Vivendi

Vivendi S.A. (formerly known as Vivendi Universal) is a French multinational mass media company headquartered in Paris, France. The company has activities in music, television, film, video games, telecommunications, tickets and video hosting service. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index.

Activities

Vivendi is a company primarily focused on digital entertainment. It owns the French TV channel and movie producer Canal+ Group, as well as music world leader Universal Music Group. On July 25, 2013, Vivendi asset Activision Blizzard announced the purchase of 429 million shares from Vivendi for $5.83 billion, dropping the shareholder from a 63% stake to 11.8% by the end of the deal in September, ending Vivendi's majority ownership of Activision Blizzard. In 2014, Vivendi decided to sell mobile companies SFR (France) to Patrick Drahi’s company, Altice and GVT (Brazil) to the Brazil company Telefônica Vivo. In November 2013, it signed the definitive agreement to sell its majority and controlling stake in Maroc Telecom (Morocco) to Etisalat based in Abu Dhabi.

Vivendi Games

Vivendi Games, formerly known as Vivendi Universal Games or VU Games, was the holding company for Sierra Entertainment and Blizzard Entertainment. Vivendi Games was founded as Vivendi Universal Games after Vivendi bought Universal Studios in the early 2000s.

Vivendi Games was a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi S.A.. Headed by Bruce Hack, it was headquartered in Los Angeles, California and employed over 3,400 people at four separate development divisions. Vivendi Games owned the rights to franchises such as Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft (all games developed by Blizzard Entertainment), as well as others like Empire Earth, Ground Control, Tribes, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon owned by Sierra Entertainment. It later merged with Activision and is known as Activision Blizzard.

History

In February 1996, when CUC International, a large mail order and subscription company, offered to acquire entertainment software developer Sierra Entertainment. Headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, Sierra published adventure game series such as King's Quest, Gabriel Knight, Space Quest. Sierra was a public company, which employed roughly 1,000 employees at 12 different acquired studios. CUC offered to absorb Sierra's stock shares at a price roughly 90% higher than what Sierra was trading, and on July 24, 1996, Sierra became a wholly owned subsidiary of CUC.

Universal Games

Universal Games is a Nevada company that produced such board games as Merger, Titanic: The Board Game, and the Apollo 13 edition of Solarquest.

In 1965, their address was in Houston, Texas. Universal Games released Merger, a financial game for 2-4 players. This game simulated automobile production and stock manipulation. Each player is a plant manager. The goal of the game is to make the most money. The game is similar is style to many of the 3M bookshelf games.

Universal

Universal may refer to:

Companies and organizations

Universal Interactive

Universal Interactive Inc. (previously Universal Interactive Studios) was a video game developer and publisher and a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal Games. It is a former game studio owned by Universal Studios before being bought by Vivendi. Universal Interactive was known for publishing and distributing the Crash Bandicoot & Spyro the Dragon games, along with games based on films from Universal Pictures. Around 2001, Universal Interactive Studios name was shortened to Universal Interactive. Around 2003, Universal Interactive was known as Vivendi Universal Games.

List of Universal Interactive games

This is a list of video games made and distributed by Universal Interactive (founded in 1993, became Vivendi Universal Games in 2003, became Vivendi Games in 2006 and merged to Activision to form Activision Blizzard in 2008).

as Universal Interactive Studios

as Universal Interactive

as Vivendi Universal Games