Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated on the creation of game ports for other studios' games before beginning development of their own software in 1993 with games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1993, the company became Chaos Studios, Inc., and eventually Blizzard Entertainment after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although organized competitions have long been a part of video game culture, these were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s, when participation by professional gamers and spectatorship in these events through live streaming saw a large surge in popularity. By the 2010s, esports was a significant factor in the video game industry, with many game developers actively designing and providing funding for tournaments and other events.
BlizzCon is an annual gaming convention held by Blizzard Entertainment to promote its major franchises including Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch.
Major League Gaming Corp. (MLG) is a professional esports organization. MLG is headquartered in New York City, New York and was founded in 2002 by Sundance DiGiovanni and Mike Sepso. MLG has held official video game tournaments throughout the United States and Canada. The Boost Mobile MLG Pro Circuit was a television broadcast of Halo 2 MLG tournaments in 2006 and 2007, ESPN.com, and other broadband sites. The company has also been involved in television production, and game development. MLG's aim is to elevate computer and console game tournaments to viable competitive and spectator events.
Michele Morrow is an American television presenter, actress, writer, video game journalist and producer. Early in her career she was a freelance writer and columnist for HelloGiggles and Nerdist Industries, while also hosting various digital shows centered around video games and pop culture.
The Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA) is a South Korean body established to manage esports in South Korea. It is a member of the Korean Olympic Committee and the International e-Sports Federation. As of June 2012, it was the managing body for 25 e-sports in the country, including Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void, League of Legends, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. KeSPA also hosts the KeSPA Cup, a yearly tournament event for some of their games.
Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is a subgenre of strategy video games in which two teams of players compete against each other on a predefined battlefield. Each player controls a single character with a set of distinctive abilities that improve over the course of a game and which contribute to the team's overall strategy. The typical ultimate objective is for each team to destroy their opponents' main structure, located at the opposite corner of the battlefield. In some MOBA games, the objective can be defeating every player on the enemy team. Players are assisted by computer-controlled units that periodically spawn in groups and march forward along set paths toward their enemy's base, which is heavily guarded by defensive structures. This type of multiplayer online video games originated as a subgenre of real-time strategy, though MOBA players usually do not construct buildings or units. Moreover, there are examples of MOBA games that are not considered real-time strategy games, such as Smite (2014), and Paragon. The genre is seen as a fusion of real-time strategy, role-playing and action games.
Heroes of the Storm is a crossover multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It was released for Microsoft Windows and macOS on June 2, 2015. The game features various characters from Blizzard's franchises as playable heroes, as well as different battlegrounds based on Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, and Overwatch universes. Players form into five-player teams and fight against another team in 5-versus-5 matches, with an average game duration of roughly 20 minutes. The first team to destroy opponents' main structure, known as the "King's Core", wins the match. Each themed battleground has a different metagame and secondary objectives to secure, whose completion gives your team massive advantages, typically through pushing power. Every player controls a single character, known as a "hero", with a set of distinctive abilities and differing styles of play. Heroes become more powerful over the course of a match by collecting experience points and unlocking "talents" that offer new abilities or augment existing ones, contributing to the team's overall strategy.
Hearthstone is a free-to-play online digital collectible card game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Originally subtitled Heroes of Warcraft, Hearthstone builds upon the existing lore of the Warcraft series by using the same elements, characters, and relics. It was first released for Microsoft Windows and macOS in March 2014, with ports for iOS and Android releasing later that year. The game features cross-platform play, allowing players on any supported device to compete with one another, restricted only by geographical region account limits.
Tempo Storm is an American esports professional video game team that has teams competing in Age of Empires II, FIFA, Magic: The Gathering, fighting games, and Shadowverse. They have formerly held divisions in Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Fortnite, League of Legends,Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, Vainglory, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege,World of Warcraft, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
PVP Live was an American esports news website. It was founded in 2012 and included a statistics database. The website was owned by PVP Live Interactive, Inc. PVP Live came out of its most recent beta on June 8, 2015. The company is based in Frisco, Texas.
Blizzard Entertainment's online collectible card game Hearthstone became played professionally quickly after its release in March 2014. The game is played as an esport, with high-level tournaments such as Blizzard's official World Championship featuring prize pool of up to $1 million, and livestreamers can earn money streaming gameplay on Twitch.
The Overwatch League (OWL) is a professional esports league for the video game Overwatch, produced by its developer, Blizzard Entertainment. The Overwatch League follows the model of other traditional North American professional sporting leagues by using a set of permanent, city-based teams backed by separate ownership groups. In addition, the league plays in the regular season and playoffs format rather than the use of promotion and relegation used commonly in other esports and non-North American leagues, with players on the roster being assured a minimum annual salary, benefits, and a portion of winnings and revenue-sharing based on team performance. The league was announced in 2016 with its inaugural season taking place in 2018, with a total prize pool of US$3.5 million given to teams that year.
The Nexon Arena is a dedicated eSports stadium in Seoul, South Korea that hosts events for StarCraft II, League of Legends, and other games. It is owned by Nexon, a South Korean game development company. SPOTV is the main broadcaster at the stadium.
The Overwatch World Cup (OWWC) was an annual international Overwatch esports tournament organized by Blizzard Entertainment, the game's developer. The tournament format had varied in each year, with the most recent one involving a preliminary stage in which national teams competed against others in a single-elimination tournament system to claim the five qualification spots in the group stages, which also included five national teams who prequalified via ranking. Top-ranked teams from the group stage advanced to a single-elimination playoff bracket at Blizzard's BlizzCon event every November. The first three World Cups were won by South Korea, while the most recent one was won by the United States.
Professional StarCraft II competition features professional gamers competing in Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game StarCraft II. Professional play began following the game's initial release in 2010, as the game was the long-awaited sequel to StarCraft, considered one of the first esports and the foundation of South Korea's interest and success in competitive gaming. Between 2016 and 2019, competition was centered around the Global StarCraft II League in Korea and the World Championship Series Circuit everywhere else, with all Blizzard-sanctioned events being under the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) banner. Since 2020, Blizzard changed the format of WCS by entering into a three-year partnership with esports organizers ESL and DreamHack.
College esports in the United States began around 2009. Various schools began forming esports clubs to play any number of video games in collegiate tournaments. While there are thousands of schools that participate in collegiate esports competitions, in 2018, there were at least 73 college varsity esports programs, and by 2019 over 130 college varsity programs. College esports is often viewed as a starting path for gamers that aspire to go professional. Although popular, companies are finding it hard to monetize collegiate esports, especially with the recent COVID-19 situation. On December 9, 2020, North American collegiate partner of Activision-Blizzard's esports system, Tespa announced that it is closing down.
In October 2019, American video game developer Blizzard Entertainment punished Ng Wai Chung (吳偉聰), a Hong Kong esports player of the online video game Hearthstone, for voicing his support of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests during an official streaming event. The public's response, which included a boycott and a letter from United States Congress representatives to Activision Blizzard, prompted Blizzard to reduce the punishment, but not to eliminate it.
Erik Lonnquist, better known by DoA, is an American esports commentator. He began his career casting StarCraft II for companies such as GomTV in South Korea and IGN in California. He worked for OnGameNet from 2013 to 2017, casting League of Legends Champions in South Korea, where he worked with his casting partner Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles. He was signed by Blizzard Entertainment to cast the Overwatch League from 2018 to 2019 and again in 2021. In 2022, he began hosting the Rainbow Six: Siege North American League.
