Activision

Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.

The company was founded as Activision, Inc. on October 1, 1979, in Sunnyvale, California, by former Atari, Inc. programmers for the popular Atari Video Computer System (later renamed to Atari 2600) home video game console. Upset at their treatment by Atari, they left to develop games for the same system. Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer. The video game crash of 1983, in part created by too many new companies trying to follow in Activision's footsteps without the experience of Activision's founders, hurt Activision's position in console games and forced the company to diversify into games for home computers, including the acquisition of Infocom. After a management shift, with CEO Jim Levy replaced by Bruce Davis, the company renamed itself to Mediagenic and branched out into business software applications. Mediagenic quickly fell into debt, and the company was bought for around by Bobby Kotick and a small group of investors around 1991.

Kotick drastically revamped and restructured the company to get it out of debt: dismissing most of its staff, moving the company to Los Angeles, and reverting to the Activision name. Building on existing assets, the Kotick-led Activision pursued more publishing opportunities and, after recovering from its former financial troubles, started acquiring numerous studios and various types of intellectual property over the 1990s and 2000s, among these being the Call of Duty and Guitar Hero series. A holding company was formed as Activision's parent company to manage both its internal and acquired studios. In 2008, this holding company merged with Vivendi Games (the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment) and formed Activision Blizzard, with Kotick as its CEO. Within this structure, Activision manages numerous third-party studios and publishes all games besides those created by Blizzard. In October 2023, Microsoft acquired parent company Activision Blizzard, maintaining that the company would continue to operate as a separate business. While part of the larger Xbox division (ex Microsoft Gaming), Activision retains its function as the publisher of games developed by its studios.

History

Founding (1979)

thumb|left|Co-founder David Crane in 2013

In 1976, Warner Communications bought Atari, Inc. from Nolan Bushnell to help accelerate the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS or later the Atari 2600) to market by 1977. That same year, Atari began hiring programmers to create games for the system. Prior to Warner's acquisition, the company did not award bonus pay to programmers who worked on profitable games, nor credit the programmers publicly, to prevent them from being poached by rival game companies. Warner Communications' management style was also different from Bushnell's. According to developer John Dunn, Warner management treated developers as engineers rather than creative staff, creating conflicts with staff. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar, named to that position following Warner's acquisition in 1978, was committed to keeping production costs minimal for Warner. Out of a development staff of thirty-five, four programmers (Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead), had produced games that had accounted for 60% of Atari's sales.

The four made the decision to soon leave Atari and start their own business, but were not sure how to go about it. as software for video game consoles were published exclusively by makers of the systems for which the games were designed; thus the common thinking was that to make console games, one needed to make a console first. The four decided to create their own independent game development company. They were directed by their attorney to Jim Levy, who was at the time raising venture capital to get into the software business for early home computers. Levy listened to their plans, agreed with its direction, and helped the four to secure about in capital from Sutter Hill Ventures. Activision was formally founded on October 1, 1979, with Levy serving as CEO. The company was initially named "Computer Arts, Inc." while they considered a better title. The founders had thought of the name VSync, Inc., but feared that the public would not understand or know how to say it. Levy suggested combining "active" and "television" to come up with Activision.

Early years (1980–1982)

Activision began working out of Crane's garage in the latter half of 1979, each programmer developing their own game that was planned for release in mid-1980: Dragster, Fishing Derby, Checkers, and Boxing.

Ahead of the release of the first four games, Activision obtained space at the mid-year 1980 Consumer Electronics Show to showcase its titles, and it quickly obtained favorable press.

Following the first round of releases, each of the founders developed their own titles, about once a year, over the first few years of the company. Near the end of 1982, Kaplan left Activision to work on the development of the Amiga personal computer as he wanted to be more involved in hardware development. The company completed its public offering in June 1983 on NASDAQ under the stock ticker AVSN.

The video game market crash (1983–1988)

The success of Activision, alongside the popularity of the Atari 2600, led to many more home consoles third-party developers as well as other home consoles. Activision produced some of its Atari games for the Intellivision and ColecoVision consoles, among other platforms. However, several new third-party developers also arose, attempting to follow the approach Activision had used but without the experience they had; according to Crane, several of these companies were founded with venture capital and hired programmers with little game design experience off the street, mass-publishing whatever product the developers had made. This was a contributing factor to the video game crash of 1983. Because of this, Activision decided that it needed to diversify its games onto home computers such as the Commodore 64, Apple, and Atari 8-bit computers to avoid completely going out of business like other third-party developers. and even attempted to seek a lawsuit to recover its purchase from Infocom's shareholders.

