Corp. Warfare: Activision Calls Lawsuit 'Meritless'
The modern warfare continues between ex-Infinity Ward soldiers and the Activision tank.
Earlier this week, Infinity Ward senior employees Jason West and Vince Zampella were dismissed of their roles at the company – a move that Activision foresaw would bring about legal action. The publisher was right, as the pair filed suit against Activision Blizzard for allegedly withholding royalty payments.
Activision has now responded publicly to the lawsuit with the following statement:
Activision is disappointed that Mr. Zampella and Mr. West have chosen to file a lawsuit, and believes their claims are meritless. 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 honor 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.
Interestingly, Activision didn't name a continuation of the Modern Warfare franchise – an IP that Zampella and West may have a claim in.
UPDATE: Tom's reader garandx also brought our attention to the MOU, with this following comment:
According to the MOU, (memorandum of understanding, which by the way is being submitted to the court) that west, zampella and activision agreeded to in order to get west and zampella to stay on with IW and make MW2, it states:
"First, the MOU gives West and Zampella creative authority over the development of any games under the Modern Warfare brand (or any Call of Duty game set in the post-Vietnam era, the near future or the distant future) including complete control over the Infinity Ward studio. The MOU explicitly provides that no such game can be commercially released without the written consent of West and Zampella. Second, the MOU gives West and Zampella the right to operate Infinity Ward independently and to choose to develop new intellectual property after they completed Modern Warfare 2. Third, in addition to the standard and bonus compensation in the Employment Agreement, Activision agreed to pay Plaintiffs and the Infinity Ward studio additional compensatio, including a pool of Restricted Stock Units, stock options, a royalty for any Call of Duty game, a technology royalty for any Activision game that makes significant use of Infinity Ward technology, and a royalty for Modern Warfare 2 and future titles."
There's also some rumbles that Zampella and West were sniffing around the EA camp while still employees at Infinity Ward.
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no modern warfare 3??? they should go make moh then
I hope they win their Lawsuit, their is plenty of Money laying around
at Activision these day's. They fired em then denied them their cut of
the Royalty's, can you say spineless Bastards? I just love how these big companys take a dump on employee's the first chance they get. I'm sure we will here the truth sooner than later.
I hope they win, big times. Bobby (Infamous Activision CEO) needs a huge kick in the ass, not like his moral compass would benefit from it - its gone - likely sold to the devil himself!
I sure hope blizzard find some way to leave Activision before Mr.Kontic's greed corrupts them beyond repair.
Is Modern Warfare 'actually' a separate IP? Considering that the CoD name is in every listing of MW2, I don't think it is.
Is Modern Warfare 'actually' a separate IP? Considering that the CoD name is in every listing of MW2, I don't think it is.
As far as I Know, Call of Duty franchise have two main developers: Infinity Ward and Treyarch. The very first Call of Duty is made by Treyarch, Modern Warfare series are developed by Infinity Ward. The last Call of Duty made by Treyarch is Call of Duty World At War. Well at least it is something like this. Please someone correct me if wrong. Thanks
Modern Warfare is owned by IW per the renewal contract in 2008, as are, contractually, every call of duty game produced after the vietnam war.
And my, what interesting wording. Obligations to Activision? You mean like developing the best selling game ever? I'm not sure what else matters, really.
Dear Activision, when will you realize that we hate companies that screw over the developers of our games?
You suck, we hate you.
As far as I Know, Call of Duty franchise have two main developers: Infinity Ward and Treyarch. The very first Call of Duty is made by Treyarch, Modern Warfare series are developed by Infinity Ward. The last Call of Duty made by Treyarch is Call of Duty World At War. Well at least it is something like this. Please someone correct me if wrong. Thanks
Treyarch worked on the first COD with Infinity Ward, with IW doing most of the work. Activision published it. Treyarch I believe did world at war and also COD3 which never made it to PC. Infinity Ward in my opinion has always been a great studio (going as far back as the medal on honor series with MOH: Allied Assault being the greatest in my opinion) I really do believe Activision has done wrong on this one as many of us do. The two executives deserve a great amount of praise for developing the COD series but i feel that MW2 fucking blows ass.
According to the MOU, (memorandum of understanding, which by the way is being submitted to the court) that west, zampella and activision agreeded to in order to get west and zampella to stay on with IW and make MW2, it states:
"First, the MOU gives West and Zampella creative authority over the development of any games under the Modern Warfare brand (or any Call of Duty game set in the post-Vietnam era, the near future or the distant future) including complete control over the Infinity Ward studio. The MOU explicitly provides that no such game can be commercially released without the written consent of West and Zampella. Second, the MOU gives West and Zampella the right to operate Infinity Ward independently and to choose to develop new intellectual property after they completed Modern Warfare 2. Third, in addition to the standard and bonus compensation in the Employment Agreement, Activision agreed to pay Plaintiffs and the Infinity Ward studio additional compensatio, including a pool of Restricted Stock Units, stock options, a royalty for any Call of Duty game, a technology royalty for any Activision game that makes significant use of Infinity Ward technology, and a royalty for Modern Warfare 2 and future titles."
Hmmmmm.....
i will volunteer to say this for the n-th time .... if it ain't broke, don't fix it ...... again they thought they were fixing their number one team by firing those two employees and now look what has happened.
Modern Warfare is owned by IW per the renewal contract in 2008, as are, contractually, every call of duty game produced after the vietnam war.And my, what interesting wording. Obligations to Activision? You mean like developing the best selling game ever? I'm not sure what else matters, really.
