Former Blizzard CEO establishes own game company and two development studios

Mike Morhaime, a co-founder of Blizzard and a former CEO of the company, has announced the creation of his own game company Dreamhaven. This includes two development studios, which also include ex-Blizzard employees.

Dreamhaven is located in Irvine, California. The Dreamhaven team has come together with a common goal to empower creators, help bring their ideas to life, and create creative, original gaming experiences that lead to meaningful connections between players.

In a conversation with GamesBeat, Morhaime announced that Dreamhaven as a parent company has the task of providing guidance and financing, in addition to other services such as communication and human resources. Dreamhaven will finance the projects itself.

The money to set up the company came from Morhaime and his wife, something he thought was important in determining the direction of the company in the first phase. Morhaime expects to raise more money in the future, but says he is in no hurry, because he believes it is more important to keep control over the decisions the company makes. “When we look for investors, our visions and values ​​must be the same,” says the ex-Blizzard CEO.

The two new studios that are part of Dreamhaven are Moonshot and Secret Door. Moonshot is directed by Jason Chayes, Ben Thompson and Dustin Browder. Chayes was previously a producer at Blizzard and responsible for Hearthstone. The latter also applied to Thompson. Dustin Browder was responsible for Hearthstone, StarCraft II, Heroes of the Storm and Command & Conquer, among others.

Secret Door is directed by Chris Sigaty, Alan Dabiri and Eric Dodds. As a producer, Sigaty was responsible for, among others, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, Heroes of the Storm and the original Warcraft III. The other two developers were also involved in several of these Blizzard games.

Morhaime emphasizes that each studio can make its own decisions about how best to make its games. A total of 27 people now work at Dreamhaven and the two studios, but nothing is said about how many or what kind of games they work. Morhaime indicates that the parent company will be opportunistic about how many studios will be set up. That means that there may be more studios than the current two.

In October 2018, Morhaime left Blizzard as CEO and retained an advisory role, but at the beginning of last year it became clear that this too was coming to an end in April 2019. Morhaime was succeeded at the time by J. Allen Brack, the former head of the World of Warcraft team.