Blizzard North was originally an independent company. It was established in 1993 under the name Condor, founded by Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik. The company was purchased and renamed by Blizzard about six months before the release of their hit PC game, Diablo, in 1996. Diablo proved to be a considerable success, and the still-more successful sequel Diablo II was released in 2000. An expansion pack followed the year after.
By June of 2003 two new games were in production. However on June 30, 2003, several key employees left Blizzard North to form the new companies Flagship Studios (8 moved here) and Castaway Entertainment (9 moved here). The Blizzard North exodus continued on with around 30 employees leaving the company in total.
The resignations were partly due to a conflict with Blizzard Entertainment's owner, Vivendi, and partly due to employees wishing to start something new. Back at Blizzard North, however, they would have a common effect; of the two unannounced games that were in production at the time, one was now forced to be canceled. Blizzard Entertainment has since said the canceled game was a "Blizzard North kind of game". Since Blizzard's acquisition of Condor and until the time of this exodus, Blizzard North had worked only on Diablo games - meaning that a "Blizzard North kind of game" signified a 'Diablo kind of game'. Because of this, some have drawn the conclusion that "Diablo 3" was the unannounced game that had been canceled.
On August 1, 2005, Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North, saying that remaining employees were moving to its head offices to resume work on an unannounced project. A few employees from the Diablo team, including Eric Sexton, Michio Okamura and Steven Woo, organized to launch a new company, Hyboreal Games, which later became U.I. Pacific and is working on a new online game.[1]
