Call of Duty Lawsuit Separates "Call of Duty" and "Modern Warfare", Explains Scope of Royalties

Dear... God... Bobby Kotick is a fucking monster. He really IS living up to the whole fear and pessimissm shit. Holy fuck.

BLIZZARD HOOKED UP WITH THESE GUYS?! REALLY?!

I don't know about you guys but I've got a RAGING HARD ON to see where this is going!

"3D Realms co-owner and Duke Nukem Forever developer"
This guy seems legit, let's listen to him. He knows how to release games on time.

"West and Zampella were interrogated for over six hours in a windowless conference room; Activision investigators brought other Infinity Ward employees to tears in their questioning and accusations and
threatened West and Zampella with "insubordination" if they attempted to console them;..."

US Justice System, don't fail me now!

I don't get the catalyst of this scenario. can someone enlighten me?

I read this whole article, still the only question is: "dedicated servers?"

please?

Reading through the text of the lawsuit is funny. Interesting grammar and vernacular gaffes; did a college student write this?

I think this is all about the "creative authority and approval for any 'Modern Warfare' titles" thing.
Activision probably just started developing the MW games that they just announced, and thought they could just use strongarm tactics to force Jason West and Vince Zampella to do what they wanted.

When they refused, they got fired.

Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

I wonder if everyone from IW will leave Activision, or how that will play out.

This is why Valve is so much smarter than all these other studios.

They separated from their publisher so that all this bullshit about IP rights wouldn't ever be an issue again. Now they can pick and choose who publishes their retail products (EA) without being contractually obligated to do anything else for them.

Infinity Ward should take heed, but, its probably too late. They're probably stuck with Activision for 30+ years.

Valve FTW. And, a Nelson from Simpsons laugh at those other blokes "HA-ha"

So I own stock in Activison, and if this goes bad for them my stock is fucked, but holy fucking shit I hope it goes bad for them. Fuck that company.

I agree with Broussard. All part of the plan to get control of Modern Warfare. As long as Activision walks away with that then this is cheaper for them than keeping West and Zampella.

I assume Activision plans to settle this out of court and give these guys some money and they will not be able to speak about the deal and no longer control MW or anything COD. Win/Win for Activision. Kind of a win for West and Zampella.

I love a great get rich scam!!! Sounds like these 2 were trying to figure a way to get a way from Activison and make millions... I'm all for it, anytime a developer can stick it to a publisher its a great time for the little guy.

Eight years ago this month (March 12, 2002): http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/19172

You can stop interviewing 2015 about the game. They are no longer working on MOH and are not working on any patches or upgrades. MOH PC products are being brought internally and will be developed in-house at the EA Los Angeles studio. There are some rumors that EA was not too happy with some of 2015's work.

Jesus, they really plan to run CoD directly into the ground, don't they?

One of the more interesting things in the industry for all of us that have been watching it grow and evolve over the years is that it seems to really be a simple science. It's easy to say "everyone that makes games like Blizzard" will be successful, but realistically speaking it's impossible to get to that level without investors that own your soul.

The sad part with the whole situation is a lot of the people in power don't care about anything but the almighty dollar. That's what they're paid to do. They aren't paid to be empathetic about anything. EA learned this the hard way and now they are failing incredibly and even though now (from everything they're trying to do with what they've seen to make things better) it's hard to change your image once you've been branded with the scarlet letter. I think of all the incorporated's EA has really made an effort (with the purchase of Bioware/Pandemic) to make unique original games. They've done their part in getting them out the door but they've still failed. This is the grave that they dug themselves as well. As much as I'd love to say it brings joy to me to watch them fail it doesn't. As a gamer I want the conflict of choosing between a lot of quality products, but sadly that is not always the reality.

Activision even did this with the Guitar Hero franchise. They laughed at Harmonix and figured they wouldn't be able to do shit. Rock Band destroyed Guitar Hero. Activision openly admitted to having way too many GH sku's on the market, and were scaling back. It's always reactive business decisions they make and not proactive.

It just seems like sure they make the effort to fix the mistakes they make, but only when their dollars are affected. The company vision is tainted. Yes...investors are in it to make money. Yes that's how the industry will succeed. For indie developers as much as we as a community want to support them they have just as many turds as the big companies, so sure it's all well and good to support them in theory, but my dollars are what really say "keep up the good work".

Sadly a lot of franchises we love are going to be victimized by this and there is nothing we can do about it. People get all pissed off at Valve with claims of them making shovelware (L4D/L4D2 fiasco) and at the time that was happening I couldn't believe how disrespectful the community was to one of our honest and wonderful developers/publishers. Valve is a company that gives us a TON of free content with our games. This isn't a case of game released Monday, DLC Tuesday. They made a legitimate expansion on top of providing the additional scenarios for the low cost of a whole lot of nothing.

It's not that I'm a fanboy of any particular company. I'm a fanboy of good games, regardless of paltform, and respectable business models. It pains me as a longtime Bioware developer to look at some of the DLC they offer up and plan before the game is even released and in my head I have to think if it's a money grab or real legitimate content they're providing.

Speak with your dollars. MW2 made a fantastic amount of money. If you're really upset at what Activision is doing then don't buy their products. If you think this will never happen either just look at EA. People get sick and tired of being treated like shit.

Also back those developers who are getting fucked over. Although I won't claim to be an expert on this issue between IW/Activision it's clear that everyone is getting greedy.

When money is in your eyes your passion is gone. As the industry grows we can always use our smarts to ensure how it grows. The big American car manufacturers learned this the hard way as well (although their situation isn't 1:1 with gaming). The Japanese manufacturers moved in and started producing quality. Given a bit of time and they're now at the top. Toyota/Honda...we need to look to our own industry and find these gems of developers.

This is all a lot easier than it seems. The creme will rise to the top, and when we start thinking before we spend our dollars it really says how we want everything to evolve.

GL to both parties. I just hope we as the gamers don't lose our industry.

Lawyers . . . what else can the eff up?

So wait, they lost their jobs because they wanted their own franchise called MW and not be considering a CoD game? Seems like a good reason to me to get fired... don't bite the hand that fed you.

So this is why they wanted to release the game just as "Modern Warfare 2" without the CoD prefix. Interesting.

I hope they take the corporate monster to the cleaners. Not like they have any shortage of cash and they are royally screwing the people that actually did work on it.

huge corporate companies like these are a black hole in video game design and progression. They don't care about the customers, they don't care about furthering the industry and innovation, they care about making quarterly profits. The people that run these huge companies are so out of touch with the industry and make so many blatant and huge mistakes it's truly disgusting that they can still be around and profitable.

support indie and non corporate video game developers folks, they earn their money.

Given that nearly every game developer and publisher I've read on the issues seems firmly on the side of IW here, I hope they don't back down and have at it.

The relationship between publishing houses and developer studios is at a critical point now (Between the combination of digital distribution making large publishers irrelevent to some extent, and the deflation of the game industry), this is an important case to establish IP rights here.

8 years of work to get a studio the way you want it and poof its gone.

I don't see either of those two backing down in order to get creative control/trademark of modern warfare. ACTV will probably own CoD though but I would gather they pissed off West and Z enough that they want Modern Warfare back under their control.

This whole situation reminds me of the Bombcast's idea for a Postmodern Warfare FPS game, which ends with the player storming Infinity Ward's offices to kill Robert Bowling. Except now it turns out that Captain Price was Bobby Kotick :(

Sucks, but both of them will probably walk away with a pretty penny no matter how it's resolved.