About SC

Blizzard Entertainment® is a premier publisher of entertainment software. Since establishing the Blizzard label in 1994, the company has quickly become one of the most popular and well respected makers of computer games.

With blockbuster hits including the Warcraft ® series, Diablo™, and Starcraft™, the company has enjoyed back-to-back number-one selling games, as well as consecutive Game of the Year awards. The company's free online game service, Battle.net™, is the largest in the world with millions of active users.

Currently, the company is developing Diablo II, the highly anticipated sequel to 1997's best-selling role-playing game. Diablo II is four times as large as the original with five all-new character classes; hundreds of skills, items and weapons; 3Dfx support; and multiplayer options for up to eight players over Battle.net. Released January 1997, Diablo debuted at number one in the United States and was named Game of the Year.

StarCraft, which released in March 1998, was the company's biggest launch of a game ever with more than 1.5 million copies being sold worldwide. The game is the company's third number-one selling game and was named the best-selling game of 1998 by PC Data. The game's expansion set, StarCraft: Brood War is widely accaimed as a new standard for add-on disks and was named best expansion of 1998 by Gamespot.

The company's number-one selling Warcraft series has won industry acclaim and has shattered sales records worldwide. Warcraft: Orcs and Humans received accolades as one of the best strategy games of 1994. The game's blockbuster sequel Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness has sold more than two million copies worldwide and has won Game of the Year as well as Best Multiplayer Game.

Prior to the release of Warcraft, the company served as a third-party developer creating entertainment software for a variety of platforms including DOS, Macintosh, Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Some of the company's best-known titles include Rock 'n Roll Racing, The Lost Vikings, Blackthorne and The Death and Return of Superman.

The Blizzard research and development group is comprised of more than 130 designers, producers, programmers, artists and sound engineers. Each member of the Blizzard staff is a true game enthusiast, which provides the company invaluable insight to creating products for the gaming industry.

In March 1996, Blizzard acquired Blizzard North, a concentrated team of developers specializing in high-quality entertainment products for computer and home console systems. Located in Redwood City, Calif., Blizzard North strives to push gaming technology to the next level.

Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment was founded in 1990 under the name Silicon & Synapse by chairman Allen Adham and president Michael Morhaime. Blizzard is now a division of Havas Interactive, a subsidiary of Havas.