Mediagenic (1988–1991)

thumb|right|Mediagenic's former headquarters in Menlo Park,

In 1988, Activision began involvement in software besides video games, such as business applications. As a result, Activision changed its corporate name to Mediagenic to better represent all of its activities.

During this period Mediagenic, via Activision, secured the rights to distribute games from Cyan Worlds. The first game published by Activision from Cyan was The Manhole, on CD-ROM for personal computers, the first major game distributed in this format. This debt included a penalty against Mediagenic in May 1990 after losing patent infringement lawsuits filed against it by Magnavox over the similarities of Activision's games to Magnavox's patents. Cyan severed its contract with Activision, and turned to Broderbund for publishing, including what became one of the most significant computer games of the 1990s, Myst. Kotick was drawn to buy out Mediagenic not for its current offerings but for the Activision name, given its past successes with Pitfall!, with hopes to restore Activision to its former glory. After failing to negotiate a purchase with Davis, Kotick and additional investors bought Mediagenic in a hostile takeover for approximately in 1991. This group of investors included real estate businessman Steve Wynn and Philips Electronics. Activision changed its corporate name from "Activision, Inc." to "Activision Publishing, Inc.", while Activision Holdings took Activision's former "Activision, Inc." name.

In December 1998, Activision signed a deal with Marvel to publish Spider-Man video games. The deal was then expanded to include games based on characters from X-Men and Blade in October 1999. In February 1999, Activision signed a deal with Disney Interactive to publish video games based on Disney movies and franchises for game consoles, including Nintendo 64. In 2003, Activision signed a deal with DreamWorks Animation to publish video games based on DreamWorks animated films.

Some of the key acquisitions and investments made by Activision in this period include:

Raven Software: Raven was founded in 1990; because of their close proximity, Raven frequently collaborated with id Software, and one of the studio's early successes was the Heretic series using id's Doom engine. Around 1997, Raven's founders Brian and Steve Raffel felt the need to seek a parent company. They arranged a publishing deal with Activision in 1997, which not only served to provide Raven additional financial support, but also gave Activision the opportunity to work closely with id Software and gain business relationships with them. By the end of 1997, Activision acquired Raven as one of its first subsidiaries under Kotick. The acquisition price was $12 million.
Neversoft: Prior to its acquisition in 2000, Activision had arranged a development deal with Neversoft to re-develop Apocalypse, a title that failed to be completed within Activision. Subsequently, Activision had Neversoft work on a prototype for a skateboarding game, which became the first in the Tony Hawk's series of skateboarding video games. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was a critical success, leading Activision to acquire Neversoft in April 2000. After eight games, the series has brought in .
Treyarch: The Santa Monica, California studio was founded in 1996. With the success of the first Tony Hawk game from Neversoft, Activision used Treyarch to assist in further Tony Hawk games as well as to develop titles using Activision's license of Marvel's Spider-Man. Activision acquired the studio in 2001 for about . Following the success of Call of Duty from Infinity Ward, Activision moved Treyarch to assist in the series' development, trading off each year' major release between the two studios.
Gray Matter Studios: While Gray Matter was originally founded in 1993 as Xatrix Entertainment, it was rebranded to Gray Matter in 1999 as it began work on Return to Castle Wolfenstein, in conjunction with Nerve Software and oversight by id Software who owned the Castle Wolfenstein IP. Activision, the game's publisher, acquired a portion of Gray Matter's stock during this time. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a critical and financial success, and led Activision to acquire the remaining shares of Gray Matter in 2002 for about , with the intent to help Infinity Ward expand out the Call of Duty franchise. In 2005, Activision made the decision to merge the smaller Gray Matter into the larger Treyarch to put their combined talents towards Call of Duty 3.
RedOctane: Around 2005, Red Octane was co-developing Guitar Hero, a console game based on the arcade game GuitarFreaks, with Harmonix; Harmonix was developing the software while RedOctane developed the instrument controllers. Guitar Hero was a major success. Activision purchased RedOctane for nearly in June 2006. The series has since earned more than in revenues. Following Activision's merger with Vivendi, Activision gained the Spyro intellectual property and assigned Toys for Bob to develop the series in a new direction, leading to the toys-to-life Skylanders series.

