Vivendi Games (formerly Universal Interactive, then Vivendi Universal Interactive and later Vivendi Universal Games) was a video game publishing company. Founded as a publishing subsidiary of CUC International, it was sold to French marketing company Havas in 1998, which in turn was bought by Vivendi the same year. It was named after Vivendi's former name from 2000 to 2006, following its acquisition of Seagram's, the parent company of Hollywood conglomerate Universal Studios, in 2000. However, Vivendi Universal sold most of its Universal assets in 2004 to General Electric (owners of NBC) and formed NBCUniversal in the process. Later during 2006, the company dropped the "Universal" part from its name afterwards, although it remained the majority stakeholder of Universal Music Group, which split off from the film studio (until 2021, when it was spun-off as a separate public company).
Through its parent companies' many acquisitions, Vivendi Games owned several notable video game developers, including Blizzard Entertainment (creator of Warcraft and Diablo), Radical Entertainment, and High Moon Studios, to name a few. It also owned Sierra, publisher of graphic adventure game King's Quest.
In 2008, Vivendi reached a deal to merge Vivendi Games with Activision for $18.9 billion, which merged its assets to form Activision Blizzard. Vivendi continued to hold the majority stake of Activision Blizzard until 2013 and still held some shares until 2016.
Assets owned by Vivendi Games include:
- Blizzard Entertainment
- Davidson & Associates
- High Moon Studios
- Massive Entertainment
- Radical Entertainment
- Sierra
- Swordfish Studios