Best selling? Yes. Actually worth playing?
I liked the airport scene (how am I supposed to decimate all these enemies if the recoil n my rifle makes me shoot the ceiling> Guess I need to shoot at them some more), but really, nothing else.
Personally I don't care, as far as I am concerned, both IW and Activision sold out long ago.
Activison have always gone for the profit line, but then all publishers do, they are like the music publishers, corporate leeches that suck the talent and revenue out of everything, its expected, we all hate them for it, but they don't care as long as the profits are huge.
IW sold out on MW2, they turned their back on the very people who made them the huge success they were, they tried to turn PC gamers into console robots, killed of the modders and the mappers, the very thing that made the CoD franchise huge in the first place. You only have to look at online playing charts to see how quickly MW2 has stopped being supported by the PC community, even CoD has more players online.
SO do I care if they got sacked? not one little bit, lets face it, its not like they are going to starve is it, and if it means they cant bring us any more console ports, so what? It wont be missed, I refused to buy MW2 on principle and never regretted my decision to do so.
Why would you say that you're "disappointed" in them filing a lawsuit. That probably just pisses them off more. Unless that's what Activision is going for. Either way, they all have more money from the COD series than they know what to do with.
Why would you say that you're "disappointed" in them filing a lawsuit. That probably just pisses them off more. Unless that's what Activision is going for. Either way, they all have more money from the COD series than they know what to do with.
Would you rather they say they're thrilled that they chose to file suit?
"There's also some rumbles that Zampella and West were sniffing around the EA camp while still employees at Infinity Ward."
Who's up for some Medal of Honor: Modern Warfare
As far as I Know, Call of Duty franchise have two main developers: Infinity Ward and Treyarch. The very first Call of Duty is made by Treyarch, Modern Warfare series are developed by Infinity Ward. The last Call of Duty made by Treyarch is Call of Duty World At War. Well at least it is something like this. Please someone correct me if wrong. Thanks
IW was the one who developed Call Of Duty. Im not sure if Treyarch even worked on the game (looking at my COD disk/manual/case there is no mention of Trey. at all. I truthfully hope that IW wins this case mainly because in this instance they are being bullied around by the big corp.
Why would you say that you're "disappointed" in them filing a lawsuit. That probably just pisses them off more. Unless that's what Activision is going for. Either way, they all have more money from the COD series than they know what to do with.
Well West and Zampella could have decided to open a new game studio then they could be looking for it to be funded from this lawsuit.
Just another corporate soap opera.
Sounds like they were fired to get them out of the way so another studio can produce MW3.
MW2 is the first COD game I have played and even though lots of long time COD players don't like the absence of dedicated servers I know no different and it seems fine to me. This way it also bans cheaters/hackers from the game instead of just from a single private server. It also eliminated random kicking of people from private servers for invalid reasons. In the MoH series I would watch people get booted for absolutely no reason and it seems they just felt the need to kick one person per round just to get their rocks off.
well here's hoping the new COD programmers know how to make a game for the PS3 better than IW. man what a mess that game was on the PS3
Darn, this is messed up. Looks like we won't be getting MW3 any time soon. On the other hand, the trailer for the new Metal of Honor looks promising.
Why would you say that you're "disappointed" in them filing a lawsuit.
"Disappointed" is the typical term used by the large companies when in court and wanting to express how much disagree with something but in nice language. AFACT (Australia's MPAA, with many of the same member corporations) used the same term when responding to the court ruling against them when they sued an ISP over copyright rubbish. They were "disappointed" with the courts decision to "jeopardise the jobs of thousands of film industry workers" (paraphrased).
On the topic of this article
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.
Innovative? Call of Duty hasn't changed since the second instalment, and even then it was only the unlimited health that was truly different to the first. It's basically the same gameplay-wise throughout the entire franchise.
Sounds like they were fired to get them out of the way so another studio can produce MW3. MW2 is the first COD game I have played and even though lots of long time COD players don't like the absence of dedicated servers I know no different and it seems fine to me. This way it also bans cheaters/hackers from the game instead of just from a single private server. It also eliminated random kicking of people from private servers for invalid reasons. In the MoH series I would watch people get booted for absolutely no reason and it seems they just felt the need to kick one person per round just to get their rocks off.
yea um dedicated servers have better banning software for one.
2 you get the 12 year old kids that use racism and inappropriate language kicked or banned
3MUCH better pings.
and a system that is designed to run servers not some 6 year old pos that cant hardly run the game hosting it... if i have a fps crack my pc can run that game at over 250 fps... yet im stuck at 60 and because of that we have knife glitchers and all sorts of other stuff going on that wouldnt happen with that bs
I tried MW2 the other day, and can't say it's a game I fancy buying!
Even on the i7-920 @ 3.8ghz the game seemed to lag, dipping frmo 60fps (vsync max) to 0-1 for brief periodes of time.
Work the algebraic equation along with me, my friends.
Activision + Blizzard + DLC Agenda + IWNET + Developer Firings + No Modding Community = Me Done with COD. You can't even vote kick in IWNET or vote for a new host... I've owned them all, now I'm done. I wish Bad Company 2 was better...
hhmm...they just made one of the most popular and best selling games of the decade, the game was released a few months ago...I wonder what 'conduct and action' they could be talking about?
perhaps MW3 or another COD?