Sierra On-Line

Founded: 1979 (as On-Line Systems)

Defunct: 2008

Headquarters:

	36575 Mudge Ranch Road, Coarsegold, California 93614, United States
	40033 Sierra Way, Oakhurst, California 93644, United States
	3060 139th Avenue Southeast, Suite 500, Bellevue, Washington 98005, United States^[1]

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Sierra On-Line was a US video game developer and publisher.

History

The company was founded as On-Line Systems in 1979, changing its name to Sierra On-Line after a move from Los Angeles to Oakhurst, California^[2] in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It saw successes in the 1980s with its line of computer adventure games, expanding and going public in 1989^[2].

Sierra acquired a number of software companies in the following decade, notably Dynamix in 1990^[2], becoming a worldwide publisher. They additionally operated an internal development team named PyroTechnix.

The company was acquired by CUC International in July^[3] 1996^[4], which itself merged with HFS Incorporated in December 1997 to become Cendant Corporation. It was at this time when significant accounting fraud at CUC was uncovered, with Cendant subsequently selling its software division to the Paris-based Havas S.A. (part of Vivendi Communications) in January 1999^[4]. Sierra subsequently became a part of Havas Interactive, laid of much of its development staff and became purely a sofware publisher. The company would change its name to Sierra Entertainment, Inc. in February 2002^[5].

After a series of mergers in 2000, Sierra's parent company, Havas S.A. became Vivendi Universal Publishing. A series of unsuccessful products saw more cost-cutting and redundancies Sierra, reducing the company to little more than a brand of Vivendi Universal Games. 2008 saw Vivendi merge with Activision to form the holding company Activision Blizzard, and Sierra was closed in the months which followed, with many of its IP rights being sold to third-parties.

Activision briefly brought back the Sierra name in 2014 to re-release older Sierra titles and some independently-developed games, but is otherwise unrelated to the original Sierra On-Line.