World of Warcraft has been a worldwide success and enabled Vivendi Universal Games to return to profitability. VUG's earnings operations were EUR 13 million, compared to a loss of EUR 168 million in the first half of 2004, mainly due to the increase in net sales and reduced operating expenses as a result of the recovery plan introduced in 2004, but also benefited from the worldwide success of World of Warcraft (4 million players at the end of August) and a strong increase of subscriptions with higher margins.