Merger with Vivendi Games (2008)

While Activision was highly successful with its range of developers and successful series, Kotick was concerned that it did not have a title for the growing massively multiplayer online market, which presented the opportunity for continued revenues from subscription models and microtransactions instead of the revenue from a single sale. Around 2006, Kotick contacted Jean-Bernard Lévy, the new CEO of Vivendi, a French media conglomerate. Vivendi had a games division, Vivendi Games, that was struggling to be viable at the time, but its principal feature was that it owned Blizzard Entertainment and its highly successful World of Warcraft game, which was drawing in a year in subscription fees. Vivendi Games also owned Sierra Entertainment. The merger was completed in July 2008. The new company was called Activision Blizzard and was headed by Kotick, while Vivendi maintained a 52% share in the company. The new company was estimated to be worth , ahead of Electronic Arts, which was valued at .

Post-merger developments (2009–2022)

Activision Publishing remains a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard following the merger, and is responsible for developing, producing, and distributing games from its internal and subsidiary studios. Eric Hirshberg was announced as Activision Publishing's CEO in 2010. Since then, Sledgehammer, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch share development duties for the flagship series, with support from Raven and other studios as necessary.

In February 2010, Activision Blizzard reported significant losses in revenue stemming from a slow down in Guitar Hero sales and from its more casual games. Subsequently, Activision Publishing shuttered Red Octane, Luxoflux and Underground Development as well as laid off about 25% of the staff at Neversoft. Within the same year, Activision shuttered Budcat Creations in November 2010, and Bizarre Creations in February 2011. Also in 2010, Activision's deal with DreamWorks Animation expired, and the video game license was acquired by THQ.

Hirshberg left the CEO position in March 2018. On January 9, 2019, Activision Blizzard appointed Rob Kostich as president of Activision Publishing, as part of a broader executive reshuffle at the company. Before the promotion, Kostich served as executive vice president and general manager of the Call of Duty franchise for more than ten years.

Into the 2020s, Activision put more focus on the Call of Duty franchise, including the release of the free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone in 2020. By April 2021, the company had assigned all of its internal studios to work on some part of the Call of Duty franchise. This includes a new studio, Activision Mobile, devoted to the Call of Duty Mobile title as reported in August 2021.

In 2021, while all its employees were working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, Activision and its parent Activision Blizzard vacated its longtime headquarters building in Santa Monica and ended its lease with Boston Properties. In September 2021, it subleased a much smaller office space in Santa Monica at the Pen Factory (a former Paper Mate factory) from Kite Pharma, which had leased the space from Lincoln Property Company.

Purchase by Microsoft (2023–present)

With the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft in October 2023, Activision Blizzard as a whole, including the Activision Publishing subdivision, became a separate division under the Microsoft Gaming arm of Microsoft.

On March 8, 2024, 600 Activision QA workers in Texas, Minnesota and California unionized under the Communication Workers of America (CWA), marking it as the largest union in the United States video game industry.

On May 16, 2024, Activision announced the establishment of Warsaw-based studio Elsewhere Entertainment, assembled for the development of a new narrative-based AAA IP not associated with other Activision series like Call of Duty. The studio comprises various developers associated with other narrative-driven gaming franchises such as The Last of Us, Uncharted, The Witcher and Far Cry among others; at the time of announcement it was recruiting more staff to create a "state-of-the-art and next-generation gaming experience", as well as a franchise with "an enduring legacy that goes far beyond games."

In July 2024, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) actor labor union, which provides numerous video game voice actors, initiated a labor strike against a number of video publishers, including Activision, over concerns about lack of AI protections which concern not only video game actors, but also the use of AI to replicate an actor's voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness.

Studios

Activision Shanghai Studio in Shanghai, China; founded in 2009.
Beenox in Québec City, Canada; founded in May 2000, acquired on May 25, 2005.
Demonware in Dublin, Ireland; founded in 2003, acquired in May 2007.
Digital Legends Entertainment in Barcelona, Spain; founded in May 2001, acquired on October 28, 2021.
Elsewhere Entertainment in Warsaw, Poland; founded on May 16, 2024.
High Moon Studios in Carlsbad, California, US; founded as Sammy Entertainment in April 2001, acquired by Vivendi Games in January 2006.
Infinity Ward in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, US; founded in 2002, acquired in October 2003.
Raven Software in Madison, Wisconsin, US; founded in 1990, acquired in 1997.
Sledgehammer Games in Foster City, California, US; founded on July 21, 2009.
Solid State Studios in Santa Monica, California, US; founded in 2021.
Treyarch in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California, US; founded in 1996, acquired in 2001.

