Meltdown at Activision and Infinity Ward?

Bobby Miller 2 Mar, 2010 at 2:29pm ET Article published in Gaming

Trouble is brewing amongst the courts of the Kings of console FPS. G4TV is reporting that both Infinity Ward’s CEO Vince Zampella and CTO Jason West have been let go following a seemingly bitter bout between the company and their parent company Activision. Zampella and West met with Activision yesterday morning. They entered Activision’s headquarters as Infinity Ward staff members, but they walked out unemployed.

Activision filed a Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday afternoon which lends credence to the dissolving situation at Infinity Ward. The SEC filing states the following in regards to the matter:

The Company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company.

Conditions at Infinity Ward were described as “tense,” and the general mood of the studio yesterday was one of confusion. G4’s source stated that late yesterday, a bunch of “bouncer-types” showed up at the Infinity Ward offices unannounced, unwilling to disclose why exactly they were there. Though Activision has yet to comment on the matter or delve into the details of what actions led to the accused “insubordination”, we do know that Vince Zampella and Jason West are no longer employed by Infinity Ward, as their LinkedIn profiles were updated this morning to list Infinity Ward as “previous employment experience”.

Late last night, social networking service Twitter became a battleground as giants sounded off in regards to the Activision situation. Tim Schafer of Brutal Legend fame had his own issues with Activision, and he was quite poignant in his comments about the debacle. George Broussard, known for being a man who kicks ass and chews bubblegum, had a more colorful commentary on the matter.

Infinity Ward is responsible for making the wildly successful Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games. Though Activision were quick to note in the SEC filing that “the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company,” one must wonder what kind of impact the removal of two key members of a studio will have on future Call of Duty titles. Continuing the cycle, Activision plans on releasing Call of Duty 7 this upcoming Holiday season, which is being developed by Treyarch. Based on the past cycle, Infinity Ward would be developing Call of Duty 8 some time in 2011 or 2012. It has yet to be seen if this move will effect such a release.

Comments

2 Mar 2010 ~ 2:43pm Sirus Pernot I'm a huge fan of the CoD series myself and if you look carefully you'll notice one thing throughout it's history. Infinity Ward makes the best CoD games. Call of Duty 2 was an IW project and was beloved by it's fans. CoD 3 was a treyarch development and was, in my opinion, terrible. CoD 4 : MW then came out from IW and was probably the greatest FPS ever released. Soon after Treyarch "borrows" the game engine and tries to retread it into CoD: World at War. Somehow between IW giving them a spectacular game engine they managed to create a game with bad hit detection and terrible spawns, not to mention a played out theme of WW2. This brings us to today and Infinity Ward is still rolling in money piles after MW2 released in November. Guess who gets to make the upcoming CoD game touted as taking place during Vietnam? Bet you also can't guess who will want to ride on the backs of all the hard workers at IW by utilizing the IW game engine again? Take one more guess as to who will ruin another CoD title by sheer incompetence alone. Treyarch. If I were Infinity Ward I would demand Treyarch develop their own engine. This is probably what happened and Activision is pissed. Imagine being a track star and having an identical twin brother who is severely retarded. Your parents force you to take turns racing in sanctioned events at the highest level. Every time your retard brother steps out onto the track with his helmet and crayons wearing your jersey he makes you look like a fool. This is how IW must feel having to share code with Trayarch.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 2:53pm Cliff_Forster Treyarch's Call of Duty games are perfectly fine. My only issue with COD3 was that it never found its way to the PC. I enjoyed it on Xbox 360 though, was it groundbreaking, no, but what COD game has been since the first two?

What I have trouble understanding is how anyone can be unhappy with that enormous success. My bet is you had two guys that thought they were worth more in the grand scheme of things, seeing the pile of money that was generated by MW2 they probably wanted to see a bigger cut for themselves, and everyone fights over money.

