Report: COD duo were talking to EA

By Tom Bramwell Published 5 March, 2010

Activision says $36m claim is "meritless".

Infinity Ward bosses Jason West and Vince Zampella were allegedly in contact with the likes of Electronic Arts prior to their dismissal earlier this week.

That's according to court submissions cited by G4TV (thanks VG247), which include, "Documents regarding West and Zampella's communications with Activision's competitors, including but not limited to Electronic Arts."

West and Zampella announced earlier this week that they were suing Activision for "at least $36 million" according to Bloomberg, and also wanted control of the Modern Warfare name.

"After all we have given to Activision, we shouldn't have to sue to get paid," Zampella had said in a press release announcing the suit.

Yesterday Activision responded to the suit. "Activision is disappointed that Mr Zampella and Mr West have chosen to file a lawsuit, and believes their claims are meritless," the company stated.

"Over eight years, Activision shareholders provided these executives with the capital they needed to start Infinity Ward, as well as the financial support, resources and creative independence that helped them flourish and achieve enormous professional success and personal wealth.

"In return, Activision legitimately expected them to honour their obligations to Activision, just like any other executives who hold positions of trust in the company.

"While the company showed enormous patience, it firmly believes that its decision was justified based on their course of conduct and actions.

"Activision remains committed to the Call of Duty franchise, which it owns, and will continue to produce exciting and innovative games for its millions of fans."

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Transmission89 #1 2 years ago

    Kind of hard to make them personally wealthy when they haven't been paid their royalties....

  • mkreku #2 2 years ago

    Exactly when did Activision show "enormous patience"? Bringing gorilla-like security to throw key personnel out of the building doesn't sound like enormous patience to me.

  • M4RV #3 2 years ago

    I still wonder... Do Activision reps do it on purpose, when trying to display how villainous they can be or it just comes out naturally...?! Just curious really. -_^

  • space_ace #4 2 years ago

    they say they own the "cod" brand, but not "modern warfare". is this true?

  • crazyhorse174 #5 2 years ago

    Meanwhile, at the Legion of Doom...

  • effinjamie #6 2 years ago

    "Activision remains committed to the Call of Duty franchise, which it owns"

    No mention of "Modern Warfare", which I can't see them overlooking.

  • cyacomini #7 2 years ago

    I wonder what lines of conversation were opened between IW and EA - that really will decide who comes out on top here.

    From Acti's point of view, they are basically saying that If I happened to work for Tesco - I wouldn't be allowed to speak to anyone who happened to work at ASDA?

    It would of course be a different story If I were selling Tesco's secrets to ASDA.

    This has to be defined properly though I suspect this is just Acti looking for any excuse not to pay-out.

    I wouldn't be at all surprised if Kotick was leading the charge.
    Edited by cyacomini at 05/03/10 @ 08:48

  • OllyJ #8 2 years ago

    Well, it's happened before, they'll set up shop somewhere else and get key IW staff to follow them, it happens a fair bit.

  • X3Entente #9 2 years ago

    nice tangential "which it owns" there

  • bnazir #10 2 years ago

    Is Timothy Langdell heading up Activision now?, sounds like the slimey kind of thing he would do...

  • masterson #11 2 years ago

    How naive many of the replies here are.
    For senior positions (such as these guys held) you are often obliged to sign a non-compete contract. If I were Activision and found out that trusted, well paid senior staff were negotiating with a competitor (and likely to take many key personnel with them) I'd have them removed form the building too.
    With great power (and salary) comes great responsibility, as Uncle Ben once said. :)

  • spammage #12 2 years ago

    My prediction - Activision will win in court but the best part of IW will "do a Harmonix" and resurrect the MoH brand at EA. Essentially we all win!

  • Dylbot #13 2 years ago

    So, securing continued employment after your current contract ends is an offense punishable by complete denial of deserved royalties and a bloody good sacking? Unless Acti can get some concrete evidence that they'd actually broken NDAs with rival companies then they're completely fucked. And, forgive me if I'm wrong here, but even if they did breach an NDA, aren't they still entitled to royalties?

  • SavageEvil #14 2 years ago

    @masterson, great power comes great responsibility...aye. Activision wields great power indeed, but being responsible with that power is another story. California Labor Laws allow for employees of companies to have talks with other potential suitors. First of all if IW top guys were all that happy with Activision, they would have never been looking at other publishers now would they? If I'm not mistaken wasn't IW a dev house before Activision came along? They had experience with the MOH series, so it's not like activision put any creative blood into these guys. I don't like bully tactics by any means, after the first MW Acti we're basically telling IW to make a WWII game, why the hell would you after the smashing success of MW want to go back to WWII? Fast forward to the present and they rushed them to get MW2 out the door, good game, but shoddy gameplay and exploits all over the place. I don't know but it looks like Activision wanted to destroy the MW title, they never make a mention to that name as their IP ever. Whatever the issue is with these guy and Activision, hopefully this gets out of the story headlines soon.

