Vivendi

Vivendi

A colonial-era company who behave like a colonist.

Founded:	December 14, 1853 (as Compagnie Générale des Eaux)
Founder:	Napoleon III
Headquarters:	Paris, France
Key people:	Amade du Puyfontaine (CEO) Stéphane Roussel (COO)
Subsidiaries:	Sierra Entertainment (1996 - 2008, transferred to Activision) Vivendi Games (2003 - 2008) Activision Blizzard (2008 - 2013) Gameloft (2016 - present)
Website:	https://www.vivendi.com/en

Vivendi SA is a French mass media conglomerate headquartered in Paris. The company has activities in music, television, film, video games, book publishing, telecommunications, tickets and video hosting service.

Originally founded under the name Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE) by the royal decree of Napoleon III as water supply company. Vivendi has restructured themselves into a media company in 1998, since then, Vivendi has attempted to invest in the gaming industry as a part of their expansion plan, first with acquisition of Sierra Entertainment and Blizzard Entertainment in 1998, then Activision in 2008 in which they merged them with Vivendi Games (Blizzard's parent company) to form Activision Blizzard, Gameloft in 2016, and is involved in a failed attempt to take over Ubisoft in 2018.

This article will be focused on Vivendi's involvement in the gaming industry.

Why They Suck

Similar to how they handled their subsidiaries in other industries, Vivendi primarily focused on making as much profit as possible. They often meddled with their subsidiaries to achieve the result. Such as having Activision (later known as Activision Blizzard) milked Call of Duty franchise as much as possible.
- This practice would have carried over by Activision Blizzard after they bought themselves out in 2013.
As stated above, their franchise milking practices are one of the main reason contributed to Blizzard's initial downfall started in 2012, as well as Gameloft's milking on Asphalt franchise, in fact, they’re responsible for Crash and Spyro’s downfall in the 2000’s (more specifically, their time as Vivendi Universal), as most of the games released were mediocre or downright awful.
After selling away Activision Blizzard in 2013, they were desperate to find a new "cash cow" to replace them, which resulted into a hostile takeover of Gameloft and a failed attempt on Ubisoft in 2018.
They are responsible for rampant pay-to-win microtransactions scheme in Gameloft's titles since 2016 due to their executive meddling mentioned earlier.
They folded and killed several gaming divisions in order to form Activision Blizzard, such as Sierra Entertainment and Blizzard North.