Activision Blizzard, Inc., formerly Activision, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) is the American holding company for Activision and Blizzard Entertainment. The company is majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA and was created through the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, announced on December 2, 2007, in a deal worth USD $18.8 billion.The deal closed July 9, 2008. The company believed that the merging of the two companies would create "the world's largest and most subtle pure-play video game publisher". It believes that it is the only publisher that has "leading market positions across all categories" of the video game industry.