Blizzard founders (left to right) Frank Pearce, Mike Morhaime, and Allen Adham.
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Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime leaves a legacy of quality and kindness for the video game industry

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Mike Morhaime was not the primary leader of Blizzard Entertainment when he and his cohorts formed it (as Silicon & Synapse) 27 years ago. The company’s main instigator was Allen Adham, who was a big gamer and badgered his college friend Morhaime for a year to join him in making video games.

But Morhaime and cofounder Frank Pearce gave in to their more gregarious friend, and the company that became Blizzard opened its doors on February 8, 1991. Adham was a natural leader, while Morhaime was an engineer who enjoyed coding and playing games. Morhaime took over in 1998, after Adham resigned to pursue a different life. And since 2007, Morhaime was CEO of Blizzard.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.