Activision/Infinity Ward’s Public Soap Opera
- Scribbled on March 2nd, 2010 by Jordan Lund
- Filed in Industry News, Legal Brief, Rumor Mill, Shooter, WTF
You may have seen the news breaking this morning that Infinity Ward President/Game Director/CCO/CTO Jason West and Vince Zampella have been not so subtly shown the door by publisher, Activision. The corporate side of things says that they were let go due to “breaches of contract and insubordination“. As usual the truth might be just a shade more complicated than that.
James Walker at Binge Gamer has a behind the scenes look at what may be causing the turmoil between Infinity Ward and Activision.
Possible points of contention:
- Everyone knows that Modern Warfare 2 was a huge hit for Activision and that it brought to the company over a billion dollars in revenue. Unfortunately Infinity Ward, the developer of the game, hasn’t seen anything in royalties from the title. Contractually, it’s unclear if they’re entitled, but still you’d think they’d get some slice of that fat cash.
- Infinity Ward’s contract with Activision expires in October and the rumor going around is that the “breach of contract” is that they were shopping the next Modern Warfare title around to other publishers. A conflicting rumor is that Activision was going to bring in one or two other developers to knock out Modern Warfare 3 and leave Infinity Ward out in the cold, something that would be hard to do since I.W. owns the rights to the franchise.
I could see a scenario where Activision decided to not pay off Infinity Ward and started looking for other developers for MW3, at which point West and Zampella told them to take a flying leap and started shopping the project to another publisher. That led to the charges of breach of contract and insubordination, the lockout, and so on. This is pure speculation on my part, of course, but the scenario would seem to fit what we’re seeing from both parties.
It’s a shame though since both sides are essentially killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
G4 is also offering rolling updates on the story.
March 4th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
[...] next logical step to the Activision/Infinity Ward soap opera is one side taking legal action, which ex-Infinity Ward heads studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason [...]
April 6th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
[...] Activision/Infinity Ward’s Public Soap Opera [...]