Vicarious Visions Is No More, As Merger With Blizzard Is Now Official

It is the end of an era for game developer Vicarious Visions. The Albany, New York-based studio, best known for its work on the Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero franchises, is now officially a part of Blizzard Entertainment. This merger was announced in 2021, and going forward, Vicarious Visions will lose its name as it officially becomes a new Blizzard studio.

The development team will remain in Albany, New York, but going forward, the people there will be “fully dedicated” to working on Blizzard titles.

The studio will henceforth be called Blizzard Albany, which is in keeping with the style of other teams, such as Blizzard Austin in Texas.

No layoffs are planned as part of the merger. In fact, Activision Blizzard management plans to grow its development teams globally in a major way in the future.

Vicarious Visions was founded in 1991 and was acquired by Activision in 2005. Studio founders Karthik Bala and Guha Bala left the company years ago and started Velan Studios, the team behind Knockout City and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit.

Vicarious Visions developed Diablo II Resurrected most recently. The studio is currently contributing to Diablo IV, according to job listings at Blizzard Albany.

The merger of Vicarious Visions with Blizzard comes as Activision Blizzard is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft for $68.7 billion. In other news, Activision Blizzard just announced that it was converting 1,100 temporary QA staff to full-time roles and raising base wages.