To (hopefully) close Gaming’s Strangest Day, G4TV has informed the world that there’s quite an episode unfolding at Infinity Ward.
The world-famous developer of the Call of Duty franchise is apparently being occupied by a “bunch of bouncer-types” who appeared unannounced. When employees inquired as to their presence, the non-uniformed personnel refused to answer.
To make things a bit saucier, Infinity Ward studio bosses Jason West and Vince Zampella met with Activision officials earlier this morning and hadn’t returned to IW headquarters since. The current relationship between the developer and publisher has been “tense” to quote G4′s unnamed source.
Employees are reportedly “confused” and “freaked out.”
“Everyone is on edge. We just wanna make our games,” said the source.
Seriously, this day just needs to end. Now. Expect updates to this story as the situation progresses.
[Via: G4TV]
[Update]: Kotaku is reporting that Infinity Ward honcho Jason West has posted the following on his Facebook page:
In addition, West’s LinkedIn profile states he is no longer employed by Infinity Ward as of March 2010.
1up.com‘s source within Infinity Ward suggests Activision is “flexing its muscles” and “pushing back against change” within the studio. While it’s definitely vague, the last time creative changes occurred with Infinity Ward Call of Duty 4 was born.
More details as they come.
[Update 2]: G4′s Patrick Klepek has done it again. It looks like an SEC filing made early Monday has preceded this evening’s events.
The particular section of the report is as follows:
The Company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company.
While it’s quite clear that one of the senior employees is IW President Jason West, it remains to be seen whether or not the other is Vince Zampella.
We’ll be catching up with this story in the morning.
[Update 3]: According to both Jason West’s and Vince Zampella’s LinkedIn profiles, they’re no longer working for Infinity Ward.
I, for one, am very interested to see what new first-person shooter franchise they’ll be developing for another company. Oh, the irony if it was with EA…
[Image Courtesy: G4TV.com]
Man I hope this means IW can leave the big evil and do what they want some how. But I doubt that, and I know for sure not matter what CoD will be beat into the ground. Some how this is a total lose / lose for IW.
This doesn’t really come as a surprise to me. Activision has operated for some time under the misguided belief that they can do no wrong and it’s not the developers that make the game popular but the title of the game itself. Handing Tony Hawk to Robomodo, handing GH to Neversoft, and now the dismantling of IW(which probably means that Treyarch will now get handed the keys to the CoD war machine.) have all been miscues on Activisions part.
Well considering Acti owns IW lock, stock and barrel, I think all you’ll end up seeing is the team behind IW dissolving. The name isn’t going anywhere though.
I’m really interested to see what this supposed insubordination/contract breach issue is all about though. My feelings are like many others: they wanted to do something other than CoD or wanted to push it in a direction Acti didn’t like.
And to think that after his speech at DICE, I was actually starting to hope Kotick might have had a small sliver of soul left in him after all. Oh well…
Kotick a soul? hah that would be the day. Well if the whole IW team does dissolve I would love to see form a new company and have Sony buy them like they just did MM :D
There’s “stupid,” then there’s “idiotic”, and finally there’s “Activision.”
Holy crap. Where have I been all day… o.O;
Or rather, how did I miss this a couple days ago… =x