Don't like developing for a big publisher, get your own investment capital and release the game for download yourself like 2-D boy did. Wanna make a multi-million selling 3D blockbuster? Well, for now you gotta play the game, you need investment capital, you need a backing partner, and that means you have to play by their rules.

Hey, you just made a boat load of cash on the fastest selling video game of all time, what ya gonna do! Go to the boss, throw a hissy fit and get fired???? WTF????
2 Mar 2010 ~ 3:07pm Sirus Pernot "Treyarch's Call of Duty games are perfectly fine. My only issue with COD3 was that it never found its way to the PC. I enjoyed it on Xbox 360 though, was it groundbreaking, no, but what COD game has been since the first two?"

I want whatever it is that you're smoking!
2 Mar 2010 ~ 3:10pm Thrax Your opinion is wrong.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 3:14pm Gate28 Activision is killing itself from the inside-out. First they killed Sierra and Red Octane, and now Infinity Ward will inevitably be shut down, and without up-to-date resources for CoD games, Treyarch will be closed within 2 years because they don't produce anything else big-name besides the CoD games and Tony Hawk: Ride flopped, so I don't think they're on Kotick's good side at the moment.

Also, my favorite CoD game is World at War.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 3:19pm Cliff_Forster

Sirus Pernot wrote:

"Treyarch's Call of Duty games are perfectly fine. My only issue with COD3 was that it never found its way to the PC. I enjoyed it on Xbox 360 though, was it groundbreaking, no, but what COD game has been since the first two?"

I want whatever it is that you're smoking!

The typical Infinity Ward only player is only focused on the narrow multiplayer aspect.

World at War was the finest single player experience in the history of the franchise, and, a Treyarch title.

I'm not saying one is superior to the next, I'm just saying Treyarch is not a hack developer.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 4:21pm Snarkasm

Cliff_Forster wrote:

World at War was the finest single player experience in the history of the franchise, and, a Treyarch title.

I'm not saying one is superior to the next, I'm just saying Treyarch is not a hack developer.

wut
2 Mar 2010 ~ 4:43pm Tim One thing that really annoys me is when someone writes or states that a person was "let go" from a company. Like they did the person a favor by allowing them to leave. They were FIRED!!! FIRED !!! Use simple and direct language!

People in this country have been BS'd into thinking that if they change the name of the condition, that somehow they will change the condition.

It doesn't fool me, I see them coming!
2 Mar 2010 ~ 4:50pm Thrax Thank God we have Tim to keep us all on point.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 5:06pm Cliff_Forster

Snarkasm wrote:

wut

lol double wut??

I'm just sayin, both Treyarch and IW are very capable developers.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 6:45pm chrisWhite WTF were they thinking? They release one of the most successful games in history (in terms of sales) and then a few months later they get shit canned? When did Activision turn into EA?
2 Mar 2010 ~ 7:34pm Bandrik Chris, in my opinion, Activision turned into EA the moment they started selling a rainbow of flavors of their Guitar Hero series. What was once a fun and innovative take on the guitar/rhythm game family (since indeed GH didn't do it first) has become so diluted with "new" fluff that I couldn't care less about future releases.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 8:57pm UPSLynx It was so perfectly stated on Twitter by someone when they said "what, is Activision being run by NBC now?"
Word on the street is that IW is done with Call of Duty. If that's true... something ugly is afoot.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 10:54pm Bandrik
Overheard: What Activision is really saying to Infinity Ward
2 Mar 2010 ~ 11:08pm rayle I for one will be glad to see the death of the COD:MW series if it happens. I'm sorry, but the multiplayer aspect that everyone over hyped looked and played like a glorified Counter Strike to me.
20 Sep 2010 ~ 4:04am Justinking I'm pretty the servers were fucked up or something in MWF2 cuz that was definently the most hacked game I've ever played in my life.personally I think treyarch wins with the zombies, and infinity ward for single player. Both multiplayers failed in their own ways.hopefully black ops will change that