Blizzard, the developer behind landmark series like Diablo , Warcraft , and Overwatch , struck gold repeatedly for over two decades. According to Jason Schreier, a Bloomberg reporter and author of the upcoming book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment , it was not only a routine hitmaker; it was one of the unique studios that ever graced screens with its big, icey logo. Thirty-three years after it came on the scene as “Silicon and Synapse,” modern-day Blizzard is a shadow of its former self.
While its latest expansion to World of Warcraft, The War Within , and hits like Diablo IV keep the company in the public’s eye, the developer hasn’t yet recovered from massive sexual misconduct allegations and a $69 billion buyout by Microsoft. Schreier took on the task of writing about Blizzard just before Microsoft announced its intent to buy Activision Blizzard. Since the deal closed, sweeping layoffs have rocked the entire company .
The author worked for eight years at Kotaku (Gizmodo’s former sister site), reporting about the industry before moving on to Bloomberg. In Play Nice , Schreier documents Blizzard’s humble though ambitious origins from its founders, Allen Adham and Michael Morhaime, through the company’s burgeoning popularity with games like Warcraft 2 , StarCraft , and Diablo II . Despite those hits, it was World of Warcraft that transformed the developer’s trajectory from a popular though relatively small game maker into an inter.