Activision Blizzard, Inc
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is a prominent international interactive entertainment company, founded in 2008 through the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games. Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, the company specializes in developing and publishing video games across various platforms, including consoles, PCs, and mobile devices. Its portfolio includes renowned franchises such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, and it also extends into the realms of film and television through Activision Blizzard Studios. The company operates several divisions, including Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, and King Digital Entertainment, which is famous for mobile games like Candy Crush Saga.
Activision Blizzard stands out in the gaming industry for its focus on competitive gaming and eSports through Major League Gaming, which it acquired in 2016. Despite facing significant challenges, including a high-profile lawsuit in 2021 regarding workplace culture issues, the company has continued to thrive, reporting millions of active users and substantial revenue. A notable recent event is Microsoft's announcement to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, a deal that has raised concerns among regulators about competition in the gaming market. Overall, Activision Blizzard remains a key player in interactive entertainment, influencing trends in gaming and beyond.
Activision Blizzard, Inc.
Company Information
- Date Founded: 2008
- Industry: Interactive entertainment, video games
- Corporate Headquarters: Santa Monica, CA
- Type: Public
Overview
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an international interactive entertainment company that produces and develops video games and other related products and services. It specializes in interactive and competitive video games for gaming consoles, personal computers (PCs), and mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. It also develops films and television shows based on its video game franchises. Its games focus on action/adventure, first-person shooter, role-playing, simulation, sports, and strategy themes and can be purchased either at retail stores or through online subscriptions.
Founded in Santa Monica, California, in 2008 from a merger between the companies Activision and Vivendi Games, Activision Blizzard has since acquired several other businesses to become one of the largest video game producers worldwide. Activision Blizzard encompasses five businesses: Activision (also known as Activision Publishing, Inc.), Blizzard Entertainment, Activision Blizzard Studios, Major League Gaming, and King Digital Entertainment.
Activision focuses on immersive and interactive video games. Some of its popular video game titles include Call of Duty and Skylanders. Blizzard Entertainment is responsible for games such as World of Warcraft (WoW), a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Activision Blizzard Studios was developed to create films and television series related to the content of Activision Blizzard's other enterprises. Major League Gaming specializes in eSports and organizes competitive video game tournaments. King Digital Entertainment is best known for creating games for mobile devices and social media sites such as Candy Crush Saga, Farm Heroes, and Bubble Witch. Activision Blizzard has other holdings, including video game developers Toys for Bob, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Treyarch, and partnerships with numerous corporations within the video gaming industry.
History
Former Atari gaming system programmers Alan Miller, Bob Whitehead, David Crane, and Larry Kaplan, along with venture capitalist Richard Muchmore and music executive Jim Levy, founded Activision in 1979. The Atari workers wanted recognition for the games they developed, so they decided to start their own company. They named it Activision, so it would appear before Atari in the telephone book. The company developed its first successful game for the Atari console, Pitfall!, in 1982. In 1988, the company changed its name to Mediagenic and began to focus on other ventures. However, by 1992, it decided to shift its focus back to producing video games and reverted its name back to Activision. In the years that followed, it acquired several other companies.
In 2008, Activision Blizzard formed from the merger between Activision and Vivendi Games. Vivendi Games owned the company Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard Entertainment formed from a company named Silicon & Synapse, which was created by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) graduates Allen Adham, Frank Pearce, and Mike Morhaime in 1991. At first, it created games for the Nintendo consoles and then branched into PC games. In 1994, Silicon & Synapse changed its name to Chaos Studios and then to Blizzard. It found fame with the 1994 release of the PC game Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, which introduced gamers to the Warcraft franchise and later spawned the immensely popular World of Warcraft series of multiplayer role-playing games in 2004. The company continued to produce numerous other titles after its parent company Vivendi Games merged with Activision, taking the video game producer's name of Blizzard to form Activision Blizzard.
In 2013, Activision Blizzard purchased its majority ownership from Vivendi to become an independent company. By this time, Activision was well known for several video game titles, such as the first-person shooter video game franchise Call of Duty and the children's franchise Skylanders, which makes physical toys come to life on the screen. Blizzard continued to expand its World of Warcraft series.
The company entered the film and television industry in 2015 with the launch of Activision Blizzard Studios. It released its first production, the animated Skylanders Academy television series, and partnered with Legendary Pictures in 2016 to produce films based on the World of Warcraft franchise.
In early 2016, Activision Blizzard acquired two more companies: Major League Gaming and King Digital Entertainment. Its Activision and Blizzard Entertainment divisions previously worked on various eSports games with Major League Gaming, which was founded in 2002. With Activision Blizzard, Major League Gaming continued to focus on competitive gaming, expand on eSports titles, and organize video game sports tournaments. King Digital Entertainment formed in the early 2000s and later became popular with its Candy CrushSaga game for mobile devices and social media sites such as Facebook. This acquisition helped push Activision Blizzard in a new direction, adding social media and mobile gaming to its growing list of products.
Activision entered the list of Fortune 500 companies in 2017. In 2018, despite posting a record year in revenue, Activision laid off nearly 10 percent of its staff.
In 2021, Activision became the focus of an industrywide scandal when the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit focusing on alleged sexual harassment and employment discrimination after a two-year investigation. CEO Bobby Kotick initially claimed the allegations were false, leading Activision employees to call for his resignation. Following the DFEH lawsuit, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it was also investigating the company. After the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a federal lawsuit in September 2021, it was announced in early 2022 that a settlement deal that included a fund of $18 million had been approved by the court. Around the same time, the company had agreed to a $35 million settlement with the SEC.
Meanwhile, Microsoft revealed in January 2022 that it was in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard in a deal valued at $68.7 billion. However, as some antitrust regulators worldwide expressed fears that such a large merger would threaten the potential for competition and, subsequently, creativity and variety in the industry, by April 2023 the UK's Competition and Markets Authority had instituted a block against the acquisition. The following month, while the European Commission ruled that the deal could move forward under certain conditions, Microsoft officially appealed the UK block. However, in June, the US Federal Trade Commission, which had already filed an in-house lawsuit against the merger in late 2022, took an additional step by filing to seek a federal court injunction and temporary restraining order.
In January 2023, Activision Blizzard's servers went offline in China after the company's licensing agreement with the Chinese gaming company NetEase expired. CNN Business reported that the expiration of the deal, which ended a fourteen-year partnership that allowed Activision Blizzard to operate within the country, resulted in millions of Chinese players losing access to popular Activision Blizzard games such as World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Hearthstone.
Impact
Activision Blizzard is one of the largest international interactive entertainment companies in the world. It began with the development of computer and video games but has since expanded to keep up with advanced technology. Many of its immersive video games have a competitive edge that allows players to play against one another in online settings, making them popular with many video game enthusiasts. In the late 2010s, Activision Blizzard branched into mobile, online, and social media games. It also launched a film and television division to further increase its reach.
In the first quarter of 2023, Activision Blizzard reported about 368 million monthly active users. It employed more than nine thousand people according to Forbes and was worth an estimated $72 billion in 2021 according to PC Gamer. Many of its games are well-known within the video gaming industry, and competitors include Nintendo Co. Ltd., and Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. The lawsuits filed against Activision in 2021 led to an industrywide discussion on the necessity of a safe workplace and worker's rights—two hot-button issues in the video game industry. Microsoft's planned acquisition of Activision in 2022 made headlines for being one of the most high-profile deals in the history of the video game industry.
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