A Legacy Bigger Than Warzone
Call of Duty didn’t make Raven Software—it just kept it alive. Long before loadout tuning and mid-season patches, the studio built strange, striking shooters and some of the best licensed action RPGs on consoles.
Co-founder Brian Raffel is retiring 36 years after starting the studio, a milestone that naturally puts Raven’s full body of work back in view. The company is now a key pillar in the Activision machine supporting Warzone and yearly COD releases, but its résumé runs much deeper than battle royale metas and camo grinds.
“In 1990, inspired by a shared love of storytelling, Brian and his brother Steve set out to build something of their own,” the studio posted on X on April 2. “What began as a small creative pursuit known as Black Crypt grew into something far, far greater. Over the years, his leadership guided our studio through a wild and shifting industry, shaping it into what it is today. From dark, otherworldly realms to places that reached far across galaxies, Brian has crafted stories that have left a lasting mark on players around the world.”
The studio’s announcement also points players to a refreshed history page that lays out every game Raven has touched. It’s a reminder that the name once meant experimental fantasy shooters and crunchy action RPGs as much as killstreaks.
From Black Crypt To Hexen: A Studio Finds Its Voice
Raven was born on PC in 1990 with Black Crypt, a first-person fantasy dungeon crawler that foreshadowed the team’s knack for moody art and mechanical tinkering. Then came Heretic, Hexen: Beyond Heretic, and Hexen II, a run that etched the studio into ‘90s shooter history. Doom designer John Romero served as producer on the first two, and that collaboration helped Raven inject arcane weapons and labyrinthine level design into a genre otherwise defined by speed and shotguns.
Activision acquired the studio in 1997, a move that widened its reach rather than immediately redefining it. Three years later, Raven shipped Soldier of Fortune, an ultra-violent shooter that courted controversy and built a cult following before getting ported to PS2 and Dreamcast. The common thread across these early projects wasn’t just gore or fantasy—it was a willingness to chase a specific feel, whether that meant spellcasting in a catacomb or blasting mercenaries apart on a city street.
Licensed Hits And Cult Favorites
The 2000s saw Raven hit a different stride: licensed games that actually played well. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy still draw praise for letting players carve through arenas with lightsabers and Force powers that didn’t feel like afterthoughts. Around the same time, the team moved from Jedi to mutants, shipping X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, followed by Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. These were the weekend crushers—tight, replayable action RPGs perfect for couch co-op.
Some of those releases were great; others were the kind of “perfect weekend rentals” you’d finish between Friday night pizza and Sunday returns. Together they formed a dependable track record: hand Raven a big license, and you’d get a game with clear systems, responsive combat, and enough depth to keep a group of friends busy.
Raven’s last swing at an original IP came in 2010 with Singularity, a sci-fi horror shooter built around a time-manipulation device that doubled for combat and puzzle solving. Development troubles left the campaign more linear and conventional than pitched, at a moment when linear shooters were already cooling off. Singularity didn’t land the franchise start many hoped for, but it underlined something true about the studio—it kept trying to push on an idea until it clicked.
From Survival To Support—And What Comes Next
After Singularity, Raven shifted fully into Call of Duty support, initially helping on Black Ops with DLC and multiplayer. The role grew. By 2020 the studio was co-developing Warzone and Black Ops Cold War, taking on live-balance tweaks, seasonal content, and the endless engineering work that keeps a free-to-play shooter online. What began as a pragmatic move to stay busy became the public identity for an entire generation of players.
Raffel was candid about the studio’s adaptability long before Warzone took over. “I think we’ve got a very diverse and very successful portfolio,” he told US Gamer in 2014. “Also, the ability to adapt ourselves and not get stuck on our own press, and in a certain mode to not sit on our laurels, and I think that’s why we’ve been around for 25 years.” You can read that as corporate stoicism, but it also matches the history: Raven shifted lanes again and again, and usually delivered.
Raffel’s retirement doesn’t change Raven’s current role overnight, and the COD pipeline still needs steady hands. But his exit does shine a light on possibilities. With Microsoft now overseeing Activision’s sprawling slate, there’s room to ask whether a studio with Raven’s track record might get another shot at something with its own voice—whether that’s a Hexen revival for a new audience or an original pitch that isn’t built around battle passes.
If you only know Raven through patch notes and weapon nerfs, the studio’s back catalog is an easy rabbit hole to explore. It’s a body of work that proves two things: this team can make great games under any banner, and it’s most interesting when it’s allowed to chase the weird stuff. Here’s hoping that, after decades of keeping other franchises humming, Raven gets to be strange again.
