Fans Mourn The Closing Of Vicarious Visions As It Merges Into Blizzard Entertainment

This morning, Tony Hawk studio Vicarious Visions confirmed it would be merging into Blizzard Entertainment, prompting many fans negative response to the news.

It goes as follows: Vicarious Visions was the studio behind the remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, titled Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2.

The game saw critical and financial success, with many fans happy to see a big part of their childhood brought back to life for modern consoles.

However, despite this, it was announced that the studio, Vicarious Visions, would instead be absorbed into Blizzard Entertainment- something many followers of the industry typically see as a punitive action.

“THIS is VV’s reward for resurrecting Crash and Tony Hawk?”, writes redditor n8han11. “Pretty depressing honestly, considering their remakes have been miles ahead of anything else Activision’s churned out with either of those series.”

Some fans are misguidedly hoping that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard might overturn the decision- though considering Microsoft didn’t make one of the most expensive game acquisitions of all time just for Tony Hawk, that’s highly unlikely.

“If the Xbox merger goes through, I could see them getting saved from this after that”, writes redditor jabberwockxeno.

It’s not all negative though- for some fans, they’re genuinely hoping that new blood via the Vicarious Visions team will inject some spring into Blizzard Entertainment’s lawsuit-encumbered steps.

“It’s honestly sad. You guys brought Crash back to life and even managed to gave us a damn awesome Tony Hawk remaster. But no doubt that your skilled staff will help improve Blizzard. Good luck!”, writes Twitter user Lucho Diaz.

It should be noted that there’s some fan misunderstanding over the details of this- Vicarious Visions wasn’t acquired by Blizzard Entertainment, the studio had always been owned by Activision Blizzard prior to the development of Tony Hawk.

But with the stripping of their status as their own studio, that does mean that you’re more likely to see the Albany-based studio’s work in Blizzard titles, rather than any kind of continuation of their games like the Tony Hawk series.

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