Activision
Activision is a gaming company formed in 1976 by Jim Levy and former Atari programmers David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead. In 1988, they branched out to other forms of software than video games, and changed the name of their corporate name to Mediagenic. Under the Mediagenic holding company, they continued to produce and publish games as Activision. Following a lawsuit that resulted in Mediagenic having to pay millions in damages, an investor group consisting of Robert Kotick and Brian Kelly purchased Mediagenic in 1990. They renamed the company back to Activision in 1992. In 2008, Activision was merged with Vivendi Games to form the holding company Activision Blizzard. In 2013, Activision Blizzard purchased most of Vivendi's shares of the Activision Blizzard stock to become an independent company. As in the Mediagenic years, they still produce and publish games under the Activision name while under the Activision Blizzard holding company.
Activision purchased Infocom in 1986, and shut down the Infocom development studio in 1989. Some of the Infocom staff remained at Activision after that, and the Infocom label was still used to designate the developer of sequels to Infocom games until 1993.
Activision acted as the publisher on Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 and Return to Zork which were credited to Infocom as the developer. They created two other games with the MADE engine, which were credited to Activision as the developer.
They also developed games in the Zork series, including Zork: The Undiscovered Underground, using the Z-machine engine, as well as Zork Nemesis and Zork: Grand Inquisitor, using the ZVision engine.
Activision also published games made by LucasArts in Europe, South-East Asia and Australia.