First published 2024
Jason Schreier chronicles the rise and collapse of Blizzard Entertainment across thirty-three tumultuous years. The gaming industry's top investigative journalist traces how two UCLA students built a legendary company that created StarCraft, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Hearthstone. Schreier reveals how Blizzard's creative culture thrived until 2013, when a cancelled project gave Activision CEO Bobby Kotick the opening he needed to crush the studio's independence. Drawing from interviews with over 300 current and former employees, Schreier documents how Activision executives from McKinsey and Procter & Gamble systematically dismantled Blizzard's creative autonomy. The author exposes the corporate invasion that drove away key talent, produced buggy games, triggered mass layoffs, and culminated in California's explosive sexual misconduct lawsuit. Schreier shows how the legal battle led to Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition that transformed the entire gaming industry. The book captures both the creative passion that built Blizzard and the corporate betrayal that destroyed it.
Genres: history, business, non-fiction, 21st-century, gaming
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: corporate-takeover, creative-decline
Setting: Blizzard Entertainment, UCLA, California
Period: 2013, 1980s-2010s
384 pages · Hardcover · Grand Central Publishing
Content warnings: abuse