Vicarious Visions is now officially merged into Blizzard

pcgamer.com:

Vicarious Visions, whose most recent games include Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy(opens in new tab) and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2(opens in new tab), is no more. The studio announced today that it has now merged with Blizzard, and will work exclusively on Blizzard games.

Vicarious Visions was founded in 1991 and released its first game, the DOS-based Synnergist, in 1996. Over the years it became known primarily as a developer of handheld games, particularly for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. Activision acquired the studio in 2005 and turned it toward supporting high-profile game series like Guitar Hero, Skylanders, and Destiny 2. Studio founders Karthik and Guha Bala left in 2016, and the studio website at vvisions.com(opens in new tab) now redirects to a Blizzard Albany job list. 

We've officially merged with Blizzard Entertainment. Our development team will remain in Albany, NY and fully dedicated to Blizzard games. We invite you to follow us @Blizzard_EntApril 12, 2022

The merger isn't a surprise: Activision turned Vicarious Visions into a full-time Blizzard support studio(opens in new tab) in early 2021, after the release of the outstanding Tony Hawk 1 + 2, and reports that it would be fully merged surfaced in October(opens in new tab) the same year. 

Despite that advance notice, the reaction to the news was not what you'd call broadly positive.

The one positive that can come from this is letting these Activision studios be free. So much talent wasted on 3 IPs. It's a real shame.April 12, 2022

I know, it doesn’t make sense why they did this, they weren’t near Bankruptcy, hopefully Microsoft can undo this but it may be too late when they officially joinApril 12, 2022

Don't even say it