Video-game maker Activision was founded in 1979 by an ex-music industry executive and four disgruntled programmers from Atari, a pioneer in arcade games and home video-game consoles. In part, the company was established as a haven for game developers unhappy with prevailing industry policy at the end of the 1970s. At the time, systems providers like Atari hired developers to create games only for their own systems; in-house developers were paid straight salaries and denied credit for individual contributions, and there was no channel at all for would-be independents. Positioning itself as the industry’s first third-party developer, Activision began promoting creators as well as games. It went public in 1983 and successfully rode the crest of a booming market until the mid-1980s.