It’s always with a vague sense of unease that we witness studios acquired by larger game developers and then, more often than not, completely dissolved within the company itself. And so we now wave farewell to Vicarious Visions, which is no longer a subsidiary of Blizzard Entertainment — it is Blizzard Entertainment.
The studio, which was founded in 1991 and bought up by Activision way back in 2005, has now dropped its name as part of the merge into Blizzard that’s been taking place over this past year. This signifies a shift from the previous status quo, where the studio would retain its identity. According to Polygon, Vicarious Visions was “under the impression the merger meant [it] would continue to operate as its own studio, although it was owned by Blizzard.” This, clearly, is no longer the case.
The announcement for the name drop happened at a Blizzard town hall meeting on Wednesday. Vicarious Visions had a long history of working on console titles and, more recently, acclaimed work on both Destiny 2 and Diablo II: Resurrected. Its former head, Jen Oneal, was named as one of two co-leads of Blizzard earlier this year when Blizzard president J. Allen Brack was ousted.
