Short answers, pulled from the story.
Blizzard Entertainment was founded in February 1991 by Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce, all three of whom had earned bachelor's degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles the year prior. The company was originally called Silicon & Synapse.
World of Warcraft peaked at 12 million monthly subscriptions in 2010. By April 2008, the game was estimated to hold 62 percent of the entire MMORPG subscription market, and it holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG by subscribers.
Co-founder Allen Adham changed the name first to Chaos Studios in 1993 because outsiders were confusing silicon, the material in microchips, with silicone polymer. A Florida company called Chaos Technologies then threatened a trademark claim, prompting a second rename. Adham worked through a dictionary and the first suitable word the legal department approved was "blizzard," adopted by May 1994.
Blizzard has passed through several owners. Davidson & Associates acquired it in early 1994, CUC International acquired Davidson in 1996, and Vivendi took over through the Havas acquisition in 1998. Activision merged with Vivendi Games to form Activision Blizzard in 2008. Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in a deal that closed on the 13th of October 2023, surpassing the $67 billion Dell-EMC merger as the largest acquisition in tech history.
The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed suit in July 2021 after a two-year investigation, alleging gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment, unequal pay, retaliation, and a "pervasive frat boy workplace culture" within the Blizzard Entertainment workplace. The lawsuit led to the departure of President J. Allen Brack, who was directly named in the suit.
Blizzard and NetEase announced in November 2022 that they could not agree on renewal terms, and most Blizzard games ceased operations in China in January 2023. By April 2024, Blizzard and NetEase had agreed to new publishing terms, with plans to restore Blizzard's games to China by mid-2024; the new deal also allows NetEase to bring games to the Xbox platform.