Information about Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment logo
	Private (subsidiary of Vivendi Games)
Founded	1991 (as Silicon & Synapse)
Headquarters	Irvine, CA, U.S.[1]
Key people	Michael Morhaime (president and co-founder) Frank Pearce (vice president and co-founder) Rob Pardo (vice president) Shahram Dabiri (producer on World of Warcraft) Jeffrey Kaplan (lead designer on World of Warcraft)
Industry	Computer and video game industry
Products	The Warcraft series The StarCraft series The Diablo series
Revenue	$1.5 Billion
Employees	2,700[2]
Website	www.blizzard.com

Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Vivendi Games, is an American computer game developer and publisher headquartered in Irvine, California.

History

Blizzard Entertainment was founded by Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce as Silicon & Synapse in February of 1991, a year after ^[3] all three had received their bachelor's degrees from UCLA.^[4][3] 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.^[5][6] In 1993, the company developed games like Rock N' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings (published by Interplay Productions). 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. That same year, they were acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates for under $10 million. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit .

Blizzard has changed hands several times since then: Davidson was acquired by Sierra On-line which was then acquired by a company called CUC International in 1996; CUC then merged with a hotel, real-estate, and car-rental franchiser called HFS Corporation to form Cendant in 1997. 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. The company sold its consumer software operations, Sierra On-line which included Blizzard, to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. Blizzard is now part of the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi.

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 . Blizzard North was located in San Mateo, California.

Blizzard launched their online gaming service Battle.net in January of 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.^[7] 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 console game developer which had been developing . The team was renamed Blizzard Console and is now focusing on next generation consoles, after StarCraft: Ghost was 'postponed indefinitely'. On August 1, 2005, Blizzard announced the consolidation of Blizzard North into the headquarters in Irvine, California.

See also:  and

Titles

Further information: List of games by Blizzard Entertainment

Game Name	Year Released	Genre
RPM Racing<ref name="blizz_tline" />	1991	racing game
The Lost Vikings	1992	platform game
<ref name="blizz_tline" />	1993	puzzle game
Rock N' Roll Racing	1993	racing game
Blackthorne<ref name="blizz_tline" />	1994	cinematic platform game
The Death and Return of Superman<ref name="blizz_tline" />	1994	side-scrolling beat 'em up
	1994	fantasy real-time strategy game
The Lost Vikings II	1995	platform game
Justice League Task Force[8]	1995	fighting game
	1995	fantasy real-time strategy game
	1996	expansion pack
Diablo	1996	action-oriented computer role-playing game
StarCraft	1998	science fiction real-time strategy game
	1998	expansion pack
	1999	fantasy real-time strategy game
Diablo II	2000	action-oriented RPG
	2001	expansion pack
	2002	fantasy real-time strategy game
	2003	expansion pack
World of Warcraft	2004	MMORPG set in the Warcraft universe
	2007	expansion set for World of Warcraft
StarCraft II	Under development	science fiction real-time strategy game
	Under development	expansion set for World of Warcraft
	Indefinitely postponed	Third-person shooter

• StarCraft II has been officially announced as of May 19, 2007, at the World Wide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea.
• has been officially announced as of August 3, 2007, at Blizzcon 2007 in Anaheim, California, United States.
• Warcraft film - Movie based on the popular Warcraft series.

Notable unreleased titles include , which was cancelled on May 22, 1998, Shattered Nations, and , which was "indefinitely postponed" on March 24, 2006 after being in development hell for much of its lifespan, and whose current status is in question. The company also has a history of missing release dates.^[9]

Pax Imperia II was originally announced as a title to be published by Blizzard. Blizzard eventually dropped Pax Imperia II, though, when it decided it might be in conflict with their other space strategy project, the now-legendary StarCraft. THQ eventually contracted with Heliotrope and released the game in 1997 as .

