Activision Publishing, Inc.

Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publishing company based in Santa Monica, California, serving as the publishing business for its parent company, 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. It was founded as Activision, Inc. in October 1979 by former Atari developers, , , , and. After the 1983 video game crash, the company renamed itself as Mediagenic and branched out into business software applications; Mediagenic quickly fell into debt and the company was bought by businessman in 1991, who reworked the company to cover its debts.

Most of the staff was dismissed and the company was moved to Los Angeles and reverted to the Activision name. Building on existing assets, Activision pursued more publishing opportunities and, after recovering from debt, started acquiring numerous studios and intellectual properties over the 1990s and 2000s, such as Call of Duty and Guitar Hero. A holding company was formed as Activision's parent company to manage the internal and acquired studios. In 2008, this holding merged with Vivendi Games and formed Activision Blizzard.

Activision is an infrequent sponsor on Smosh Pit and Smosh Games, having sponsored five videos across Friendly Fire, SmoshVentures, Squad Vlogs, and the Call of Duty-based miniseries Blackout In Real Life.