Activision

Where Activision came from

Activision's own anniversary article dates the company to October 1979, when four developers set up one of the earliest independent third-party games studios. The founders, the studio recalls, joined the words Active and Television to make the name. It presents that launch as a break from a system in which console makers published everything themselves. For a reader today, those two details matter most: the year, and the founding circle that Activision itself treats as the starting point of its story.

The studio's first large success, by the same account, was Pitfall!, which Activision describes as one of the best-selling home games of 1982. That single fact says a lot about the company's self-image. It frames itself as the upstart that proved independent developers could sell their own work. The habit has lasted. Decades on, the publisher still builds much of its catalogue around returning to material it first made famous, whether through remasters or through fresh entries in long-running series.

The franchises and the publishing reach

The clearest list of Activision's modern franchises appears in Microsoft's 2022 announcement of its plan to buy Activision Blizzard. That release names Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty and Candy Crush among the properties arriving with the deal, and notes that the group employed nearly ten thousand people. Call of Duty in particular runs through Activision's own blog posts, which tie anniversary events and store promotions back to that series again and again.

Beyond the shooters, the label's reach stretches into licensed and remastered work. Its Steam storefront carries Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, a FromSoftware action game that Activision published and distributed, and Spyro Reignited Trilogy, a rebuilt three-game collection the company owns. Both sit in this wiki's games database under Activision as publisher, so their store pages are the firmest evidence of what the label actually releases.

The two titles in our database

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was developed by FromSoftware and published by Activision, and its Steam copyright line states plainly that Activision handled both publishing and distribution. The same listing records a Game of the Year win at The Game Awards 2019 and more than fifty awards and nominations, and notes that Dark Souls, a FromSoftware property owned elsewhere, is not connected to this title.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy gathers three original PlayStation-era adventures, Spyro the Dragon, Ripto's Rage and Year of the Dragon, in remastered form. Its Steam listing carries an Activision Publishing copyright notice and sits inside the wider Spyro collection. For this wiki the two entries show opposite ends of the publisher's range: a punishing modern action game and a family-friendly nostalgia package.

Who owns the company now

Activision is not independent. Microsoft announced on 18 January 2022 a plan to acquire Activision Blizzard in an all-cash transaction it valued at 68.7 billion dollars, priced at 95 dollars a share. The release says that once the deal closed the business would report to Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Gaming, and that the purchase was expected to complete within Microsoft's 2023 fiscal year.

The same announcement ties the purchase to Microsoft's subscription catalogue, noting it expected Activision Blizzard titles to reach Game Pass, and counting roughly 400 million monthly players across the group. It also states that the deal required shareholder approval and regulatory review before closing. Those conditions matter for anyone tracking the company's status, because the plan's stated terms are firmer than its completion schedule.

Quick facts

Founded: October 1979, by four developers, according to Activision's own fortieth-anniversary article, which calls the venture one of the first third-party studios. The name combines Active and Television. Earliest hit: Pitfall!, described by the publisher as among the best-selling home games of 1982. Owner: Activision announced its acquisition by Microsoft for 68.7 billion dollars in January 2022, with completion expected in Microsoft's 2023 fiscal year.

Key series and properties: Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch and Candy Crush, as named in Microsoft's announcement. Games in this database published by Activision: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Spyro Reignited Trilogy. Location: the Microsoft announcement is datelined from Redmond and Santa Monica, California, and closes with an Activision investor address in Santa Monica, though the pages reviewed state no current corporate headquarters.

Why the 1979 origin still matters

The reason Activision keeps returning to 1979 is that the date is an argument, not just a birthday. By calling itself one of the first independent studios, the company claims credit for a model the industry now takes for granted: creators outside the hardware maker selling their own games. That claim shapes how the publisher talks about itself far more than any single release does.

The counterweight is scale. A company that began as four people breaking away from one console owner now belongs to a transaction measured in tens of billions of dollars, and its best-known name is a yearly shooter. Watching how Activision balances those two identities, the scrappy origin and the corporate present, is the most useful way to read its announcements.

Questions people ask