Activision and Infinity Ward

The internet has been busy this week gone, with news of the summary dismissal and legal prosecutions of 2 of the senior management at Infinity Ward. Vince Zampella and Jason West were apparently escorted off the premises and legal notice of an intent to sue from Activision soon followed, for allegations of ‘breaches of contract and insubordination’. As one of the largest computer games publishers in the industry Activisions actions against the developer of one of it’s most profitable IP’s seemed extreme. Surely more was happening here?

At this point in the tale, most of what is being reported is rumour and second-guessing – very little concrete information is available yet. What seems apparent, from comments made by both Activision and the ex-IW members is there has been something of a power struggle for control of the IP Modern Warfare, which IW has developed. Second only to World of Warcraft, Modern Warfare has been a highly successful IP for Activision, making significant amounts of money (and profit) over the years. As a developer owned by Activision, on the surface things would’ve seen to be perfect for both sides – successful game, profit maker and happy customers.

Below the surface, it appears things weren’t so golden. Infinity Ward was exploring the possibility of working on developing a new IP, which would give them a creative break from Modern Warfare. Activision was concerned by this behaviour, given that they wanted to continue serialising the IP. Activision are also claiming that the 2 heads of IW were in secret talks to move the development team over to a new publisher – something Activision simply could not allow to happen.

On the either side of the fence, Zampella and West are claiming that Activision had signed creative control on the IP over to them, and then decided to renage on this promise. They also claim that the move was engineered by Activision to avoid having to pay over a large royalty payment from the recent sales of Modern Warfare.

While commenting on a story that is thick with supposition, and thin on facts, it does seem as though the handling of Infinity Ward by Activision has been extremly ‘clumsy’. As one of the largest games companies in the world, Activision is attempting to paint itself the victim of malicous tactics by it’s own employers – yet it’s difficult to resolve this with Activision’s own reputation for hard-headed business tactics.

Infinity Ward are also due for some criticism here – as a wholly-owned division of Activision, it seems precocious of them to expect to operate as an independant company. I do feel that the shadow of Blizzard, as a part of the Activision empire, is being cast across the whole affair. It’s not impossible that Activision were attempting to prevent another part of the empire from becoming too independant.

Unfortunately, now that lawyers and courts are involved the most likely outcome is that the general public will never find out the truth of what happened. While a fascinating human and business story, it doesn’t exactly shine a professional light on the industry.

• World Of Warcraft Mage Tips
  | WORLD OF WARCRAFT
• Afghan govt held peace talks with Taliban No. 2; Karzai said to be …
• Nadal News » Blog Archive » IW: post 3rd round interview
• Man arrested for breaches of the firearms act | Jamaica’s Most Wanted
• computer game
  | GamersTouch.net
• Lenovo Laptops – Posted In IBM | Favorite RSS – Favorite Rss!
• [GI] Quest Online sacks president, admits MMO “should never have …
• Hardy Boys Computer Games | The Challenge Base

• Activision looks to dispose of Bizarre Creations