Diablo III and Reaper of Souls went on to achieve tremendous success with over 30 million sales, but 'cold feet' by Activision executives saw a second expansion cancelled and developers transferred over to a fast-tracked Diablo IV.īlizzard experienced further controversies when a second MMORPG they put into development in 2007, Titan, was cancelled in 2014 after an immense amount of money had been spent on it. In recognition of this, Blizzard abandoned plans for a StarCraft III in favour of StarCraft Remastered, released in 2017 to critical acclaim. StarCraft II's sales topped out at under 20 million, with the game losing online momentum and long-term fans preferring the original game's unit balance and online play. Diablo III's problems were fixed by the release of the critically acclaimed Reaper of Souls expansion in 2014. Both games were criticised, StarCraft II for the immense wait for the second and third parts of the campaign (the final part was not released until 2015) and Diablo III for technical problems and an 'auction house' approach which was believed to be nickel-and-diming loyal fans. However, as part of the deal Blizzard continued to operate autonomously and they continued to release sequels: the much-delayed StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was released in 2010 and Diablo III in 2012. The game's immense success saw them acquired by Activision in 2008.

In 2004 they shifted gears again and released World of WarCraft, the most successful and popular online roleplaying game of all time with more than 100 million player accounts and over $10 billion in generated revenue. They also began development of a dark fantasy action roleplaying game, Diablo (1997), and achieved success with more sequels: Diablo II (2000) and WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002). They achieved even greater success with a science fiction variant on the franchise, StarCraft, which was released in 1998 to universal acclaim and enormous sales, becoming the biggest-selling real-time strategy game of all time with over 20 million copies sold. They became known as Blizzard in 1994.īlizzard had their first big hits with WarCraft: Orcs and Humans (1994) and its sequel WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995), fantasy real-time strategy games inspired by Warhammer and Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis. They released their first two games, Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings, in 1993 before before switching their name to Chaos Studios, Inc. No games have yet been announced, but presumably both studios will be anxious to get projects underway ASAP.īlizzard Entertainment was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse. Dreamhaven will run two development studios: Moonshot Games and Secret Door.

Morhaime ran Blizzard until 2018, stepping into an advisory role for a year before leaving altogether. The new company is called Dreamhaven and has been founded by former Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime.

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