Raven Software

Raven Software was incorporated on 23 May 1990 in Madison, Wisconsin. Brothers Brian and Steve Raffel founded it to turn a pen-and-paper role-playing game inspired by Dungeons & Dragons into an Amiga video game. The result was Black Crypt (1992), which did not sell well but impressed critics and caught the attention of John Romero, co-founder of id Software.

Using an engine based on Wolfenstein 3D's, it made ShadowCaster (1993), whose success led to a deal with id Software and Strategic Simulations to publish its next games: Heretic (1994), Hexen: Beyond Heretic (1995) and Hexen II (1997), dark fantasy shooters. In August 1997 Activision announced it would acquire the studio. Heretic II (1998), Soldier of Fortune (2000) and Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force followed, then, with LucasArts, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (2002) and Jedi Academy (2003).

With Marvel it made X-Men Legends (2004), its sequel (2005), Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (2006) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). For id it developed Quake 4 (2005) and Wolfenstein (2009). Its own property, Singularity, came out in 2010 to positive reviews, but after several rounds of layoffs the studio moved in 2011 to supporting the Call of Duty series. In 2014 it opened a studio in Shanghai to work with Tencent on Call of Duty Online; it is no longer active.

Since then it has been one of the Call of Duty studios: it worked on Ghosts, remade Call of Duty 4 as Modern Warfare Remastered, worked on Warzone (2020) and co-developed Black Ops Cold War (2020), Black Ops 6 (2024) and Black Ops 7 (2025) with Treyarch. In 2022 its quality assurance team voted to unionise. With the acquisition of Activision Blizzard it became part of Microsoft. Brian Raffel retired in April 2026. The studio is based in Middleton, Wisconsin.