Activision



Activision is an American video game developer and publisher which currently distributes, publishes, and owns the Call of Duty series. It was the first independent developer and distributor of computer and video games.

History
Activision was founded on October 1, 1979 by Jim Levy and former Atari programmers. Activision's first products were games for the Atari 2600, including the well-known Pitfall!. Activision has now become one of the largest third party video game publishers in the world. The company was merged with Vivendi Games to form Activision Blizzard on July 9, 2008.

Legal issues
Activision is currently in the middle of a $400 million lawsuit against Electronic Arts and two former employees of Infinity Ward, Vince Zampella and Jason West. . Activision accuse Zampella and West of conspiring with EA, even going as far as helping in the development of the main rival game Battlefield: Bad Company 2, to the detriment of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Recently, Zampella and West have added fraud onto the list of charges in their counterlawsuit against Activision.

Controversy
Activision is a victim of controversy. They are accused of using the Call of Duty series solely for money, and are accused of preferring to release an incomplete game on a yearly cycle than spend a long time developing a high-quality game, a process commonly known as "milking".

Activision is often bashed for their pricing of the downloadable content for Call of Duty games. Knowing that there is a lot of brand loyalty, Activision can put prices up and still expect large amounts of downloads. Activision have been accused of exploiting this situation, again "milking" the game of money.

Studios Relating to Call of Duty

 * Infinity Ward - acquired on October 2003
 * Sledgehammer Games - founded November 17, 2009
 * Treyarch - acquired in 2001
 * n-Space

Trivia

 * Strangely, Activision objected to the creation of the "Modern Warfare" theme and Infinity Ward's expansion to consoles.