All The Activision Blizzard Franchises Microsoft Now Owns

gamespot.com:

By Eddie Makuch on

It is now officially official: Microsoft owns Activision Blizzard. Microsoft successfully overcame a series of regulatory issues and hurdles-–and suffered its own gigantic internal document leak in the process–-but the deal is finally done and signed. With the deal officially settled, Microsoft takes ownership of all of Activision Blizzard's franchises and developers.

This means Microsoft will now own Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, and Candy Crush, as well as the people and studios behind those gigantic franchises. In this gallery, we're running through all of the Activision Blizzard franchises that Microsoft now owns following the closure of the deal.

Activision was founded in 1979 and made a name for itself with Atari games like Boxing, Fishing Derby, Tennis, Ice Hockey, and many more. Bobby Kotick bought Activision in the early 1990s and has been its CEO ever since. The company saw massive growth and success in the 2000s with Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and the Tony Hawk series. Activision grew bigger still when it merged with Warcraft developer Blizzard in 2008 and formed one big company called Activision Blizzard.

The company has been one of the biggest and most dominant and successful in all of video games since then. The company has faced criticism for a number of things, including a high-profile harassment and sexual misconduct scandal that emerged in media reports just before Microsoft made its bid to buy the company in January 2022.

Now, let's get to the games. This gallery covers the big ones like Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, Warcraft, and Diablo, as well as dormant franchises that we believe Activision Blizzard still owns. Some of these include games like