 Logo used since 2017 | |
 Headquarters atGreenway Station Center | |
| Raven | |
| Formerly | Raven Software, Inc. (1990–1997) |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | May 23, 1990; 35 years ago (1990-05-23) inMadison, Wisconsin, US |
| Founder | Brian Raffel Steve Raffel |
| Headquarters | 8496 Greenway Blvd,Middleton, Wisconsin ,US |
Key people |
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| Products |
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Number of employees | 350 (2022)[1][2] |
| Parent | Activision (1997–present) |
| Website | ravensoftware |
Raven Software Corporation (trade name:Raven; formerlyRaven Software, Inc.) is an Americanvideo game developer based inMiddleton, Wisconsin, and part ofActivision. Founded in May 1990 by brothers Brian and Steve Raffel, the company is most known for thedark fantasy franchiseHeretic/Hexen, the first twoSoldier of Fortune games, as well aslicensed titles based in theStar Wars: Jedi Knight series andMarvel Comics'sX-Men characters, including 2006'sMarvel: Ultimate Alliance. Since 2011, Raven has been working on multipleCall of Duty games as both lead and support developer.
Raven's first game,Black Crypt (1992), was conceived in the late 1980s by Raffel brothers to be apaper-and-penrole-playing game, until the two retooled the project from scratch to become avideo game. While it did not perform well commercially, its positive reception by critics andtechnology efforts led toJohn Romero approaching Raven to develop new titles for thepersonal computer starting withShadowCaster (1993), which was powered byRaven Engine, a modifiedWolfenstein 3D engine designed byJohn Carmack. The game's success impressedid Software andStrategic Simulations, who signed a deal to publish the company's next titles, which had grown to two teams to work on 1994'sCyClones andHeretic. The latter, inspired by Brian Raffel's interest in making aDungeons & Dragons–inspired game, was critically acclaimed, spawnedseveral sequels, and helped Raven grow to three development teams.
In August 1997, Activision announced it had agreed to acquire Raven and took over the distribution toHexen II, while the other two Raven teams continued production on the previously announced titlesTake No Prisoners andMageSlayer. After 1998'sHeretic II, Raven aimed to expand its games to a broader audience, acquiringSoldier of Fortune magazine name rights to develop agame of the same name while also working on its first licensed title,Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force. The latter achieved universal acclaim by critics and has since gained acult following, encouragingLucasArts to collaborate with Raven onStar Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast andStar Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. The company also continued partnering with id Software, working onQuake 4 and the 2009Wolfenstein, and becoming one of the first studios to licenseid Tech 4.
In the 2000s, Raven worked withMarvel Entertainment on some of itssuperhero properties, developingX-Men Legends (2004),X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (2005),Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (2006) andX-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). This lasted until Raven announced a newintellectual property,Singularity, which was released in 2010 to positive reception. In 2011, Raven shifted to work on severalCall of Duty titles as support developer, and in 2014, the company opened a Chinese studio inShanghai to collaborate withTencent Games onCall of Duty Online,[3][4] although this studio is no longer active today.[5] Raven worked withInfinity Ward andTreyarch on 2020'sCall of Duty: Warzone andCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, leading production on the latter's single-player campaign. It also developedCall of Duty: Black Ops 6, which was released on October 24, 2024, andCall of Duty: Black Ops 7, which was released on November 14, 2025.
