In January, Activision Blizzard announced that it would merge developer Vicarious Visions with Blizzard. Vicarious Visions worked on Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot, Destiny, Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and Tony Hawk. Following the merger, the developer will be “fully dedicated to existing Blizzard games and initiatives.” Today, the developers took to Twitter and announced that the merger is complete.
Vicarious Visions said “We’ve officially merged with Blizzard Entertainment. Our development team will remain in Albany, NY and fully dedicated to Blizzard games.” Recently, Vicarious Visions recently worked on Diablo II: Resurrected, a full HD remaster of Diablo II. The remaster also included the game’s expansion Lord of Destruction. Vicarious Visions was working on Diablo II: Resurrected for year prior to its reveal. They were brought on following the poor reception of Warcraft III: Reforged. The last game Vicarious Visions was lead developer was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2.
When Activision Blizzard first revealed the move, they said “After collaborating with Vicarious Visions for some time and developing a great relationship, Blizzard realized there was an opportunity for [Vicarious Visions] to provide long term support.”
Vicarious Visions was around for nearly 30 years after they released Synnergist for PC in 1996. The biggest game that Vicarious Visions worked on was the mega-popular toys-to-life game Skylanders.
No layoffs are planned. Blizzard plans to grow its development teams globally in a major way in the future. They want to hire more than 2,000 employees in the future.
With the merger now official, Vicarious Visions is no more as the move meant that the studio would be losing its name. Similar to other Blizzard studios, Vicarious Visions will now be known as Blizzard Albany going forward and will be fully dedicated to Blizzard games.