Use of Battle.net.
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