Earlier this year the excrement hit the ventilation over at Activision. Jason West and Vince Zampella, the two heads at Infinity Ward slapped Activision with a lawsuit over unpaid royalties and ended up leaving IW, taking practically everyone whose loyal to them along for the ride, and starting a new development house titled Respawn Entertainment. There was a whole legal song and dance and as soon as we thought everything was said and done more fuel was thrown in the fire.
At the start of this week Activison did the unexpected by pulling Electronic Arts into the ring. Activision is claiming that EA was behind the FoD developments early this year. Activision now wants $400 million from EA for claims that EA’s John Schappert tried to woo West and Zampella away from the Call of Duty publisher and sabotage Treyarch aka the devs of Black Ops.
This isn’t surprising if you’ve followed West and Zampella over the years as they have a history of jumping ship. In the early 2000’s West and Zampella were at 2015, the developer for some of the Medal of Honor games when they hopped over to Activision because they wanted to create their own war game called “Call of Duty”. So it now looks like the circle is complete as they are back to being friends with EA.
Below is what Activision claims was going on, cue Unsolved Mysteries theme/Robert Stack narration.
“Although West and Zampella preferred to portray themselves – both to the public and within Activision – as game developers often forced to battle with corporate “suits,” the reality was and is much different. They were small-minded executives almost obsessed by jealousy of other developers and the thought that another Activision game or studio might share their spotlight. Motivated by envy and personal greed, West and Zampella went so far as to deliberately undermine the efforts of other developers within the Activision family and then lied about their conduct. On the same day that Treyarch released a video trailer promoting a follow-on product – a “map” pack or “downloadable content” – designed for players of Treyarch’s game Call of Duty: World at War, West and Zampella released a marketing video for Modern Warfare 2 with the purpose of hurting Treyarch’s and Activision’s marketing efforts. Far from being remorseful, West attempted to justify his actions on the ground that Treyarch had insufficiently coordinated with Infinity Ward by stating: “We released on the same day as you because we had no clue you were releasing anything. We are not happy about it.” The real truth, however, was revealed by a series of text messages between West and an Infinity Ward employee contemporaneous with the video trailers’ release. The employee texted West that “treyarch released their mp dlc video.” West responded: “Super nice? We release our video? Crush and destroy with our video.” The employee answered: “We already did. And . . . we already did.” West’s following comment: “Nice.” Thus, West’s own words reveal his intentional strategy to “crush and destroy” his fellow developers at Treyarch.”
So, what do you think about all this Activision/West & Zampella/EA craziness?