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that they will be producing a Warcraft live-action movie. ^[10]

Former employees

Over the years, some former Blizzard employees have moved on and established gaming companies of their own:

• Flagship Studios^[11], creators of , currently working on Mythos.
• ArenaNet^[12], creators of the Guild Wars franchise.
• Ready at Dawn Studios^[13], creators of Daxter, currently developing .
• Red 5 Studios^[14], currently working on a yet to be announced next-gen MMOG.
• Castaway Entertainment^[15], currently working on a yet to be announced next-gen title.
• Click Entertainment^[16], creators of Throne of Darkness.
• Carbine Studios^[17], currently working on a yet to be announced massively multiplayer title.

Controversies

Battle.net

Main article: Battle.net

Battle.net is an online gaming service used for its games Diablo, Starcraft, Starcraft: Brood War, Diablo II, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, Warcraft III, and Warcraft III Expansion Set: The Frozen Throne. It was released in January 1997 coinciding with the release of Diablo. It functions as a way to play over the Internet, featuring cooperative and player-versus-player game playing, a game matchmaking system, and online chat among other features. Battle.net is free, and only requires an Internet connection and account registration in order to use.

A group of gamers reverse engineered the network protocol used by Battle.net and Blizzard games, and released a free (under the GNU GPL) Battle.net emulation package called bnetd. With bnetd, a gamer is not required to use the official Battle.net servers to play Blizzard games.

In February of 2002, lawyers retained by Blizzard threatened legal action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act against the developers of bnetd. Blizzard games are designed to operate online exclusively with a set of Blizzard-controlled servers collectively known as "Battle.net". Battle.net servers include a CD key check as a means of preventing software piracy.

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. 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.

This decision was appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which also ruled in favor of Blizzard/Vivendi on September 1, 2005.

Warden Client

Main article: Warden (software)

Blizzard has made use of a special form of software known as the 'Warden Client'. When running, the client scans an individual's computer in order to verify compliance with the EULA/TOS. The Warden client is known to be used with Blizzard's World of Warcraft online game, and all players consent, via the EULA and terms of use, to the Warden software performing these scans while World of Warcraft is running. ^[18]

The Warden client scans the process names, window titles, and a small portion of the code segment of running processes in order to determine whether any of these third-party programs are running. This determination is made by hashing the scanned strings and comparing the hashed value to a list of hashes known to correspond to cheat programs. ^[19] The Warden scans all processes running on a computer, not just the World of Warcraft game, and could possibly run across what would be considered private information and other personally identifiable information. It is because of these peripherial scans that Warden has been accused of being spyware and has run afoul of controversy among privacy advocates. ^{[20] [21] [22]}

The Warden's reliability in correctly discerning legitimate vs illegitimate actions has been called into question due to actions Blizzard has taken regarding the information gathered by Warden. Most notably, that it appears that many players are reported as violating the EULA/TOS by the program, and subsequently banned, when in fact they are not cheating. A large scale incident happened when many Linux users were banned after an update to Warden caused it to incorrectly detect Cedega as a cheat program. ^[23] Blizzard issued a statement claiming they had correctly identified and restored all accounts and credited them with 20 days play. ^[24] Blizzard has regularly stated that the Warden sends no information, only a violation flag, to the home server. However, without specific information, having been sent by the Warden software initially, it would have been impossible for Blizzard to discern Cedega users from actual violators. ^[25]

The Warden is not the first time Blizzard Entertainment has attempted to look at their customer's computers. In 1998 Blizzard Entertainment had a class action lawsuit filed against them for "unlawful business practices" for the action of collecting data from a user's computer without their permission. ^[26]

FreeCraft

Main article: Stratagus

On June 20, 2003, Blizzard issued a cease and desist letter to the developers of an open source clone of the Warcraft engine called FreeCraft. This hobby project had the same gameplay and characters as Warcraft II, but came with different graphics and music. It was written from scratch and no Blizzard code was used. As well as a similar name, FreeCraft enabled gamers to use Warcraft II graphics, provided they had the Warcraft II CD. The programmers of the clone shut down their site without challenge. Soon after that the developers regrouped to continue the work by the name of Stratagus.^[27][28]

Corporate Culture

Blizzard gives much discretion to its developers in deciding on future games, believing that developers who are gamers will best understand what gamers in the marketplace will want. ^[29]

April Fools'

Every year on the 1st of April, Blizzard posts creative humorous news on their website as an April Fools' joke.

