Another one of my history threads,
but on July 24th, 1996, Sierra On-Line, Inc. was officially sold in a stock swap to CUC International Inc., for $1.5 billion in stock money. At the time, Sierra had over 1,000 employees in California, England, France, Spain, Washington and other locations, and was the market share leader in computer games. With that date, Ken Williams resigned as CEO of Sierra and Sierra President Michael Brochu took control of the company. Ken stayed with Sierra until 1997 as an advisor at Producct Strategy meetings and worked for CUC as a Senior Vice President.
Sierra would go on to be profitable in it's first year with CUC, and would continue to purchase other companies, such as Synergistic Software, Books that Work Inc., PyroTechnix and Berkely Systems throughout 1996 and 1997. By December 1997, Sierra had over 10 different development houses working on games. However, in November 1997, Michael Brochu departed Sierra and CUC broke Sierra up into three parts, with three Senior Vice Presidents controlling a third of Sierra. In June 1998, they elected David Grenewetski as their new CEO. The company was deeply impacted, by the Cendant Scandal and was sold off in November 1998 to a company named Vivendi, and struggled to retain profitability.
David Grenewetski became quickly unpopular in February 1999 when he ordered the layoffs of over 250 Sierra employees and the shutdowns of the Oakhurst facility (where Sierra was born and the first six KQ's were developed), and 3 other development studios. He also shutdown InterAction Magazine. In September 1999, Grenewetski laid off 105 more people, and in 2001, Vivendi cut 43% of Sierra's total staff and axed their Sierra Home Division. Vivendi shutdown Dynamix, which was Sierra's first purchase and had been a huge part of Sierra since 1990. All of these shutdowns were made to try and make Sierra profitable after the Cendant scanadal.
In 2004, Vivendi shutdown Papyrus Design Group and Impressions Games Games, Sierra's last remaining subsidiaries, and then in June 2004 shut Sierra offices at Bellevue, meaning the company existed in name only. However, they restocked Sierra with 4 new development studios throughout 2006 and 2007, bur Sierra still struggles to gain money and rumors abound that Sierra's name is to be phased out.
This all began began 12 years ago today.