In 1986, Brian Raffel was anart teacher atUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison andcross country-track coach atMiddleton High School and his brother, Steve, worked in ascreen-printshop.[6][7][8] Their late father, Don, was an influence on the two growing up playingDungeons & Dragonsadventure modules such asPalace of the Silver Princess,Tomb of Horrors,Lost Tomb of Martek, andCastle Amber, who inspired Brian to draw a concept by the end of 1988 called "The Well"— apaper-and-penrole-playing game originally conceived as aD&D module until Steve came up and reworked it with Brian to be its own thing.[9][10]
After seeing some of the recent games released to theAmiga, Brian decided that their art was "as good as and in some cases better" than what was coming and chose to moveThe Well to the Amiga for taking advantage of itscomputing power. Brian brothers retooled the project from scratch while opening their own company to work on the now calledBlack Crypt.[7] Raven Software was officially incorporated on May 23, 1990.[11]
Shortly after established Raven, Brian got togetherprogrammers Rick Johnson and Ben Gokey, andmusician Kevin Schilder to join the company. Johnson was the youngest crew member at 18 years old.[12][13]Black Crypt production started in April 1990 and lasted nearly two years, with Raffel brothers and the team moving to a $200 per month office, which sat under aworkshop inMadison.[10][14] The game's budget was $40,000.[15] Described as an "Age of Darknessfirst-persontile-basedreal-time combat dungeon simulator",Black Crypt draws inspirations fromFTL Games'Dungeon Master3Drealtime style and consists of twelve interconnected dungeons rendered in 64-colourextra half-brite graphics, which allowed players to define apalette customization of sixty-four colours—unlikeDungeon Master and its clones.[16][17]
Raven Software was founded in 1990 by brothers Brian and Steve Raffel.[18] Originally a three-person company, they were discovered byJohn Romero, co-founder ofid Software, who collaborated with Raven to make games using their game engine beginning withShadowCaster.[19] Raven then started making games with id Software; the company even briefly moved to the same street as id Software.[20] They used id'sengines for many of their games, such asHeretic,Hexen: Beyond Heretic andHexen II.
In 2005 and 2009, Raven developed two games from id's catalog:Quake 4 andWolfenstein respectively.[21]
The company was independent until 1997, when it was acquired byActivision for $12 million.[22] They were still collaborating with id Software but at the same time developed other titles as well such asSoldier of Fortune in 2000,Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy in 2003,X-Men Legends in 2004 and many more.
In August 2009, following poor performance and possible over-budget ofWolfenstein,[23][24] the company made a major layoff of 30 to 35 staff, leaving two development teams. This was reduced to one after more layoffs in October 2010, after delays withSingularity; as many as 40 staff were released. Following the layoffs and after id Software was bought over byZeniMax Media, Raven has since become a primary developer for theCall of Duty series.[25][26][27] By July 2021, Raven Software had grown to roughly 350 employees.[28]
In December 2021, Activision did not renew the contract of several members of thequality assurance (QA) department that were contract employees. One of the associate managers said that "valuable members" were fired although they "were promised, for months, that Activision was working towards a pay restructure to increase their wages".[29] Following these firings as well as othercontroversies involving Activision Blizzard, astrike has been initiated.[30][31] On January 21, 2022, Raven's QA team formed a union named theGame Workers Alliance withCommunications Workers of America.[32]
In May 2022, workers of the Raven QA team voted to unionize with a count of 19 – 2 in favor.[33] In June 2022 Activision Blizzard CEOBobby Kotick stated that the company would recognize the union and begin negotiations with it.[34] Following the Raven QA team's successful unionization, the 20-member QA team ofBlizzard Albany announced a unionization drive in July 2022 as GWA Albany.[35] The vote passed (14–0), forming the second union at an Activision Blizzard subsidiary.[36]
On March 8, 2024, 600 QA testers at threeActivision studios inAustin, Texas,Eden Prairie, Minnesota andEl Segundo, California joined Raven and Blizzard's unionizations to form the union "Activision Quality Assurance United-CWA" and voted to unionize (390–8) in favor, making it the largest video game union in the United States. FollowingMicrosoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard, who included Raven Software, the companyvoluntarily recognized the union.[37][38][39]
Heretic (also referred asHexen) is a series of first-person shooter games with action-adventure and action role-playing elements. The first game,Heretic (1994), was one of the first games to feature inventory manipulation and the ability to look up and down. It also introduced multiplegib objects that spawned when a character suffered a death by extreme force or heat. The game was the first in the "Serpent Riders" trilogy, followed by sequelsHexen: Beyond Heretic (1995) andHexen II (1997). A direct sequel to the first game,Heretic II, was released in 1998. Set in "City of the Damned",capital city of thedark fantasy fictional world of Silverspring, the series was one of the first to combine 3D realistic graphics withfantasy setting, using Silverspring and its people to enrich the narrative and exploration.
