Category:Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment is part of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI). Previously, Blizzard was a division of Vivendi Games (originally Havas Interactive). Founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse in Irvine, California by Allen Adham, current president Michael Morhaime, and current senior vice president Frank Pearce. Blizzard has developed games for DOS, Macintosh, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Windows NT and Mac OS platforms.

Blizzard North
Blizzard North was the Northern-California division of Blizzard Entertainment, known for the Diablo series. The studio was originally based in Redwood City, and then moved a short distance away to San Mateo, with Blizzard proper being based in Irvine (in southern California).

History
Blizzard North was originally an independent company. It was established in 1993 under the name Condor, founded by Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik. The company was purchased and renamed by Blizzard about six months before the release of their hit PC game, Diablo, in 1996. Diablo proved to be incredibly successful, and the still-more successful sequel Diablo II was released in 2000. An expansion pack followed the year after.

By June of 2003 two new games were in production. However on June 30, 2003, several key employees left Blizzard North to form the new companies Flagship Studios (8 moved there) and Castaway Entertainment (9 moved there). The Blizzard North exodus continued on with around 30 employees leaving the company in total.

The resignations were partly due to a conflict with Blizzard Entertainment's owner, Vivendi, and partly due to employees wishing to start something new. Back at Blizzard North, however, they would have a common effect; of the two unannounced games that were in production at the time, one was now forced to be canceled. Blizzard Entertainment has since said the canceled game was a "Blizzard North kind of game".

On August 1, 2005, Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North, saying that remaining employees were moving to its head offices to resume work on an unannounced project. A few employees from the Diablo team, including Eric Sexton, Michio Okamura and Steven Woo, organized to launch a new company, Hyboreal Games, which later became U.I. Pacific and is working on a new online game.

A few months after the closure of Blizzard North, Bill Roper, Erich Schaefer and his brother Max Schaefer co-founded Flagship Studios which now is developing Mythos and Hellgate: London.