Vicarious Visions move to Blizzard means remastered Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft

By Chris Burns/Jan. 22, 2021 4:57 pm EST

The folks at Vicarious Visions will soon need to switch up their digital business cards. Back in the year 2005, the developer brand and its developers were acquired by the folks at Activision. In the year 2008, Acivision merged with Blizzard, forming Acivision Blizzard. So why should you or I or anyone spend even a moment thinking about how the Activision-owned developer group Vicarious Visions was merged into Blizzard?

Activision Blizzard is a group name that includes both Activision Publishing and Blizzard Entertainment. Vicarious Visions was acquired by Activision Inc in 2005 – that group is currently more accurately called Activision Publishing, working separate from Blizzard Entertainment – both of which live under Activison Blizzard.

The move today effectively moves Vicarious Visions out of Activision, into a division of Blizzard Entertainment, then officially merged into Blizzard Entertainment. As such, Vicarious Visions is part of Blizzard Entertainment.

The team at Vicarious Visions were responsible for a whole bunch of Skylanders games over the past decade, including Skylanders: Swap Force (PS3, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One,), and Skylanders: SuperChargers.

The handled a bunch of Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance games over the past couple of decades, and delivered Skylanders: Trap Team in 2014 for iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire. In 2016 they delivered Skylanders: Imaginators (Crash Edition) for PlayStation 3 and 4. In 2017 they were assigned to work as a support team for Bungie for Destiny 2 for Windows.

Also in 2017 Vicarious Visions delivered the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. In the year 2020, the crew brought Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

This team is very adept at bringing already-developed games to new platforms. They've done a whole lot of this business over the past couple of decades – and they'll likely assist Blizzard Entertainment in doing something similar in the near future.

In March of 2020, Michael Chu left Blizzard. Chu was a lead writer on Diablo, Warcraft, and Overwatch. In the year 2017, Blizzard released StarCraft: Remastered, and in 2020, they released Warcraft III: Reforged. Both of these were remastered versions of their original releases.

Clues point toward Blizzard using the folks at Vicarious Visions to bring some classic titles to the future on a variety of platforms. Given the relative lack of a need for any brand new franchises, it's likely time we see new editions of the following:

• WarCraft

• StarCraft

• Diablo

It's prime time to bring collections of classic titles to platforms like PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X (or PS5 Digital Edition, Xbox Series S), and streaming game platforms aplenty. Blizzard isn't about to let their old games die peacefully, especially when they're all still playable today with the right team on the job.

UPDATE: And it all fits. mobile versions of the classics will very, very likely be released in the future thanks to this Vicarious Visions team. Their years of knowhow in the field should make for an impressive set of remastered editions of the classics.