Raven Software


Raven Software is an American video game developer based in Wisconsin and founded in 1990. In 1997, Raven made an exclusive publishing deal with Activision and was subsequently acquired by them. After the acquisition, many of the studio's original developers, largely responsible for creating the Heretic and games, left to form Human Head Studios.

History

Raven Software was founded in 1990 by brothers Brian and Steve Raffel. The company was independent until 1997 when it was acquired by Activision.
Raven has a history of working with id Software, who were briefly located on the same street. They used id's engines for many of their games, such as Heretic in 1994. They took over development of id's Quake franchise for Quake 4 and the 2009 iteration of id's Wolfenstein series.
The company started with three development teams. In August 2009 following poor performance and possible over-budget of Wolfenstein, the company made a major layoff of 30-35 staff, leaving two development teams. This was reduced to one after more layoffs in October 2010, after delays with Singularity; as many as 40 staff were released. Following the layoffs, Raven has been focused on assisting with the Call of Duty series ever since.

Games

In 2012, Raven began hiring employees for a game, and were announced as collaborating with Infinity Ward on ' in May 2013.
On April 3, 2013 following the closure of LucasArts, Raven Software released the source code for ' and ' on Sourceforge.
As of April 2014, the company is the lead developer of the free-to-play Chinese Call of Duty title, '. The company also remade , titled .
Currently Raven Software are collaborating with Infinity Ward on the game Call Of Duty: Warzone