Surprised no one has stated the obvious yet, Blizzard is most certainly private. They're not the same company as "Activision Blizzard". That title was given by Vivendi a while back to umbrella all of their game developer subsidiaries simply because they could. Both Activision and Blizzard didn't merge, and they were still their own two business entities.
Parent:
- Formerly Vivendi - publicly traded
Subsidiary:
- Activision Blizzard - publicly traded
Subsidiaries of subsidiary:
- Activision - publicly traded
- Blizzard - private
- Whole bunch of other developers - some private, some public
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My guess behind the reason no-one stating the obvious would be because if what you listed is the obvious it is incorrect. As a separate company Blizzard does not exist, if is not registered with the SEC nor does it file accounts with them, Blizzard is a division, albeit an important division, of ATVI.
No, greed is not the point of business, Making money is the point of business, Don't use a word if you don't even know the actual meaning of it. Hint:
NOUN
[MASS NOUN]
Intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food:
Wanting to make money, is not the same as being greedy for money.
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Completely broken logic. Employees have no relation to a founded company.
Blizzard doesn't need to report anything. They do so (and did with vivendi) because they agreed to for the benefit of their parent. There's a metric fuckton of private companies that do not share their earnings with the public, regardless if a parent company owns a stake.
EDIT: If you honestly don't understand how businesses and subsidiaries work, and don't think Blizzard is a "real" company, you should probably let them know. They seem to be confused about it themselves!
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/
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Are you suggesting that a wholly owned subsidiary of a public company is somehow privately held? Or that when buying shares of the parent company you aren't somehow buying investment in the subsidiary? Or perhaps that economic performance and expectations about the subsidiary aren't discussed/presented on the shareholders call, or that they aren't included with SEC filings?
Fair enough I thought it was similar to Companies House in the UK and held all company registration details but it would appear that is done on a state by state basis. However this does not change the fact that you were incorrect and Blizzard are not a separate entity from Activision and all accounts are filed under the ATVI banner.
Err... I work for a large corporation, that has over 70 discrete operating units (with discrete names and reputations). Each of those is a part of the larger publically traded company, and there is a single SEC 10-k filed for the corporation as a whole (as there was for Acti/Blizz, and now for Vivendi or whoever is buying them, I've not been paying attention).
Each subsidiary acts as a relatively independent company, and has 'about us' pages a lot like Blizzards. None the less, as part of the whole publically traded company, they are just a piece of that large publically traded company. The idea that a wholly owned subsidiary of a public company is somehow private is amazingly wrong.
1. Blizzard is not wholly owned, never have been. Where are you getting this information?! Are you honestly under the assumption that no one at Blizzard owns a stake in the company? Lol.
2. The SEC cares little about companies that have nothing to do with issuing securities. Feel free to enlighten yourself to how the business world works: http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/qasbsec.htm
3. Of course if you invest in a publicly traded company, you are investing in their own investments. Pretty simple logic, doesn't change the fact that Blizzard is a company.
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Would make sense if Blizzard was wholly owned. They're not. Are you aware of the differences between partial stakes in private business, controlling stakes and wholly owned subsidiaries?
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ASRock Extreme3 - Sennheiser Momentums - Xonar DG - EVGA Supernova 650G - Corsair H80i
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Yea I'm not going to teach you how this works. Every single publically traded company has to file with the SEC. Blizzard isn't a discrete company, it is a division of Activision Blizzard, which is publically traded.
Your utter ignorance on this matter while you tell me to 'englighten myself' is hilarious though. Keep it coming.
Blizzard was acquired for $6.75 million by Davidson and Associates in 1994, they have since been sold to several different owners before eventually ending up being owned by Vivendi in 1998. In 2008 Vivendi sold Blizzard and their other gaming studios to Activision in a reverse merger where Activision paid for the purchase with a 52% stake in the new company Activision Blizzard. Blizzard are an asset of ATVI and do not exist separately.