A Founder Steps Away

After 36 years steering one of PC shooters’ most storied studios, Brian Raffel is stepping away from Raven Software. The studio’s co-founder confirmed his retirement from game development in a LinkedIn post, closing a chapter that began in 1990 when he and his brother Steve set up shop in Wisconsin.

Raffel has worn several hats over the decades. He served as Raven’s Vice President from the start and took over as Studio Head in 1997, the year Activision acquired the studio. He’s also held the title of Vice President at Activision since that acquisition. In 2024, leadership duties began to shift as Raffel started sharing the Studio Head role with Dave Pellas, a veteran who joined Raven in 2011.

“It’s hard to put into words what this journey has meant for me,” Raffel wrote. “From those early days building Raven to becoming the first studio acquired by Activision, I’m grateful for the people, the culture and the games we created together. Most of all, I want to thank my brother Steve. Taking this path together and choosing Activision was one of the best decisions of our lives.” Steve Raffel retired from Raven in 2017.

From Heretic To Warzone

Raven’s story tracks closely with the rise of first-person shooters on PC. The team’s debut, Black Crypt, was an Amiga-first dungeon crawler later known on PC for its DOS sibling ShadowCaster. Momentum truly kicked in with 1994’s Heretic, published by id Software, which fused Doom-speed gunplay with dark fantasy. Heretic helped introduce inventory items to the genre and even allowed players to look up and down—features that signaled where shooters were headed. A recent Nightdive remaster shows it still hits hard.

Success bred a string of formative hits. HeXen doubled down on Heretic’s ideas, while Soldier of Fortune pushed gore and ballistics in a way few mainstream shooters dared at the time. Many still point to the studio’s pair of Star Wars sequels—Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy—as high-water marks thanks to their still-remarkable lightsaber combat. That blend of technical ambition and feel-good action became a Raven signature.

The 2000s saw the team stretch again with Wolfenstein (2009) and the underappreciated Singularity, a time-twisting shooter that’s gained admiration long after launch. In the 2010s and beyond, Raven pivoted almost entirely to Call of Duty, becoming one of Activision’s most trusted hands. The studio helped lead the design of Call of Duty: Warzone and contributed to campaigns for Black Ops: Cold War, Black Ops 6, and Black Ops 7. According to PC Gamer’s reporting, the first two campaigns stood among the stronger recent entries, while Black Ops 7 stumbled and prompted Activision to rethink back-to-back releases within the same sub-series.

Tributes And Transition

Raffel’s influence stretched beyond Raven’s walls. Doom co-creator John Romero, a longtime collaborator, congratulated him in a message to IGN and recalled how Raffel guided the studio through platform transitions and rapid industry shifts. “Brian did a great job steering the company through those turbulent early days, transitioning from an Amiga-only studio to a PC studio that made great games,” Romero said. “Their acquisition by Activision worked out well for Brian and Steve, and I was happy for them. It’s a rare team that can survive from 1990 to today—36 years! I definitely give credit to Brian for making that happen.”

Stability became a theme of Raffel’s tenure. Raven endured market swings, technology pivots, and an evolving role within a giant publishing machine. Few studios from the early ’90s still operate at this scale, and fewer still have shipped recognizable work across so many eras of FPS design. That durability says a lot about the culture Raffel often praised.

Leadership continuity appears set as Raffel exits. Pellas, now sharing the Studio Head mantle, has more than a decade inside Raven and knows the Call of Duty pipeline as well as Warzone’s live-service demands. That kind of institutional memory tends to matter when annual tentpoles and long-running battle royales need fresh ideas without derailing what already works.

What Comes Next For Raven

Raven’s recent history makes its future easy to guess and still interesting to watch. Expect the studio to remain a pillar for Call of Duty while continuing to steward Warzone and support campaign efforts across the Black Ops branch. Fans will also keep rooting for the occasional curveball—this is, after all, the team behind Singularity and two of the best Star Wars action games on PC.

Raffel leaves with a catalog that spans dungeon crawlers, dark fantasy shooters, licensed lightsaber duels, and the most mainstream FPS franchise on the planet. That arc doesn’t happen by accident. If Pellas and the team can carry forward the mix of technical sharpness and player-first instincts that defined Raven at its best, the studio’s next act could be as important to Call of Duty’s future as Heretic once was to PC shooters’ past.