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West, Zampella File Lawsuit Against Activision Over Sacking
by Simon Carless [PC, Console/PC]
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March 4, 2010
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Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella have filed a lawsuit against Activision citing "breach of contract", following their abrupt removal as heads of the Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare developers.
Law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP released an official announcement confirming a Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuit by the duo against Activision Publishing, Inc., claiming that "Activision terminated their employment weeks before they were to be paid substantial royalty payments as part of their existing contracts for Modern Warfare 2."
The suit includes claims for breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, wrong termination in violation of public policy, and declaratory relief, and was filed "to vindicate the rights of West and Zampella to be paid the compensation they have earned, as well as the contractual rights Activision granted to West and Zampella to control Modern Warfare-branded games."
The duo's comments confirm Gamasutra-reported claims that only Infinity Ward may make games in the Modern Warfare series, and that conflict over this appears to be one of the reasons behind the duo's removal.
West and Zampella developed two of the most successful video games in history – Call of Duty and Modern Warfare – at the Infinity Ward studio, a company they co-founded in 2001. After its acquisition by Activision in November 2003, West and Zampella served as president/game director and CEO, respectively.
"Activision has refused to honor the terms of its agreements and is intentionally flouting the fundamental public policy of this State (California) that employers must pay their employees what they have rightfully earned," said their attorney Robert Schwartz.
"Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public, last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual 'investigation' into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of 'insubordination' and 'breach of fiduciary duty,' which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st."
"We were shocked by Activision's decision to terminate our contract," said West. "We poured our heart and soul into that company, building not only a world class development studio, but assembling a team we've been proud to work with for nearly a decade. We think the work we've done speaks for itself."
Zampella added, "After all we have given to Activision, we shouldn't have to sue to get paid."
For Activision's part, the company made an SEC filing on March 1st, just before the change, claiming: "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." The firm has not yet commented on this latest development.
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You can be forced out of a studio - as this example shows. No matter how powerful you think you are.
But you cannot be forced out of your own name as a creator.
Next story will be "The Golden Cow that was Milked to Death".
Greed.
I have a strong feeling that what happened was Activision realised that they need Modern Warfare to keep the cogs turning. Recently I read an article that upper management at activision are concerned that all their eggs are in 3 baskets (GH, Mw, and WoW). Since GH is in decline Activision would be desperate to make up the deficit with Mw. I suspect they are trying to strong arm infinity ward into getting a sequel out sooner than originally anticipated.
Also I'm wondering how do you charge a CEO with insubordination? (Maybe I don't understand what that means but isn't CEO the big boss of the company how can he be insubordinate?)
1. Founders were unhappy with the pressure being put on them so they were looking to spin out into a new studio, and Activision found out.
2. Founders pushed back on pressure from Activision, and Kotick didn't like it one bit and they couldnt resolve their differences.
This excludes any theory that the founders did something really HR-enforceable bad, but that'd have to be really bad for TWO heads of one of their star studios to get canned, so I'll discount that theory, and ATVI's claims of breach of K and insubordination seem to verify that.
I would hope that if there was a diff, ATVI would have tried very hard to buy em out quickly and make this go away quietly. This sort of thing (like Viacom asking Harmonix execs to give back part of their purchase price) make them look bad in public... really bad, regardless of what the 'facts' are.
As for "insubordination" - they were the senior execs in a wholly-owned subsidiary. Under those circumstances they are completely at the mercy of the Activision board (or whoever they actually reported in to).
And to Tim: you can only be forced out of a studio that you don't own. If they had kept control of the company and the IP, then no-one could force them to do anything. But they decided to sell the IP off and their own lives with it!
@Gus Simpsons, you cleary know nothing about the credit markets. Financing is still out there, only the financing is no longer for insolvent people, banks actually care about actual viability now after skirting their fiduciary duties for almost 10 years. Susie Homemaker can no longer get a 300k loan to buy a house. The IW employees would be a very safe and bankable project given the potential profits. Most good games only sell 500k-1mil copies and are profitable given development costs.
The conglomeration of the game industry has served to destroy long-term value in the industry. We are seeing the same bs that happened in other bad mergers: (AOL-Time Warner, Merryl Lynch-BOA, the list goes on and on). Activision brought very little if any value to the acquisition of Blizzard or Infinity Ward. If I were a rival publisher trying to make as much money as possible, I would position myself as a much friendlier competitor to Activision and EA and try to suck as much talent as I could away from them at this point.
http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/500x_custom_1253217464546_SPF_02.jpg
West & Zampella could be laughing out loud in front of it, actually.
More seriously, I'm really sorry for them ... This move is so broadly gross that it should only happen in movies.
Also, I would be curious to see Mike Morhaime's reaction on this IW case. I'm not sure he will like it very much.
http://kotaku.com/5485703/ousted-infinity-ward-founders-lawsuit-against-activisi
on-the-court-documents/gallery/
More like The Golden Cow who was beaten, shot, had its corpse vilolated, buried in peat for six months, dug up and then used as an ottoman. There has got to be something hinky going on at Activision. How can they have the two most successful game franchises in history and yet fail to turn a profit?
@ Chris Kykora: This has nothing to do with BC2. ATVI would have probably preferred to do this at a slightly different time to avoid such bad press near the release of DLC and the mention of the next COD. There are a million smarter ways to steal the thunder from a competitor - most notably releasing DLC, but they didn't. Probably because it wasn't ready. This news won't effect the sales of BC2 one iota.
And if the filings by Jason and Vince are true, and there is nothing that ATVI can substantiate for serious breech of contract, then ATVI has just screwed themselves royally. Losing Jason and Vince, to the detriment of one of the best teams in the industry, was incredibly ignorant.
