Blizzard Albany (formerly Vicarious Visions, Inc.) is an American video game development division of Blizzard Entertainment based in Albany, New York. Founded in 1991, the company was acquired by Activision in January 2005. In January 2021, Vicarious Visions became part of Activision's sister company Blizzard Entertainment and was merged into it in April 2022.
History
The studio was founded by brothers Karthik and Guha Bala in 1991 while they were in high school.[1] In the late 1990s, Vicarious Visions appointed Michael Marvin, an Albany-based investor and entrepreneur, and founder and former CEO of MapInfo Corporation; and Charles S. Jones, investor, who sat on the boards of various software and industrial companies including Geac and PSDI, to its board of directors. Under their leadership, a sale of the company was negotiated to Activision, earning the original investors over 20x their initial investment. In 1999, Vicarious Visions partnered with Vatical Entertainment for a three-year strategic alliance, where Vatical published titles Vicarious Visions is developing, including Game Boy Color.[2]