Raven is the creator ofSoldier of Fortune, a military first-person shooter series based in themagazine of the same name. The first game,Soldier of Fortune (2000) introduced GHOUL, an in-housephysics engine designed by Raven that helped the game's realisticgraphic depictions of firearms dismembering the human body. This graphic violence is the main stylistic attraction, enabling depiction of extreme graphic violence, in which character models are based on body parts that can each independently sustain damage (gore zones). Players play as John Mullins in the first game andSoldier of Fortune II: Double Helix (2002). The series continued after Raven ceased developing further games.Soldier of Fortune: Payback (2007) was developed byCauldron HQ, whileSoldier of Fortune Online, anMMOFPS, was developed by South Korean companyDragonfly and released in 2010.
Star Wars: Jedi Knight is a series of first- and third-person shooter games with action-adventure hack and slash elements. Originally created and developed byLucasArts,Jedi Knight was passed to Raven after numerous restructures at LucasArts in the 2000s led by then president Simon Jeffery. The series is set years afterReturn of the Jedi and focuses onKyle Katarn, a formerImperial officer who becomes amercenary working for theRebel Alliance, and later aJedi and instructor atLuke Skywalker's Jedi Academy. Raven produced Katarn's storyline sequelsStar Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (2002) andStar Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (2003).[40][41]
On April 3, 2013, following the closure ofLucasArts, Raven Software released thesource code forStar Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast andStar Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy onSourceForge under theGPL-2.0-only license.[42]
In 2012, Raven began hiring employees for a game,[43] and were announced as collaborating withInfinity Ward onCall of Duty: Ghosts in May 2013.[44]
In April 2014, the company became lead developer of the now shutdownfree-to-play ChineseCall of Duty title,Call of Duty: Online.[45] The company also remadeCall of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, titledCall of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered.[46]
In 2020, Raven Software collaborated withInfinity Ward on the gameCall of Duty: Warzone. The company is considered the face of maintaining, updating and debugging the game as they regularly provide status updates and patch notes on Twitter and their official website (though it is unclear if they are the sole studio responsible behind-the-scenes).[47][48][49]
Raven developedCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War withTreyarch, which released on November 13, 2020.[50]
Raven developedCall of Duty: Black Ops 6 with Treyarch, which released on October 24, 2024.
Raven developedCall of Duty: Black Ops 7 with Treyarch, which released on November 14, 2025.
Raven is known for its approach to multi-project development teams and choice to useproject leads and "state-of-the-arttools" that can help incubate ideas before they evolve intoproduction.[51] Eric Biessman, Raven's project director, said: "It's very laid back here. We're left alone to be as creative as we can be".[51] The work culture at Raven is focused in their mentality of team-driven initiatives, extensiveplaytests,emergent narrative-focused gameplay and lessmiddle-management involvement.[52][53][54] Brian Raffel ascribes the company'smotto as "move or die", explaining that different directions and creative opportunities are a key element ingame design to help Raven determinate which market and public their games are visioning.[55][56] The studio's vice-president Steve Raffel also headRaven Scout Team (RST), aresearch group within the company who spend time with analysis, planning and creatingvertical slices-based methods to be purposeful improved in company's future projects.[51][57]
Raven was listed in 2016 byFortune as the 77th best place to work, and the 66th best in 2017, both as part ofActivision Blizzard studios.[58][59] Raven co-founder Brian Raffel was inducted onIn BusinessHall of Fame "for his visionary leadership and unparalled passion in game's industry, shaping a successful company and inspiring countless individuals within the gaming community, helping create a close-knit and collaborative culture among teams that marked him as a true icon".[60]
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