00:00 This episode of Acquired covers the 2008 merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment, and the history of Blizzard starting as a company called Silicon and Synapse in 1991.

05:55 Blizzard Entertainment, originally known as Silicon and Synapse, gained recognition in the early 90s with successful games like Rock and Roll Racing and Lost Vikings, and was inspired by Westwood Studios' release of Dune 2 to create their own real-time strategy game, Warcraft.

11:53 Blizzard Entertainment releases Warcraft 2, which becomes a huge hit and popularizes PC gaming, and also introduces a map editor and multiplayer matchmaking, leading to the emergence of a modding community.

17:23 Blizzard releases Starcraft, which becomes the biggest selling game of 1998 and popularizes eSports, particularly in South Korea.

22:49 Blizzard's parent company, Sendin, was involved in accounting fraud and had to divest all their assets, including their games division, which was sold to Habas and then acquired by Vivendi, which also owned Universal Studios.

28:04 Blizzard's focus on World of Warcraft, which was released in 2004 and became a massive phenomenon with over 12 million monthly subscribers, revolutionized the gaming industry with its subscription fee business model and led to Blizzard's sole focus on supporting and expanding the game.

33:24 In December 2007, Vivendi announced a merger with Activision, valuing the combined company at $18.9 billion, with Vivendi owning 63% and the remaining 37% trading in the public markets.

39:21 Blizzard Activision is the only way for public company investors to get exposure to the esports wave, and their game Overwatch has been incredibly successful, with over 30 million players and over a billion in revenue.

44:45 Blizzard's approach to video games is focused on creating games that grow, get bigger, and make more money over time, similar to the movie industry, with games like Call of Duty Ghosts making a billion dollars in retail on the first day and continuing to make money for a significant amount of time after release, resulting in Blizzard making 2.4 billion dollars in revenue in 2016 and consumers spending 43 billion hours playing and watching Activision Blizzard content, which is on par with Netflix and over one and a half times the amount of time spent in Snapchat.

50:22 Activision saw the potential for Blizzard's games to be monetized over time and continue to grow, which was a departure from the traditional hits-driven nature of the video game industry, and Blizzard saw the merger as a way to have more control over publishing and release, as well as a way to smooth out the hits-driven business.

55:32 The merger with Activision allowed Blizzard to have more control over publishing and release, and without it, Valve and Riot may have become even more powerful in the gaming industry.

01:00:39 Blizzard and Activision may struggle to create the same level of affinity for their characters as Disney has with its universe, and the challenge for Blizzard is that they don't own Twitch, which could be the ESPN of the gaming world.

01:05:45 The hosts are unsure if the merger between Blizzard and Activision was a good idea in terms of value creation, as the combined company has only grown 2x in 10 years, but they acknowledge that 2x-ing on a $20 billion base is difficult and that Blizzard Activision could have been even bigger if they had executed better.

01:11:42 The hosts discuss their favorite podcasts and cocktails, and then proceed to promote Cruso, a clean compute cloud provider for AI workloads.