The Infinity Ward/Activision Scandal: The Story so Far

In light of the Leap Year of Death problem, many gamers (myself included) had their eyes and ears focused on Sony and their actions over the course of yesterday, and not much else. But, while Sony was working on the problem, and we were ranting angrily about it, there were some other big happenings in the gaming world. A real shake-up at Infinity Ward seems to have taken place, and it could mean big things for the Call of Duty franchise, as well as bringing Activision to a new level of hatred for some.

Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella met with Activision at some point yesterday afternoon. After the meeting, neither of the two were seen (nor have they since) by any IW staff. On top of that already nerve-wracking fact, "a bunch of bouncer types" (according to the source for G4's original report on the issue) showed up around Infinity Ward unannounced, and would not disclose why there were there when asked by staff.

A few hours after the original report, some very unfortunate facts stated to pop up around the net. First, it was discovered that Jason West had posted a depressing Facebook status update(below) as well as changing his Linkedin profile to reflect an end to his employment at Infinity Ward.


And this is how West's Linkedin profile looks:These two facts had the gaming community, especially Call of Duty fans, worried. One would think that Activision would not go this far with a developer like Infinity Ward, which has raked in billions for the publisher with the Call of Duty franchise.

Later in the day, an SEC filing by Activision cited an HR investigation into "breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward." While "two senior employees" is vague, Jason West and Vince Zampella are about as senior as it can get, and they're the two that are missing at the time. The filing goes on to say "This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation." Certainly sounds like Activision had already planned on bringing the...banhammer down on the heads of Activision.

Most recently, Zampella's Linkedin profile has been updated to read that his employment at Activision has also come to an end. His employment as CEO and Studio Head at IW is now listed under past employment as of March 2010, after eight years, three months with the company.

There still has yet to be any "official" word from Activision, IW, or the two employees in question. Despite that, the Linkedin updates really confirm that Activision has chosen to fire Vince and Jason. I think Tim Schafer has described this situation as best as anyone could, though. As you may or may not know, Schafer doesn't have the best relationship with Activision after their treatment of Brutal Legend. So when this situation arose, Schafer felt the need to voice his opinion of everyone's reaction to the whole thing on Twitter:
Updates will come as soon as there is anything new to report.

Update: Two new bits of info have arisen. First, it seems that IW has not yet received a single penny in royalties for Modern Warfare 2, a game that has earned Activision over a billion dollars in profit. Certainly a reason for Vince and Jason, as well as the rest of the staff, to have a bone to pick with Activision. On top of that, it seems that Activision stock is steadily dropping today, which means the investors are not too happy to see this change made by Activision. As I write this, the stock is at $10.83 a share, a drop of eleven cents. That may not seem like much, but it's just over a percent of its total earnings, and the market has only been open a few hours. The stock dropped until it hit $10.76, a fall of eighteen cents, before rising a bit and it's been oscillating around 10.80 for a while. if it's dropped substantially before the market closes today, I'll be sure to update these amounts.

It's nice to think that Bobby Kotick will be spending his day hearing shit from investors after the stunts pulled by Activision yesterday.

Update 2: Looks like Bobby Kotick's woes aren't left just to dealing with publishers. Looks like he's meeting with the development heads at IW as we speak, according to one of G4's sources. After meeting with the dev heads, he's supposed to address the studio as a whole. Once that's done, I'm sure we'll hear more trickle out from the employees at IW.