2007

Blizzard's 2007 April Fools jokes include the "Tinfoil Hat." The Tinfoil Hat is explained to be an in-game headgear for World of Warcraft that prevents other players from seeing the Tinfoil Hat wearer's equipments, statistics, and appearance.^[30] This is an obvious joke on the tin-foil hat meme in real life.

For 2007, Blizzard also introduced an absurdly long and difficult attunement process for their next World of Warcraft dungeon, the Black Temple. The attunement process for The Black Temple is absurdly long, with a few incredibly difficult to achieve requirements at the end. For example, it requires the player to slay 15 hardest bosses within 10 minutes of each other.^[31]

The 2007 April Fools jokes also included the announcement of a new RTS: Warcraft: Heroes of Azeroth. The game's name is abbreviated "WHoA," a pun on the commonly-used abbreviation of World of Warcraft, "WoW." The RTS is simply Warcraft III with minimum changes made to the advertisement text. Also, the four "boxes" available in the picture were obviously taken from Warcraft III with the game name edited on.^[32]

2006

In 2006, one of their jokes was related to the then upcoming World of Warcraft expansion: The Burning Crusade. Blizzard had not revealed what the new Alliance race would be, and on March 31st, one day early, they posted a news item on the World of Warcraft main page saying that the new race would be the Wisps. (In Warcraft III, Wisps are resource-gatherers for the Night Elves.) Wisps were given the 'Detonate' racial ability that caused them to permanently explode, requiring a new character to be rolled.^[33] The Alliance race was later officially revealed on May 10 at E³ as the Draenei.

The other news posted at the same time was that Blizzard planned to open a fast food chain named BurgerCraft, where people could order food and drinks named after Blizzard characters and games.^[34] This news was actually posted on the main page after a joke thread authored by the player Gilgamesh on the Alleria realm was made in their General Forums as a complaint lambasting Blizzards' customer service.^[35]

Blizzard also posted an absurdly long list of updates to World of Warcraft that would have ruined most characters and gameplay.^[36] These fake patch notes included many contradictory changes, one example being "using friendly emotes will now significantly increase the Infernal and Doomguard's chance to remain loyal to the Warlock," with the following entry reading, "Friendly emotes are no longer available to the Warlock."

Notable earlier jokes

The April Fools' joke from 2002 introduced a new race, Pandaren, to the soon-to-be-released Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. ^[37] Due to positive response to the joke, the Pandaren debuted in the expansion as part of both the storyline campaign and multiplayer game.^[38]

In the April Fools' joke for 2003, Blizzard released a track known as "The Deckard Cain rap", on the Arreat summit site for diablo II.

In April Fools' joke for 2004, Blizzard stated that the two-headed ogre would be a playable race in the upcoming World of Warcraft MMORPG, and that it would require cooperation between two players to control the ogre as each player would only control one head.^[39]

See also

• BlizzCon
• Blizzard North
• Make Love Not Warcraft

References

External links

Company & Corporate

• Blizzard's website
• Blizzard UK's website
• Battle.Net website

The Bnetd case

• Blizzard's official statement on battle.net emulators
• A rebuttal to Blizzard's official emulation statement
• Yale LawMeme's analysis of the case
• EFF page on case

•  • [ e] Vivendi
Canal+ Group:	Canal+ | CanalSat | StudioCanal
Maroc Telecom:	Maroc Telecom | Gabon Telecom | Menara, Maroc Telecom | Mauritel | Onatel
SFR:	SFR
Universal Music Group:	Interscope-Geffen-A&M | The Universal Motown/Universal Republic Group | The Island Def Jam Music Group | Universal Music Classics Group | Universal Music Group Nashville | Verve Music Group | Machete Music | Sanctuary Records
Vivendi Games:	Blizzard Entertainment | Sierra Entertainment
Other assets:	NBC Universal (20%) | Neuf Cegetel (35%)

•  • [ e] Video games developed by Blizzard Entertainment

Blackthorne • Lost Vikings • Rock N' Roll Racing • Death and Return of Superman • Justice League Task Force  • ()  • () World of Warcraft ( • ) Diablo  • Diablo II () StarCraft () • StarCraft II