Former Infinity Ward bosses sue Activision, company responds [Update]

DAMN! I hope none of the CoD series are affected....

Although Activision should get a new developer (prefably Square Enix lol)

Square Enix as Actvisions developer? Thats just a bad idea, lol.

Everyone saw this coming after hearing about what Activison did. Activision is 100% in the wrong and truthfully I hope that Zampella and West start up another developer. I wouldn't be surprised if the people from Infinity Ward backed them up with this as well. If Activision gets away with this then it's just going to cause all kinds of problems. Developers will always be looking over their shoulders to see if they are gonna have a stunt like this pulled on them just so they don't get paid. If Activision wins this then it'll be starting the gaming industry done a dark path.

I'm hoping they move to EA and IW employees follow. Activision would have some fierce competition then, on top of Battlefield and Medal of Honor games.
Or maybe they could join those teams...that would be something too.

They say IW was looking elsewhere, but maybe they were looking elsewhere for good reason.

This is what happenz when your series gets too big.

There was a neonews thing several months ago about Activision/Kotik 'only being in it for the money the whole time'. It's depressing that companies are so selfish as to do this, it really only ruins things for everybody except them in the long run.
And regarding Square Enix hooking up with Activision... I'd be about as sad as the day Nintendo dumped Rare.

There's many quotes from Kotick like that. He also said, “We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression" and "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.”

Bobby Kotick, Reaper of Souls.

I miss Rare
Dont do it square dont do it!!! It's bad enough they hooked up with enix but if they were to dev for activision I'd probably go on a killingspree.

Interesting how Activision & Blizzard merge making them nearly the biggest popular game make around and now every one wants to sue them seems like others want there hand in the cookie jar to.

In this case it's the developer of the fastest selling video game of all time. I'm sure they would've much rather just been paid appropriately.

Well, maybe this will bring a stop to the Call of Duty series, which has ruined this gernerations male youth on GOOD video games

Call of Duty is by no means a bad series.

@ Northern49:
I think "H8ter" means that Call of Duty is such a good game series that a significant amount of our current generation of male youth are playing it rather than doing other ("productive") things like, say, sports or anything else. Either way, the poster's name doesn't make it any easier to ascertain the message he intended though, indeed, he may very well mean what you interpreted...

Short Version: This is all screwed up.
(Very) Long Version:

I hate to see developers treated like this and everyone else should too; These kinds of practices stifle creativity and innovation, no matter what anyone can argue. How can a development team, assembled to make great games in the first place, hope to achieve that goal when their publisher's demands oppose such aims? And if creative people are cut from a team*, therefor weakening them, how can they ever hope to do anything worthwhile, even permitting they did have more freedom?

*I in no way claim that Jason West and Vince Zampella are the largest source of creativity at Infinity Ward: It is a development -team- after all. But with different studio heads at the reigns, the developers just won't have to go up the corporate ladder to be told off or how to do something; they'll just be told bluntly -within- their own studio.

I share the sentiments of many others when they say Jason West and Vince Zampella should found a new development team. Of course, I wonder just how many people from Infinity Ward would follow them as they gather team members, though it would seem to be a lot of them from claims of underpayment. Even if they don't form a new dev team, those two will easily prove to be valuable assets, no, rather, -leaders- to any team they join.

All that said, I can't imagine how much they're going through after being fired from the very team they've assembled, and worked with for quite a time, to deliver one of the industry's, and gaming's, greatest series. Personally, I'm not that much a fan of the series, but I -can- imagine having placed so much effort into something only to have it taken from me and/or destroyed*. That feeling should speak to everyone how they must feel right now; regardless of whatever you do or think, -no one- would like to have their work stolen from them with barely anything in return.

*Arguably, having lost two key members, with others likely to follow, is as good as having the CoD series destroyed anyway.

Activision -owes- Infinity Ward for their hard work as not many studios can make such great games, even with as much "freedom" as Activision gave them.

Failing that, gamers should take it by heart that, as long as a publisher acts like this, they should not buy any games coming from them. Publishers come and go, and change over time. Your choices should change too, for good reason. Remember, and I can't stress this enough: Your money is as good as your opinion. It is a basic rule of economics and business. If you don't like something but purchase it anyway, no company is obligated to change what they do so long as they have your money for the time being. In fact, receiving your money is as good to them as saying you approve of them. The more, and longer, you give them your money, the more you inadvertently support their practices. -Don't- prolong the way they treat developers, and gamers for that matter.

Developers should also be cautious of running into these situations and should seek or demand better contracts and agreements. Someone on Slashdot even suggested developers should form unions, his reason being even actors have unions.

By the way, with Tomonobu Itagaki, how many other studio heads other than these three have been shafted in such a short span of time? Even then, that's still too many to me, especially given they're all significant people.

Whew, that's a LOT. Too bad not many people are even going to read this, either from the age of the article or the length of my post. I should at least make an account with responses this long. Hahaha TLDR. Have a cookie if you did read all of this.

FFFFFFFFFF, I thought I fit -everything- I wanted to say in my last post...

Anyhow, one more thing (Sorry!).

Whoever even suggested the (im)possibility of Square Enix working under Activision doesn't really know what Square Enix is. Square Enix isn't just a large scale developer with -more- than several dev teams; They're also a publisher, both for their own games as well as anime and manga. They may very well do some other things but that's the extent of my knowledge. Look them up in Wikipedia for something more specific.

quote chautemoc

I'm hoping they move to EA and IW employees follow. Activision would have some fierce competition then, on top of Battlefield and Medal of Honor games.
Or maybe they could join those teams...that would be something too.

They say IW was looking elsewhere, but maybe they were looking elsewhere for good reason.

*shiver*

I like BFBC2 so much more than COD in so many ways. It feels like a war game done right. I'd prefer that DICE was left as-is, but perhaps with less involvement from EA (The EA Account system in-game is horrid, and the root of most glitches the game has).

quote dvrocc

Interesting how Activision & Blizzard merge making them nearly the biggest popular game make around and now every one wants to sue them seems like others want there hand in the cookie jar to.

Just wondering was the whole thing tl;dr or something for you or was it intentional to miss the entire story?

Infinity Ward developed one of the highest grossing games for Activision in their history and as the time arrived for royalties they were cut out of the picture and had an SEC filing placed against them.

Hard to make the case that they want to get their hand in the cookie jar when they helped fill a significant portion of the jar to begin with this year. Unless you think development teams should work for skeleton crew wages and are not entitled to traditional royalty payments that they get?

I honestly hope they win, it'll set a bad standard for the industry if publishers can strong-arm teams out of their reward for a successful title. It's not like they just had a computer randomly generate MW2 for them.

quote Lorx

*shiver*

I like BFBC2 so much more than COD in so many ways. It feels like a war game done right. I'd prefer that DICE was left as-is, but perhaps with less involvement from EA (The EA Account system in-game is horrid, and the root of most glitches the game has).

Stick 'em on the Medal of Honor team, where they used to be.
Yeah I've heard EADM is pretty rough.