CUC acquired Davidson in 1996, then merged to form Cendant in 1997. Vivendi-owned Havas acquired Cendant in 1999, shortly before Vivendi acquired Universal.

"If you look at these companies, most of these entities don't know anything about game development," said Frank Pearce, referring to the many corporations that have owned Blizzard over the years. "That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending upon how they view the studio beneath them."

He noted that Morhaime had kept the developers isolated from what the corporate owners were doing, allowing them to focus on making games.

Rob Pardo, who joined the company after Pearce and Morhaime had already been there, noted the lack of corporate interference. "From the point I started to even the point I am now as an exec, it is pretty rare to see people from our parent company at Blizzard.

"They don't walk around the halls. We don't show them or games for greenlight or approval process," he said. "That's something I always thought was amazing working at Blizzard."

Morhaime provided an example of what went wrong when they relied upon a corporation to their detriment. "We actually did a deal with Interplay to do the French distribution for Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.

"Back then, we had copy protection "enter word 5 on page 5" of the manual. [Interplay] didn't actually localise the game into French, but they localised the manual."

Blizzard was shocked that a game could be released with such a major flaw going unnoticed, and from then on their own QA group has been responsible for testing their products, no matter what language they are in.

Continue to Read: The secret of Blizzard's success... 

News Original From: kotaku & gamesindustry