Irvine’s Blizzard Entertainment Inc. is taking over Broadcom Corp.’s recently vacated three-building campus in the Irvine Spectrum, marking a big expansion for the county’s top video game maker.
Blizzard, part of France’s Vivendi, is set to move into 235,000 square feet of space at the Alton Corporate Center at Laguna Canyon Road and Alton Parkway, according to sources familiar with the deal.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. The lease is for “at least five years,” according to one source.
The Irvine Company, which owns the campus at the western edge of the Irvine Spectrum, declined to comment.
So did Blizzard, now based in the Irvine Co.’s University Research Park at the other end of Irvine. The company keeps a low profile and isn’t publicizing the move, possibly out of concerns about fans of its cult-like “World of Warcraft” game seeking out the company.
The deal doubles Blizzard’s space from what the company had at University Research Park. The Business Journal estimates Blizzard at 650 local workers.
Vivendi doesn’t break out yearly sales for Blizzard, though it’s believed to be a big chunk of the company’s $1 billion in yearly games revenue.
In an interesting twist, Blizzard is swapping spots with Broadcom. The chipmaker just finished moving to a newly built campus at University Research Park.
Broadcom’s 45-acre campus spans eight buildings with 685,000 square feet of office, laboratories and other space.
More than 1,800 local workers, about half of them engineers, have moved to the new Broadcom campus.
Broadcom won’t count Blizzard as a neighbor but joins San Jose-based Quantum Corp. and Woburn, Mass.-based chipmaker Skyworks Solutions Inc. at University Research Park.
Blizzard is growing. On its Web site, it lists some 60 open jobs, ranging from character animators to game testers.
Some of the jobs are for a new office in Austin, Texas.
Blizzard is riding a wave with its “World of Warcraft” games played over the Internet. In the game, players act out roles within “game universes,” facing off with others from their part of the world.
Players “develop friendships, forge alliances and compete with enemies for power and glory,” Blizzard said on its Web site.
Worldwide, more than 8.5 million people pay $15 a month to play the game. Blizzard expects that number to grow.
The company’s most recent release, “World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade,” has seen record sales after debuting earlier this year.
Analysts expect Blizzard to sell millions of copies at $40 each, plus the monthly subscription fee after that.
“World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade” sold nearly 2.4 million copies worldwide in its first 24 hours in January, more than any other computer game in history, according to Blizzard.
Its first month saw 3.5 million copies sold.
The game was released in South Korea in February and Taiwan in March. It’s set to be released in China later this year.