Given the, "MW2 multiplayer is going to be much like MW1." statement one minute, then the abrupt switch to EventuallyPayToPlay.net, mess, I figured something like this would happen. You can only make so many deals with the devil before you get burned. I hope they roast ATVI personally.
Never.
Read that again.
You - never - own - your - IP.
This is a myth of game development.
The studio you work for owns it.
If you founded the studio, then you can have majority control of this studio which owns its own IP. But *you* don't own it. The studio owns it.
The next question is: Who controls the studio that owns the IP?
If you want to get your game funded for development and marketing (assuming you actually want it 1.) made, and 2.) gotten in front of an audience), unless you are independently wealthy, you need investment. Then the investors will, in all likelihood control 51+% of your studio. Now they control the studio and the IP. Not you.
And, if somehow you get investment and retain control of the studio, what if you need expansion capital down the road?
Sooner or later you *will* lose control of the studio and the IP.
You would be much smarter to build your own brand as an individual creator and negotiate terms such as creative control and residuals as an individual creator. This gives you far more power than trying to manage an IP through administrative control of a studio; where you sacrifice your name brand to the studio brand - basically remaining anonymous to the audience.
That one hit they had, in the right time and place, funded all of Valve's adventures. Steam, commercial release of Counter-Strike, etc.
But that was over 10 years ago. It was more of a wild west then. Is the situation the same today?
Anyway, look at this way: Is Valve going to fund your game? Not. Even if you slave away to make an awesome mod, and you get awards for it, odds are they won't pick it up, because they have grown to the largest they can get to.
Besides, Valve doesn't promote the names of its core creators. Can Kim Swift go off and make a new game with the same level of agency she can in Valve? Can she control her own destiny away from Valve? Did Valve give Kim Swift or any of the core creators of Portal residuals? - which would allow them to leave Valve, do projects of their own, and still receive ongoing compensation for Portal? Of course, to be fair, they probably like it in Valve, but Valve has Half Life and Steam under its belt - they can afford to be generous. They are the exception in the game industry, not the rule.
For_Dark_Void_Dev.php
Either way Portal was a student project at Digipen that got funded by Valve. Not sure what the gripe re: ownership as it was built on Valve's existing Source Engine and got each of the students a job. I think they got a pretty fair deal considering most students don't have their games published by a major developer.
And the Source Engine comment? That's like saying that an artist's success comes down not to their vision and execution, but to the paintbrushes and paints they use.
Tripwire owns the IP. The 4 owners of Tripwire own the company outright. We all still work here. There is no external money in the company. No-one outside of us has any control of the company, IP or creative direction. We aren't independently wealthy - but after two titles developed and published, third on the way, we STILL own everything ourselves. Yes, I "share" the ownership of the IP with the other owners of the company. But we actually trust each other and agree on the direction of the studio.
Your view is about the creation of a purely personal "brand", rather than that of the IP or the Studio. My (our) view would be that that is only going to work if you have a massive hit up front a la Half Life. We would much rather create a brand based on the IP and the studio.
The number of those purely "personal" brands is extremely small in comparison to those of the IP and studio. And you know why? Because most games development is done by a TEAM, not by one single person. In using Kim as an example, you miss the point: she was part of a small TEAM, that joined Valve and became a bigger TEAM. The Portal TEAM built Portal, just as the TF2 TEAM built TF2, not just Robin on his own.
Not that we are ever going to agree on this one, I know. Different world views and all that. Me, I like working in a team - get far more done than if I was trying to do it all myself. And Tripwire is living proof that you CAN do it without having to give up everything you own. Actually, without having to give up ANYTHING, in our case. And when we need working capital, we raise it - without giving up ANYTHING.
But hey - it works for us. Clearly doesn't work for you. And never the twain shall meet, clearly!
[I'd also suggest, as I did the last time this one kicked off, that you put up a separate blog where we can rant away to our heart's content on the topic, without derailing whole threads like this one!]
You can look at the Aliens franchise. Same team over the different films. Yet when Ridley Scott and James Cameron were at the helm, it flourished. After them, it went downhill fast - even though core executives and creators way back from the 1979 original are still on the franchise.
Anyway, there are several centuries of art history to back up this position. Individuals matter.
Furthermore, if you carry your logic to its end, the conclusion is that individual creators' rights don't matter. Like the group versus the individual. I guess that would put you on Activision's side here.
Anyway, when I came out of film school, I optioned a screenplay with a professional film producer. In the deal terms, if the screenplay lead to a hit franchise while I wouldn't earn residuals I would earn a fee for every spin-off product that was made across multiple IP streams. Plus I'd get my name promoted, as usual, in the credits. Fresh out of school.
Why was that possible in film, but not in games?
What great folly that would make (EA to be seen as the good guys in a total role reversal from 9 years ago).
"The company expects to release a new Call of Duty game from Treyarch this fall. [---]
The Call of Duty business unit will be led by Philip Earl, who currently runs Activision Publishing's Asia Pacific region and previously served in senior executive positions with Procter & Gamble and Nestle. Activision Publishing veterans Steve Pearce, chief technology officer and Steve Ackrich, head of production, will lead Infinity Ward on an interim basis. Jason West and Vince Zampella are no longer with Infinity Ward.
Lastly, Activision Publishing announced that the company is in discussions with a select number of partners to bring the franchise to Asia, one of the fastest growing regions for online multiplayer games in the world."
For anyone that hasn't read the press release it's available here: http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=448656
Can this one of the reasons behind the removal of Zampell and West? Maybe Activision just are fishing for a good excuse not to bring IW or these two along for the ride?
Funnily enough, 38 Infinity ward current and former employees are also suing Activision. It's a good day for Attorneys.