Activision Seeking $400 Million From West, Zampella…and EA

Dan Lee 27 Comments

I remember thinking it must be a big joke all those months ago when reports started coming in that Activision security had turned up at Infinity Ward HQ.  Surely it was just a wind-up?  Well, as we all know, it was very real and led to the dismissal of IW founders Jason West and Vince Zampella.  The pair then launched a lawsuit against Activision, who promptly responded with a countersuit.

Well now Activision has amended that countersuit, adding EA into the mix stating that they “conspired with two former senior Activision executives, West and Zampella (the “executives”) to derail Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, disrupt its Infinity Ward development studio, and inflict serious harm on the company.” Activision are asking for $400 million in:

“Actual and punitive damages from EA and the former executives, including profits Activision would have made but for EA’s interference, costs incurred in rebuilding the affected studio, and damages suffered as a result of delays and disruptions.”

Activision also wants to:

“Recapture compensation previously awarded to its faithless executives, and to prevent Electronic Arts and the former executives from benefiting from their illegal conduct.”

The countersuit details the alleged goings on of EA, West, and Zampella; including meetings and quotes from obtained emails such as “Dunno how to scan secretly ” and “Probably better to just photocopy and fedex” in relation to confidential Activision information.

Activision are also claiming West and Zampella would not co-operate with other Activision studios, stating a scenario (backed by text messages) where Infinity Ward released a Modern Warfare 2 video on the same day as a World at War DLC video.  According to the suit, the text messages between West and an unnamed Infinity Ward employee read as follows:

IW employee – “treyarch released their mp dlc video.”

West -“Super nice? We release our video? Crush and destroy with our video.”

IW employee – “We already did. And . . . we already did”

West -“Nice.”

So the countersuit has now taken a new turn of events, and it will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

Source:  Joystiq

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27 Comments

  1. W&Z sound like dicks, Acti sound like dicks
    Lawsuit – Counter lawsuit, if anything happens with either I’ll be surprised

    • In fact if EA have done anything prior to W&Z dismissals they are also dicks

      Bring back the bedroom coders

  2. Reading all that it’s difficult to see who should be made to sit on the naughty step :-/

  3. I remember when competition was just that, and not ‘illegal’.

    Jesus.

  4. Hasn’t Black Ops been one of the fastest selling games ever or some such outrageous claim? They can’t have harmed the company too much!

    • It is the fastest selling game ever, already taken a $billion & still has 6 more months of sales. This nothing to do with BlOps though & is about the dismantling of IW maybe with outside interference from EA

  5. I’ve tried my best to stay away from the ins and outs of this case. I like to play games, i’m not too interested in the shadowy goings on behind the scenes.

  6. Did anyone else read that text message conversation in the spirit of All Your Base?

    “Crush with video? ON SCREEN! GO ZIG!”

  7. I hope EA will win. Acti can’t just sue EA as i’m sure they have not done anything illegal. I seem to remeber Acti driving away IW by refusing to pay them their promised bonuses.

    • “Acti can’t just sue EA as i’m sure they have not done anything illegal.”

      Pass the bar first time, did you?
      ;)

    • We don’t know what happened, if it goes to court it may come out but from everything I’ve read people at IW were breaking their contracts causing Activision to get picky over bonus payments.
      Acti may be the innocent party here & W&Z were playing up… Maybe after being approached by EA to do so.

  8. Dear Activision,

    Man up and stop crying, bloody pansies (no offence to pansies). If you were worried about ‘damage to the company’, you’d have gagged and hung Kotick by now.

    Sincerely,

    Pete

  9. Can we all counter sue for injuries caused by constant face palming as this continues?

  10. $400m – Small change to activision. I want to know what Respawn are upto. Hope this gets resolved quickly (couldnt give a shit wether its amicably or not, i just want more games! including MW3)

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