Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles:[3] Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated on the creation of game ports for other studios' games before beginning development of their own software in 1993 with games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1993, the company became Chaos Studios, Inc. , and eventually Blizzard Entertainment after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
Since then, Blizzard Entertainment has created several Warcraft sequels, including highly influential massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft in 2004, as well as three other multi-million selling video game franchises: Diablo, StarCraft and Overwatch. [4][5][6] Their most recent projects include the expansion for Diablo III, Reaper of Souls; the online collectible card game Hearthstone; the multiplayer online battle arena Heroes of the Storm; the third and final expansion for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Legacy of the Void; the multiplayer first-person hero shooter Overwatch; and the eighth expansion for World of Warcraft, Shadowlands. The games are operated through online gaming service Battle. net.
