Players of Blizzard Entertainment's epic computer games operate in the "fog of war," with only a hazy notion of the dangers lurking around them. Now Blizzard's founders find themselves in a similar cloud of uncertainty.

Blizzard is part of the vast entertainment empire that French conglomerate Vivendi Universal put up for sale earlier this year.

But with no takers yet for Vivendi's games unit, and the sale price reportedly dropping, "we don't even know if we're part of the assets being sold," said Blizzard President Mike Morhaime, one of the studio's three co-founders. "We're used to having more control over our destiny, and now we're just waiting."

The developer of the popular "Diablo," "StarCraft" and "Warcraft" game series is no stranger to uncertainty; it has had five corporate owners in 10 years.

But jitters over the future have taken a toll: Four key "Diablo" developers quit this summer in frustration over what they said was inability to control their future. That left Blizzard's top-selling franchise without its creators.

"We've seen so much upheaval in the media and entertainment industry," said P.J. McNealy of American Technology Research, a San Francisco investment bank. "Now that turmoil is hitting the games space."

Blizzard is a key piece of Vivendi's video and computer games business, which had sales last year of $750 million, about 11 percent of Vivendi's 2002 revenue. Although Blizzard has released just one new title this year — an expansion to "Warcraft III" — it accounts for 25 percent of Vivendi Universal Games' worldwide revenue.

Vivendi Universal Games also includes Universal Interactive, Fox Interactive, Sierra Entertainment and Knowledge Adventure.

Early on, Vivendi hoped to sell the entire games unit for $2 billion, but analysts said the price has fallen to about $800 million. Even so, there haven't been any offers, despite flirtations with game publisher Electronic Arts and Microsoft.

Senior game-industry executives described Blizzard as Vivendi's juiciest games asset. Several publishers have explored purchasing the studio separately. But Vivendi, in need of cash to pay off debts, wants to shed the games unit in its entirety, industry executives said.

A Vivendi spokeswoman declined to comment on the negotiations.

Blizzard's three founders say their lack of control over the studio's fate is nerve-racking, particularly as Blizzard polishes its most ambitious project, the online "World of Warcraft."

"It's not what we're used to," said Morhaime, a programmer who worked briefly at Western Digital before joining former UCLA classmates Allen Adham and Frank Pearce to found Blizzard in 1991.

Blizzard has cranked out hit after hit. Its three franchises — 96 percent of whose fans are male — have sold more than 34 million copies worldwide.

"We had a good track record," said Pearce. "And that's what affords us the luxury of being able to do what we want, to ship our games when we want, when we feel they're good enough."

Paul Sams, Blizzard's senior vice president, acknowledges that the studio, which releases a major title about once every two years, rarely gets its products to retailers on time.

"Every single one of our owners wanted us to ship in a particular time frame," Sams said. "And every owner has seen us not do that. But when we do ship, it tends to make believers out of them."