Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded in February 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce. Based in Irvine, California, the company originally concentrated primarily of the creation of game ports for other studios before beginning development of their own software in 1993 with the development of games like Rock N, Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1994 the company became Blizzard Entertainment Inc. before being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft: Ores and Humans. Blizzard went on to create several successful PC games, including the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series, and the MMORPG World of Warcraft.
“暴雪”娱乐公司是一家美国的电子游戏开发和发行公司。1991年2月在Silicon&Synapse公 司名下注册创立。创始人是3名加州大学洛杉肌分校的毕业生——迈克尔?莫海姆、艾伦?阿德 汗和弗兰克?皮尔斯。位于加利福尼亚州的欧芬市，这家公司一开始将重心放在替其他工作室提供游戏端口上。直到1993年开始研发他们自己的软件，例如“疯 狂赛车”和“迷失的维京人”。1994年，该公司改名为暴雪娱乐公 司,之后被经销商D&A公司收购。不久之后暴雪”就发行了突破 性的卖座游戏“魔兽争霸人族和兽人”。“暴雪”接连开发出几 个非常成功的电脑游戏，包括“魔兽争霸”、“星际争霸”和“暗黑破 坏神”系列，以及大型多人在线角色扮演游戏“魔兽世界”。
Blizzard has made use of a special form of software known as the 'Warden Client' The Warden client is known to be used with Blizzard’s World of Warcraft online game, and the Terms of Service contain a clause consenting to the Warden software performing these scans while World of Warcraft is running.
“暴雪”公司开发了一种特殊的软件——“看护者”客户端。这 个客户端可以在“魔兽世界”在线时同时使用，并且《服务条款》包 括允许“看护者”客户端在“魔兽世界”运行的时候进行这些扫描 这一条款。
The Warden client scans the process names, window titles, and a small portion of the code segment of running processes in order to determine whether any of these third-party programs are running. This determination is made by hashing the scanned strings and comparing the hashed value to a list of hashes assumed to correspond to cheat programs. The Warden scans all processes running on a computer, not just the World of Warcraft game, and could possibly run across what would be considered private information and other personally identifiable information. It is because of these peripheral scans that Warden has been accused of being spyware and has run afoul of controversy among privacy advocates. Blizzard has changed hands several times since it was acquired by Davidson & Associates in 1994: Davidson was acquired along with Sierra On-Line by a company called CUC International in 1996; CUC then merged with a hotel, real-estate, and car-rental franchiser called HFS Corporation to form Cendant in 1997. In 1998 it became apparent that CUC had engaged in accounting fraud for years before the merger; Cendant’s stock lost 80% of its value over the next six months in the ensuing widely discussed accounting scandal. The company sold its consumer software operations, Sierra On-line which included Blizzard, to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. Blizzard was part of the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi. In July 2008 Vivendi Games merged with Activision, using Blizzard’s name in the resulting company, Activision Blizzard.
“看护者”客户端扫描进程名称、窗口名称、并运行程序的小 部分代码段以判断是否有其他第三方的程序在运行。这种判断是 用釆集扫描到的字符串并将其采集好的值与被认为是相对应的 作弊程序的采集值表单比对而得出的。“看护者”客户端扫描所有 的在计算机上运行的进程，而不仅仅是“魔兽世界”游戏程序，可 能还包括一些被认为是个人隐私的信息和其他个人身份信息。正 因为这种扫描，“看护者”客户端被指责为间谍软件，并且在隐私 拥护者中引起纠缠不清的争论。“暴雪”自1994年被Davidson收购 后几经易手:Davidson和Sierra在线于1996年被CUC国际收购，此后在1997年CUC与被称作HPS的旅店、房地产和汽车租赁经销商合并成立CendanU1998年， CU C合并之前做假账的事情已经很明显了。Cendant的股票市值在之后6个月的广泛讨论的假 账丑闻中下跌了 80%,公司将他的消费软件部门、Sierra在线、也包括“暴雪”在1998年出售给法 国发行商Havas。同一年Havas被威望迪收购，“暴雪”是威望迪游戏集团公司的一部分。2008年7 月，威望迪与美国动视公司合并,并使用“暴雪”的名字，称作“动视暴雪”。
Blizzard launched their online gaming service Battle.net in January 1997 with the release of their action-RPG Diablo. In 2002, Blizzard was able to reacquire rights for three of its earlier Silicon & Synapse titles from Interplay Entertainment and re-release them under Game Boy Advance. In 2004, Blizzard opened European offices in the Paris suburb of Velizy, Yvelines, France, responsible for the European in-game support of World of Warcraft. On November 23, 2004，Blizzard released World of Warcraft, its MMORPG offering. On May 16，2005，Blizzard announced the acquisition of Swingin’ Ape Studios, a console game developer which had been developing StarCrafl: Ghost. The company was then merged into Blizzard’s other teams after StarCraft: Ghost was 'postponed indefinitely' On August 1，2005, Blizzard announced the consolidation of Blizzard North into the headquarters at 131 Theory in UC Irvine’s University Research Park in Irvine, California.
“暴雪”在1997年1月份与它的动作角色扮演游戏“暗黑破坏神”一道推出了它的在线游戏 服务——战网。2002年“暴雪”从Interplay赎回早先Silicon&Synaps的三个作品的权利，并且在 GBA平台上重新发售。2004年暴雪在位于法国巴黎市郊的欧洲办事处开张，以承担“魔兽世界” 欧洲游戏在线服务的职责。2004年11月23日“暴雪”发行“魔兽世界”一它的大型多人在线游戏 大作。在2005年5月16日，“暴雪”宣布收购Swingin’Ape工作室一家用机游戏开发商，在“星际 争霸:幽灵”被无限期推迟后目前正致力其他“暴雪”游戏的开发’2005年8月1日“暴雪”宣布将其 北方“暴雪”合并进位于加利福尼亚欧文市的总部。