On-Line Systems

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Founded in 1980 as On-Line Systems, the company began when Ken Williams took on the daunting task of programming his wife Roberta's hand-written game concept into the first graphic/text adventure game ever created. Dubbed Hi-Res Adventure #1: Mystery House, the game's marriage of text and graphics became the product upon which all other graphics adventures were measured.

The success of the game allowed Ken and Roberta to move out of Los Angeles, first to Coarsegold, later to Oakhurst, California. Relating to their new location at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the company changed its name to Sierra On-Line in 1982.

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Founded in 1980 as On-Line Systems, the company began when Ken Williams took on the daunting task of programming his wife Roberta's hand-written game concept into the first graphic/text adventure game ever created. Dubbed Hi-Res Adventure #1: Mystery House, the game's marriage of text and graphics became the product upon which all other graphics adventures were measured.

The success of the game allowed Ken and Roberta to move out of Los Angeles, first to Coarsegold, later to Oakhurst, California. Relating to their new location at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the company changed its name to Sierra On-Line in 1982.

In 1996, Sierra was sold for $1.06 billion in stock to CUC International. The acquisition, announced on February 20, 1996, was completed on July 24, 1996. By then CUC (Comp-U-Card) International was a Stamford, Connecticut based, technology-driven retail and membership services company that provided access to travel, shopping, auto, dining, home improvement, financial, and other services to nearly 40 million consumers worldwide. Chairman of CUC was Walter Forbes, one of the members of the board of Sierra.

A year later Sierra became part of Cendant Software, at that time one of the largest PC consumer software groups in the world. On December 18, 1997, CUC merged with HFS Incorporated and became Cendant Corporation. Cendant Software consolidated the sales, manufacturing, finance, accounting and management of Cendant Corporation's software divisions, including Sierra, Knowledge Adventure, Davidson & Associates, Inc. and Blizzard Entertainment.

In January of 1999, Sierra and its affiliates were acquired by Havas, S.A. Through the acquisition, Cendant Software became Havas Interactive. Its holdings were, Blizzard, Coktel, Knowledge Adventure, Sierra, and WON.net. Havas Interactive had operations in the US and in Europe and is a subsidiary of the French publishing house Havas, part of Vivendi Communications. In June 2000, Havas Interactive was reformed as Vivendi Universal and on October 2001, Sierra's logo was reverted to the famous Half-Dome logo. Afterwards, on February 19, 2002, Sierra On-Line was renamed to Sierra Entertainment.

In July 2008, however, Vivendi Games was merged with Activision. That resulted in a new holding company, Activision Blizzard, making Sierra redundant. On October 2008, Sierra was disbanded, with majority of it's subsidiaries, with the exception of High Moon and Radical, are either closed or sold, with all of their titles that listed as TBA at the time were either cancelled or published under the Activision brand.

Subject ID: 45058

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Subject ID: 45058