Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California, and a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. Originally founded in 1991, the company is best known for producing the highly influential massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (2004), as well as the multi-million selling video game franchises Diablo,StarCraft and Overwatch. The company also operates Battle.net, an online gaming service.
Raven Software Corporation is an American video game developer based in Middleton, Wisconsin, and part of Activision. Founded in May 1990 by brothers Brian and Steve Raffel, the company is most known for the dark fantasy franchise Heretic/Hexen, the first two Soldier of Fortune games, as well as licensed titles based in the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series and Marvel Comics's X-Men characters, including 2006's Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Since 2011, Raven has been working on multiple Call of Duty games as both lead and support developer.
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.
Treyarch Corporation is an American video game developer based in Santa Monica, California. Founded in 1996 by Peter Akemann and Doğan Köslü, it was acquired by Activision in 2001. The studio is known for its work for the Call of Duty series, which it develops alongside Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software.
David Richard Paul Wittenberg is a South African-born American voice actor and scriptwriter.
Joshua Luis Wiener, known by his stage name Josh Keaton, is an American actor and voice artist. He is known for his many voice roles, including Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane in Voltron: Legendary Defender, Spider-Man in various media in addition to Electro in the video game Marvel's Spider-Man, Jack Darby in Transformers: Prime and the adolescent Hercules in Hercules. He was also the voice of Ryu Hayabusa in the console versions of Ninja Gaiden, and the voice of Revolver Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. He is also the voice of King Anduin Wrynn in the MMORPG World of Warcraft and Tyler in Pokémon Concierge.
Toys for Bob, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Novato, California. It was founded in 1989 by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford and is best known for creating Star Control and the Skylanders franchise, as well as for working on the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro franchises.
Chris Edgerly is an American voice actor.
Crash Bandicoot is a video game franchise originally developed by Naughty Dog as an exclusive for Sony's PlayStation console. It has seen numerous installments created by various developers and published on multiple platforms. The series consists predominantly of platform games, but also includes spin-offs in the kart racing and party game genres. The series was originally produced by Universal Interactive, which later became known as Vivendi Games; in 2008, Vivendi merged with Activision, which currently owns and publishes the franchise.
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. Activision Blizzard currently includes four business units: Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, King, and Activision Blizzard Studios.
Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is a 3D action-adventure platform game and the first video game in the Skylanders series. It is played using with toy figures that interact with it through a "Portal of Power" that reads their tag through NFC.
Skylanders is a toys-to-life action-adventure video game franchise published by Activision. Skylanders games are played by placing a character's figure on the "Portal of Power", a device that reads its tag using NFC and "imports" them into the game as a playable character, leveling them up and saving its progress on the figure to potentially be used on a different game or video game console with all its saved stats. Skylander figures are sold separately from the game itself unless you buy the starter pack. Typically, the starter pack for each game contains two or more Skylanders, a Portal of Power, the game disc and sometimes something else to show off the game's newest feature.
Skylanders: Giants is a 2012 video game in the Skylanders series and a direct sequel to the 2011 game Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. It features the voices of Kevin Michael Richardson, Greg Ellis, Peter Lurie, Steve Blum, Dave Wittenberg, Carlos Alazraqui, Kevin Sorbo, Bobcat Goldthwait, Patrick Seitz and Julie Nathanson. As the title suggests, it features larger Skylanders known as "Giants", along with other new gameplay mechanics. 16 new Skylanders were introduced, including 8 "Giants": Bouncer, Crusher, Eye-Brawl, Hot Head, Ninjini, Swarm, Thumpback, and Tree Rex.
Skylanders Academy is an animated television series produced by TeamTO and Activision Blizzard Studios based on the Skylanders series. The first season debuted on Netflix on October 28, 2016. A trailer for the series debuted on October 12, 2016. The second season was released on October 6, 2017 and the third and final season was released on September 28, 2018.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is a 2017 platform game compilation developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision. It includes remasters of the first three games in the Crash Bandicoot series: Crash Bandicoot (1996), Cortex Strikes Back (1997), and Warped (1998); which were originally developed by Naughty Dog for the PlayStation. Initially released for the PlayStation 4, it was later ported to Nintendo Switch, Windows, and Xbox One in 2018.
Activision Blizzard Studios, LLC is a motion picture production company and a subsidiary of American video game company Activision Blizzard based in Beverly Hills, California. It was created to utilize its parent company's popular game franchises through films and television shows. It is co-headed by Stacey Sher and Nick van Dyk, the latter being a former executive of The Walt Disney Company.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 is a 2020 skateboarding video game developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision. It was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on September 4, 2020, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on March 26, 2021, and Nintendo Switch on June 25 of the same year. It is a remake of the first two games in the Tony Hawk's series: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (1999) and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000), which were originally developed by Neversoft. It is the first major console game in the series since Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 (2015) and is Vicarious Visions' final work as a subsidiary of Activision before it was merged into Blizzard Entertainment on January 22, 2021.
Diablo II: Resurrected is an action role-playing video game co-developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Blizzard Albany and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It is a remaster of Diablo II (2000) and its expansion Lord of Destruction (2001). The game was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X and Series S on September 23, 2021.
Velan Studios is an American video game developer based in Troy, New York. Founded in 2016 by Guha Bala and Karthik Bala, the studio is most known for developing Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit (2020) and Knockout City (2021).
Microsoft recognizes 8 video game unions representing 2,000 video game workers. Microsoft like other tech companies, has historically resisted unions and relied on temporary workers with lower pay and job security than regular employees. This shift began in 2015 and accelerated in 2022 when Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard. To expedite the approval process, Microsoft signed a labor neutrality agreement with Communications Workers of America. This agreement guarantees that Microsoft will not interfere with or oppose union organizing efforts. It applies to both of its video game subsidiaries, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax Media. Other unionization efforts at TaxSaver Software and Lionbridge have been unsuccessful.
