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Blizzard Entertainment is a PC game developer and publisher. Since its release of Warcraft in 1994, it has been one of the most successful game development studios in the world. Its headquarters are based in Irvine, California. Blizzard Entertainment logo This is a copyrighted and/or trademarked logo. ...
A private company is a company that is not a public company. ...
1991 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Location of Irvine within Orange County, California. ...
State nickname: The Golden State Other U.S. States Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) Official languages English Area 410,000 km² (3rd) - Land 404,298 km² - Water 20,047 km² (4. ...
Mike Morhaime is the president, and one of the founders of, Blizzard Entertainment, a video game developer located in Irvine, California and currently owned by the VU Games group of Vivendi Universal. ...
The computer and video game industry is the economic sector involved with the development, marketing and sale of video and computer games. ...
Rock N Roll Racing Start Screen, for Super Nintendo Rock N Roll Racing is a racing video game released for the Sega Genesis and SNES, published by Interplay and developed by Silicon & Synapse in 1993. ...
From left to right: Olaf, Baleog and Erik The Lost Vikings is a side-scrolling action game which was developed by Blizzard Entertainment (then known as Silicon & Synapse) and released in 1992 by publisher Interplay Entertainment. ...
Map of the planet Azeroth as it appears in the game World of Warcraft (Note: The map does not include the continent of Northrend at the north pole as it is not a reachable area within World of Warcraft) The Warcraft Universe is a fictional universe in which the Warcraft...
The StarCraft universe is a fictional universe in which the StarCraft series of computer games and books are set. ...
In business, revenue is the amount of money that a company actually receives from its activities, mostly from sales of products and/or services to customers. ...
The front page of the English Wikipedia website. ...
A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ...
A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates video or computer games. ...
Video game publishers are companies that publish video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer. ...
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a real-time strategy computer game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment in 1994. ...
1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...
Location of Irvine within Orange County, California. ...
Overview
Blizzard Entertainment was founded in February, 1991 as Silicon & Synapse by Mike Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce. The company developed games like Rock & 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 USD$10 million. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft. 1991 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Mike Morhaime is the president, and one of the founders of, Blizzard Entertainment, a video game developer located in Irvine, California and currently owned by the VU Games group of Vivendi Universal. ...
Rock N Roll Racing Start Screen, for Super Nintendo Rock N Roll Racing is a racing video game released for the Sega Genesis and SNES, published by Interplay and developed by Silicon & Synapse in 1993. ...
From left to right: Olaf, Baleog and Erik The Lost Vikings is a side-scrolling action game which was developed by Blizzard Entertainment (then known as Silicon & Synapse) and released in 1992 by publisher Interplay Entertainment. ...
Interplay Entertainment Corporation was an American video game and computer game publisher and developer. ...
1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...
The United States dollar, or American dollar, is the official currency of the United States. ...
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a real-time strategy computer game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment in 1994. ...
Blizzard 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. 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, including Blizzard, to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. Blizzard is now part of the VU Games group of Vivendi Universal. CUC International was originally named Comp-U-Card. ...
1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...
Cendant Corporation (NYSE: CD) is a New York-based provider of business and consumer services, primarily within the real estate and travel sectors. ...
1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...
1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...
Vivendi was the name of a French company, which merged in 2000 with Canal+ television networks and the Canadian company Seagram, the owner of Universal Studios film company, to become Vivendi Universal. ...
Vivendi Universal (VU) is a French company active in media and communications with activities in music, television and film, publishing, telecommunications and the Internet. ...
In 1996, Blizzard acquired Condor Games, which had been working on the game Diablo for Blizzard at the time. Condor was renamed to Blizzard North, and has since developed hit games Diablo, Diablo II, and its expansion pack Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. Blizzard North is located in San Mateo, California. 1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...
Diablo Diablo is a point and click action computer role-playing game released by Blizzard Entertainment and developed by Blizzard North, released in late 1996. ...
Blizzard North is a division of Blizzard Entertainment. ...
Diablo Diablo is a point and click action computer role-playing game released by Blizzard Entertainment and developed by Blizzard North, released in late 1996. ...
Diablo II Diablo II, sequel to the popular Diablo, is an action-oriented adventure with role-playing game elements in a hack and slash style. ...
The Lord of Destruction expansion pack is an add-on for the popular game Diablo II. This expansion, unlike Diablo: Hellfire, was made by the games original publisher Blizzard North. ...
Hillsdale Inn, Honeymoon Suite San Mateo is a city located in San Mateo County, California, USA. It is one of the larger suburbs on the San Francisco Peninsula, located between Burlingame to the north, Foster City to the East, and Belmont to the south. ...
Blizzard launched their online gaming service Battle.net in January of 1997 with the release of their action-RPG Diablo. Battle. ...
January is the first month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ...
1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Computer role-playing games (CRPGs), often shortened to simply role-playing games (RPGs), are a type of video or computer game that traditionally uses gameplay elements found in paper-and-pencil role-playing games. ...
On May 16, 2005, Blizzard announced the acquisition of Swingin' Ape, a console game maker, which is now Blizzard Console, currently working on Starcraft: Ghost. In engineering, the term acquisition has the following meanings: 1. ...
Computer and video games A screenshot of Tetris for the Nintendo Game Boy A console game (better known as a video game) is a form of interactive multimedia used for entertainment, which consists of a moveable image displayed on a screen that is usually controlled and manipulated using a handheld...
StarCraft: Ghost StarCraft: Ghost is a tactical action game for video game consoles, currently under development by Blizzard Entertainment. ...
On August 1, 2005, Blizzard announced the consolidation of Blizzard North into the headquarters in Irvine, California. Consolidation is the act of merging many things into one. ...