  • masterson #15 2 years ago

    I'm not suggesting Activision are "nice guys", and of course the IW guys should be able to choose where they work.
    My point is simply that they are not acting any different from many corporate employers would in similar circumstances.
    None of us know what happened behind closed doors, but as Activision are the current "big bad" of the gaming world we just get a flood of "Bobby Kotick is like Hitler" type comments.

  • jambo74 #16 2 years ago

    I predict that they will win some of the money out of court.

  • Vlad27145 #17 2 years ago

    Sorry Acti, even IF what you're saying was somewhat colse to the truth, you're just like the boy who cried "WOLF": you've lost ALL your credibility. So, please, get your "skepticism and fear" philosophy, shove it up your innards, then STFU and GTFO.

  • Spekingur #18 2 years ago

    So, Activision is now claiming that IW "started it" and "feels sad" that these two filed a lawsuit - whereas Activision were the first to file one.
    Acti is basically shouting WE OWN YOU - hoping for abusive people to agree.

  • lordofthedunce #19 2 years ago

    regardless of any of this court stuff, I wasn't planning to buy another CoD game anyway.

  • lordofthedunce #20 2 years ago

    Bringing gorilla-like security

    lol

  • Redeye #21 2 years ago

    I really want to see the contract between Acti and IW, even though there's more chance of Kotick becoming 'Most-Loved Industry Personality 2010'.

    That's where the meat of all this will be, and it'll prove one way or the other who's taking the piss.

    Personally, my money's still very much on Activision...heck, I'm even tempted to take a trip to the bookies and slap a note on it.

  • Nighthaunter #22 2 years ago

    Here's hoping Activision get nailed to the wall. On a related note, American employment law is terrible but I doubt that's about to change anytime soon.

  • polaris70 #23 2 years ago

    Strange that Activision are turning into the old EA but ten times worse. While the new EA under Riticello has improved its image with better quality games like Bad Company, and new risky I.P's like Mirror's Edge and Dead Space. No wonder the guys at IW wanted to get out.

  • geeza2020 #24 2 years ago

    sorry activision, i'm one of the millions of fans of IW's work, not yours.

  • Murton #25 2 years ago

    Just to play devils advocate for a second, but do we know for certain if these guys (these two personally, not IW as company) are actually entitled to any royalties?

    Also it's known that these two guys' contracts were up in a few months, I'm assuming that Activision hadn't approached them for extension yet and it's only natural that a rival company would try to headhunt key staff in their final six months on contract. This looks more like Activision ducking out of a bidding war against EA (and possibly others) in order to retain their key staff and unfortunately (for Acti) it has sent a message to the competition that the softly softly approach in contrast with Activisions "iron fist" will likely allow the poaching of some of the less senior guys in the IW studio.

  • TeaFiend #26 2 years ago

    Before everyone goes on about how bad one side is, what did all of the contracts actually say?

  • SavageEvil #27 2 years ago

    @Murton So far everything is nothing but claims, and with the help of the courts things may or may not get proven, but someday everything will be told. But just going off of recent happenings with Activision in the gaming industry, you as a reasonably informed individual wonder if this company is in the right thus far. As a company you are well within your right to protect your investments and IP's, but you are also by law supposed to create a safe and nurturing work environment. These studio heads are like super star athletes, they sign contracts and are allowed to work for you as their contract specifies. Each side has to hold up their end of the bargain am I right? Recently we have been privy to new information regarding Activision and Infinity Ward from the release of CoD MW, seems that Activision wanted IW to hurry another MW for the next year, aye...doesn't that clash with what was stated in their contract about IW acting as an independent entity and not having Activision using corporate muscle on the studio? You know what I find amusing is that in press releases after this situation Activision has named CoD games to be in development and not once have they said IW was at the helm of any of those games. Sounds like IW is on it's way to dissolution, like other studios that Activision have closed down within the last 5 years.
    I don't know the whole truth but as a fairly concerned gamer and barely knowledgeable one at that, I don't hold Activision in high regard at all, their buy and bleed dry tactics with dev houses is borderline inhuman and their "EA Sports" outlook on any game that brings in the dollars is nauseating.

    @Teafiend the two dev heads could be the spawn of satan, but in light of Activision's track record of dismantled dev houses in it's wake doesn't make you cringe at the thought of them doing it to a talented dev house such as Infinity Ward? I didn't want MW2 out so soon, they could have stuck with MW and kept focusing on DLC or IW could have worked on a new IP. Look what we get instead, the game was shoddy but it's hard to argue with IW's vision for MW2. I'm sure if they had more time to work on MW2 it would have been a more complete experience, but then the game wouldn't have launched when it did and Activision would have had to give these guys adjunct to their contracts which would have been set to expire in Oct 2010. Activision's claims of insubordination sounds bad, but that could be just disagreeing with the higher ups, the breach of contract claim is what I want to hear them expound upon. Contract termination is a big deal, especially in california where labor laws allow for talks with other places of employment, I doubt that anyone would sign a contract that prevents them from doing such and seeing how talented IW is I would say that they had their contracts drawn up to give them a favorable position against Activision. In time we will see, all we can do now is wait and see.