Infinity Ward

Infinity Ward was founded in May 2002 as an independent studio. Its founders, Grant Collier, Jason West and Vince Zampella, came from 2015, Inc., the studio that had made Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for Electronic Arts, and so did its first team. Unhappy with their EA contract, they teamed up with Activision, which took a 30% stake in the new company to fund its first game. Call of Duty (2003), set in the Second World War, came out on PC that October and won Game of the Year at the D.I.C.E. Awards.

Activision bought the rest of the studio in October 2003, after the launch. Microsoft wanted a Call of Duty for the Xbox 360 launch, and the studio delivered Call of Duty 2 (2005). Activision then brought in Treyarch to alternate releases, while Infinity Ward moved to the present day with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), a fictional modern conflict. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) followed. All three were the best-selling games of their years and won Best Shooter at the Spike Video Game Awards.

After a contract renegotiation, Activision fired West and Zampella on 1 March 2010 for insubordination. In April they founded Respawn Entertainment, and over the following months several dozen Infinity Ward staff resigned, many of them to join Respawn. Lawsuits flew between the founders, Activision, Electronic Arts and a group of employees, and all of them ended in settlements. Collier had already moved to Activision in 2009. Under new management the studio made Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013) with Neversoft, which was merged into Infinity Ward in May 2014.

Next came Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016), the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot (2019), Call of Duty: Warzone (2020), made with Raven Software, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022). It is headquartered in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, with studios in Texas, Poland, Mexico and Barcelona, the last opened in June 2023. Still owned by Activision, its 2026 game is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, the first in the series made only for current-generation consoles and the first on a Nintendo platform since Ghosts.