Blizzard North is a division of Blizzard Entertainment. ...
Location of Irvine within Orange County, California. ...
Titles As of 2005, Blizzard is currently overseeing development on a stealth action game called StarCraft: Ghost, by Blizzard Console. 1990 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Computer role-playing games (CRPGs), often shortened to simply role-playing games (RPGs), are a type of video or computer game that traditionally uses gameplay elements found in paper-and-pencil role-playing games. ...
From left to right: Olaf, Baleog and Erik The Lost Vikings is a side-scrolling action game which was developed by Blizzard Entertainment (then known as Silicon & Synapse) and released in 1992 by publisher Interplay Entertainment. ...
1991 is a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
A screenshot of the original Donkey Kong arcade platform game Platform games, or platformers, are a very popular genre of video games that originated in the early 1980s. ...
Rock N Roll Racing Start Screen, for Super Nintendo Rock N Roll Racing is a racing video game released for the Sega Genesis and SNES, published by Interplay and developed by Silicon & Synapse in 1993. ...
1993 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ...
Blackthorne on the Sega 32X Blackthorne (Blackhawk in some European countries) is a video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. ...
1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...
Superman, nicknamed The Man of Steel, is a fictional character and superhero who first appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938 and eventually became one of the most popular and well-known comic book icons of all time. ...
1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...
Screenshot of Kung-Fu Fighting games are video games in which players fight each other or computer enemies with martial arts. ...
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a real-time strategy computer game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment in 1994. ...
1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...
Dune 2 (1992), an early RTS A real-time strategy (RTS) game is a type of computer strategy game which does not have turns like conventional turn-based strategy video or board games. ...
Justice League Task Force is a western Super NES tournament fighting game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and published by the now-defunct Acclaim. ...
1995 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Screenshot of Kung Fu Master. ...
1995 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (usually simply called Warcraft II; sometimes abbreviated to WCII, WC2 or War2) is a sequel to the popular real-time strategy game Warcraft, published by Blizzard Entertainment in December 1995. ...
1995 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Diablo Diablo is a point and click action computer role-playing game released by Blizzard Entertainment and developed by Blizzard North, released in late 1996. ...
1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...
Computer role-playing games (CRPGs), often shortened to simply role-playing games (RPGs), are a type of video or computer game that traditionally uses gameplay elements found in paper-and-pencil role-playing games. ...
StarCraft StarCraft (SC) is a real-time strategy computer game produced by Blizzard Entertainment in 1998. ...
1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...
Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...
StarCraft: Brood War is an expansion pack released in 1998 for StarCraft — an award winning real-time strategy computer game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. ...
1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...
An expansion pack is an addition to an existing game. ...
Diablo II Diablo II, sequel to the popular Diablo, is an action-oriented adventure with role-playing game elements in a hack and slash style. ...
This article is about the year 2000. ...
The Lord of Destruction expansion pack is an add-on for the popular game Diablo II. This expansion, unlike Diablo: Hellfire, was made by the games original publisher Blizzard North. ...
2001: A Space Odyssey 2001 2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
An expansion pack is an addition to an existing game. ...
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2002, is a real-time strategy computer game and the second sequel to Warcraft. ...
2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2002, is a real-time strategy computer game and the second sequel to Warcraft. ...
2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a class-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. ...
2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
A massively (or massive) multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG is a multiplayer computer role-playing game that enables thousands of players to play in an evolving virtual world at the same time over the Internet. ...
2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
StarCraft: Ghost StarCraft: Ghost is a tactical action game for video game consoles, currently under development by Blizzard Entertainment. ...
Bnetd A group of gamers reverse engineered the network protocol used by Battle.net and Blizzard games, and released a free, GNU General Public Licensed battle.net emulation package called bnetd. With bnetd, a gamer is not required to use the official battle.net servers to play Blizzard games. Reverse engineering (RE) is the process of taking something (a device, an electrical component, a software program, etc. ...
The GNU logo For other uses of GPL, see GPL (disambiguation). ...
bnetd is a GPLed software package that provides a complete emulation of battle. ...
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. February is the second month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a controversial United States copyright law which criminalizes production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent measures taken to protect copyright, not merely infringement of copyright itself, and heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. ...
Battle. ...
A CD key is a specific software-based key for a certain program or a computer game. ...
The copyright infringement of software is often called software piracy by those seeking to reduce its incidence. ...
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. Blizzard's Press Release The EFF uses the blue ribbon as symbolism for their Free Speech defense. ...
A software license is a type of proprietary or gratiuitious license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software — sometimes called an End User License Agreement (EULA) — that specifies the perimeters of the permission granted by the owner to the user. ...
Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...
FreeCraft On June 20, 2003, Blizzard obtained a cease and desist order against 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. June 20 is the 171st day of the year (172nd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 194 days remaining. ...
2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Cease-and-desist is a legal term meaning essentially stop: It is used in demands for a person or organization to stop doing something (to cease and desist from doing it). ...
Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...
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. Stratagus (created in 1998) is a free cross-platform real time strategy game engine used to build other games. ...
Trivia Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. - The phrase "There is no cow level" is a running joke started by the company's game designers stemming from repeated rumors on Battle.net that a "secret cow level" existed in Diablo. The phrase "There is no cow level" was a cheat code in the original Starcraft game. In Diablo 2, a cow level was made as a secret level.
- In Blizzard's strategy games (the Starcraft and Warcraft series), clicking on a character repeatedly will invoke humorous sound bites, with the most famous being the Orc Grunt's "Stop poking me!"
- In Blizzard's strategy games (the Starcraft and Warcraft series), clicking on a "critter" repeatedly about 20 times will make it explode violently.
See also Blizzard North is a division of Blizzard Entertainment. ...
External links
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