So we are still waiting on something official to be announced by Infinity Ward or Activision but as we sit now this is what we know or have seen being rumoured.
[Activision have broken their silence and confirmed point 1 below, however no reason has been announced as yet]- Jason West and Vince Zampella have both been fired.
- Infinity Ward is currently in lock down
- Infinity Ward hasn’t been paid a cent for royalties.
- Jason and Vince were talking to other publishers for after their contracts ended in October
- It wasn’t EA they were talking to
It’s point 4 that really gets me thinking, obviously Activision would be hugely upset if their star studio decided to up shop and move over to Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft or Sony…
And that would also explain the litigation statement we saw yesterday as I am pretty sure it would be against their contract to talk to other publishers while still under contact with Activision.
Source: BingeGamer
Last Updated: March 3, 2010
PillsburyDeeBoy
March 3, 2010 at 11:13
Activision own Infinity Ward outright, so the studio cannot leave unless shut down or sold, but key members in the dev team can leave. So, the contract expiration date was most likely that of Vince and Jason’s. The funny thing is the team that founded Infinity Ward was a splinter team from EA’s Medal of Honour franchise, and why this happening again would surprise anybody is beyond me. What they will likely do is start another studio and remain independent, make a great game, and cake up some.
Not knowing the inner workings of this story, it isn’t outside of reasoning that Infinity Ward wanted a level of freedom similar to that Bungie managed to wriggle from Myicrosoft. Quite simply when you see revenue that big and your royalties are only a fraction of that, it’s kind of natural for visionaries to become so disenchanted.
That’s what i think, at least.