In the world of video game development, money is king, and of course, the more you sell, the more money you have to do things with, like hire more staff or get the latest equipment and programming.

But when you’re Vivendi, and you’ve made a boatload of money off World of Warcraft and are tired of swimming in it, you need to find something to do with it.

So you do what every other company seems to be doing now a days: you go buy someone, like Activision, for example.

Yes, the long-time third-party developer has been bought by the Vivendi empire for $1.7 billion in Activision stock, with the whole deal is reported to be worth $18.9 billion. The new company that will be formed by the deal will be called Activision Blizzard, but don’t worry – the two developers are not actually merging their development teams, and they will continue to produce games under their respective names. It’s kind of like the opposite of what Namco Bandai did.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick will be taking over as CEO of the new group, while Blizzard’s Bruce Hack will stay on board as COO of Activision Blizzard.

If you’re interested in the press release, Kotaku has the whole thing up on their site.

What does this mean for the future? It might mean more buyouts and consolidation, and the rumors have already started up that EA might fire back by buying out Ubisoft, a company they own a 20 percent share in already. But if it means that we’ll be seeing some weird hybrid crossovers involving Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, Starcraft and Diablo... well, we probably won’t be seeing that, actually.