Activision

Activision is an American video game developer and publisher which currently distributes, publishes, and owns the Call of Duty series.

History
Activision was founded on October 1, 1979 by Jim Levy and former Atari programmers. Activision's first products were games for the Atari 9001, 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.

Studios Relating to Call of Duty that are owned by Activision

 * Infinity Ward - acquired on October 2003
 * Sledgehammer Games - founded November 17, 2009
 * Raven Software - acquired in 1997
 * Treyarch - acquired in 2001
 * Beachhead Studio
 * Neversoft - acquired in 1999

Trivia

 * Activision notably objected at first to the creation of the "Modern Warfare" theme and Infinity Ward's expansion to consoles, which would later prove to be one of the biggest entertainment franchises in history.