Vivendi Universal Games

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Vivendi Games
Type	Subsidiary
Founded	1996
Headquarters	Paris, France
Industry	Video game industry
Products	Video games
Revenue	▲$1.018 billion USD (2007)
Employees	3,400
Parent	Vivendi SA

Vivendi Games (formerly known as Vivendi Universal Games) is a global French developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment. Vivendi Games is a 100% subsidiary of Vivendi SA. Headed by Bruce Hack, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California and employs over 3,400 people at 4 separate development divisions.

Vivendi Games owns the rights to such popular franchises franchises franchises as Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft as well as others like Empire Earth, Leisure Suit Larry, Ground Control and Tribes.

History

The history of Vivendi Games begins in February 1996, when CUC International, a large mail order and subscription company, offered to acquire entertainment software developer Sierra On-Line. Headquarted in Bellevue, Washington, Sierra was the leading developer and publisher of computer games and was famous for its adventure game series such as King's Quest, Gabriel Knight, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. Sierra was a public company, which employed roughly 1,000 employees at 12 different acquired studios. CUC offered to absorb Sierra's stock shares at a price roughly 90% higher than what Sierra was trading, and on July 24th 1996, Sierra became a wholly owned subsidiary of CUC.

At the same time, CUC also approached Davidson & Associates, a leading publisher and distributor of educational software, with an offer of a similar stock swap. Headquarted in Torrance, California, Davidson was famous for its Math Blaster series, and also for Warcraft and Diablo. While mainly a game publisher, Davidson also had a major in-house developer in the form of Blizzard Entertainment, which Davidson had acquired in 1994, and employed over 800 employees as of February 1996. Davidson was also a public company, founded and headed by Bob Davidson, who acted as CEO, and also by Jan Davidson, who acted as President.

After acquiring these companies, CUC quickly integrated these two new divisions into the main CUC organization by announcing in September 1996 the creation of CUC Software, a holding company which would consolidate the finance, distribution, manufacturing, accounting, sales, R&D and overall management of CUC's software companies.

Soon after its creation, CUC Software acquired in January 1997 Knowledge Adventure, a leading developer of educational software, famous for its JumpStart series of child oriented programs. CUC also acquired Gryphon Software, another educational software company. Davidson & Associates and Gryphon were then absorbed into Knowledge Adventure, and Blizzard Entertainment was made a separate division of CUC Software. In 1997, CUC Software also acquired Berkeley Systems, a California-based developer famous for its You Don't Know Jack series, and integrated Berkeley Systems into Sierra On-Line.

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, which included Sierra On-line and Blizzard, to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi, which formed Vivendi Universal Games.

In 2004, Vivendi Games sold one of its divisions, Knowledge Adventure to a group of private investors. In 2005 Vivendi's revenues made 641 million euros with earnings from operations equaling to 41 million euros. In 2006 Vivendi Games created a new mobile division Vivendi Games Mobile, which was promised to begin publishing and distributing games in 2006 through mobile carriers and portals.

In December 2007 it was announced that Vivendi Games would merge with games developer Activision, forming Activision Blizzard.

Divisions

Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment is a world-renowned development studio best known for creating World of Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft. World of Warcraft, the world’s most popular game in the MMORPG category, has currently over 10 million subscribers.

The Blizzard headquarters is located in Irvine, California.

Sierra Entertainment

Sierra Entertainment creates and publishes software for consoles, handheld gaming devices and personal computers. Sierra Entertainment features a portfolio of titles based on original intellectual property and popular licenses from industry-leading content partners, including F.E.A.R., Scarface, and Ice Age.

Operating out of Los Angeles, California, Sierra employs over 700 people in development and has four wholly owned studios providing creative talents and development capabilities across multiple gaming genres: High Moon Studios, Radical Entertainment, Swordfish Studios and Massive Entertainment.

Sierra Online

Sierra Online, a newly created division, focuses on developing and publishing high quality short and mid-session casual online games for PC, Xbox Live Arcade and a range of other platforms.

Sierra Online’s titles include Assault Heroes, an award-winning game for Xbox Live Arcade, and the upcoming FreeStyle Street Basketball, an online PC game from leading Korean developer JC Entertainment, Inc.

The division is also developing a variety of other Xbox Live Arcade and PC online games targeting the mass market.

Vivendi Games Mobile

Vivendi Games Mobile, a newly formed division, creates and publishes games for the worldwide mobile market. The division publishes games based on original intellectual property, popular entertainment licenses and classic Sierra Entertainment intellectual property games which are distributed by more than 90 operators and dozens of Web portals in more than 60 countries.

Vivendi Games Mobile has launched a number of award-winning titles, including SWAT Force which was named “Best Wireless Game of the Year” by Spike TV in December 2006.

Executive management

René Pénisson, Chairman, Vivendi Games

Bruce Hack, CEO, Vivendi Games

Pascal Brochier, President, Global Retail

Cindy Cook, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer

Terri Durham, Executive Vice President, Business Development and Global General Counsel

Jean-François Grollemund, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Mark Halacy, Executive Vice President, Global Human Resources

Divisional management

Michael Morhaime, President, Blizzard Entertainment

Martin Tremblay, President Worldwide Studios, Sierra Entertainment

Al Simone, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing Sierra Entertainment

Ed Zobrist. President, Sierra Online

Paul Maglione, President, Vivendi Games Mobile

See also

• Vivendi
• List of assets owned by Vivendi

References

External links

• Vivendi.com - Official site of Vivendi
• VUgames.com - Official site of Vivendi games, redirects to Sierra Entertainment official site.
• Vivendi games at Vivendi.com — Vivendi Games page at vivendi.com.