Former studios

7 Studios in Los Angeles, US; founded in 1999, acquired in April 2009, closed in February 2011.
Activision Value Publishing in Minneapolis, US; founded in 2000 as a merger of Activision subsidiaries Head Games Publishing, Expert Software and Elsinore Studio. Closed in 2016.
Beachhead Studio in Santa Monica, California, US; founded in February 2011.
Bizarre Creations, Liverpool, England; founded as Raising Hell Productions in 1987 and changed name in 1994, acquired on September 26, 2007, closed on February 18, 2011. and was officially made defunct on July 10, 2014.
Radical Entertainment in Vancouver, Canada; founded in 1991, acquired by Vivendi Games in 2005, laid off most staff in 2012.
RedOctane in Mountain View, California, US; founded in November 2005, acquired in 2006, closed on February 11, 2010.
Swordfish Studios in Birmingham, England; founded in September 2002, acquired by Vivendi Universal Games in June 2005, sold to Codemasters on November 14, 2008.
The Blast Furnace in Leeds, England; founded in November 2011 as Activision Leeds, renamed in August 2012, closed in March 2014.
Toys for Bob in Novato, California, US; founded in 1989, acquired on May 3, 2005, spun off from Activision in May 2024.
Underground Development in Foster City, California, US; founded as Z-Axis in 1994, acquired in May 2002, closed on February 11, 2010. It was renamed to Blizzard Albany on April 12, 2022.
Wanako Games in Santiago, Chile; founded in 2002, acquired by Vivendi Games on February 20, 2007, sold to Artificial Mind and Movement on November 20, 2008.

Notable games published

1980s

Fishing Derby (1980)
Boxing (1980)
Skiing (1980)
Freeway (1981)
Ice Hockey (1981)
Kaboom! (1981)
Stampede (1981)
Laser Blast (1981)
Tennis (1981)
Megamania (1982)
Barnstorming (1982)
Enduro (1982)
Chopper Command (1982)
Starmaster (1982)
Pitfall! series (1982–2004)
River Raid series (1982–1988)
Oink! (1983)
Keystone Kapers (1983)
Beamrider (1983)
Robot Tank (1983)
H.E.R.O. (1984)
Little Computer People (1985)
Portal (1986)
Hacker series (1985–1986)
Shanghai series (1986–1990)
Transformers series (1986, 2007–2017)
The Last Ninja series (1987–1988)
Deathtrack (1989)
Tongue of the Fatman (1989)
MechWarrior series (1989–1996)

1990s

Hunter (1991)
Zork series (1993–1997)
Dark Reign series (1997–2000)
Heavy Gear series (1997–1999)
Quake series (1997–2007)
Interstate series (1997–1999)
Battlezone series (1998–1999)
SiN (1998)
Heretic II (1998)
Vigilante 8 series (1998–2008)
Tenchu series (1998–2004)
Call to Power series (1999–2000)
Star Trek series (1999–2003)
Tony Hawk's series (1999–2015, 2020, 2025)

2000s

Soldier of Fortune series (2000–2007)
X-Men series (2000–2011)
Spider-Man series (2000–2014)
Lost Kingdoms series (2002–2003)
Total War series (2002–2004)
Call of Duty series (2003–present)
True Crime series (2003–2005)
Wolfenstein series (2003–2009)
Shrek series (2004–2011)
Doom 3 (2004)
Madagascar series (2005–2011)
The Movies (2005)
Gun (2005)
Guitar Hero series (2006–2015)
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance series (2006–2009)
Barbie series (2006–2009)
Little League World Series Baseball series (2008–2010)
James Bond series (2008–2012)
Crash Bandicoot series (2008–present)
Spyro the Dragon series (2008–2018)
Prototype series (2009–2015)
Ice Age series (2009–2012)

2010s

Blur (2010)
Singularity (2010)
NASCAR The Game series (2011–2013)
Skylanders series (2011–2018)
SpongeBob SquarePants series (2013–2015)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series (2013–2016)
Destiny series (2014–2018)
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019)

Awards

In 2003, the company was awarded the Game Developers Choice "First Penguin" award in recognition of its place as the first third-party developer.