Arguably one of the biggest and most succesful publishers out there, Activision, is in bad shape after more news of law suits and the CEO resigning.
That Activision was in bad shape no one could deny. After the Modern Warfare 2 launch, ironically the most succesful games launch ever, things started to rumble within. Vince Zampella and Jason West were fired for "insubordination" and forced to leave the company. Shortly after that, the two former employees partnered up with EA and started a new company dubbed "Respawn Entertainment", pun intended. With their move, many key staff at Infinity Ward have also jumped ship to Respawn, with reports of up to 26 former employees leaving Infinity Ward for Respawn.
Today two more shocking stories have entered the world that indicate even further how badly Activision is doing. 38 former employees are lashing out at Activision due to unpaid royalties, bonuses, stock options, and technology-related payments it claims Activision withheld. The group is claiming $75 million to $125 million in compensatory damages and on top of that it is seeking punitive damages of between $75 million and $500 million as a result of Activision's withholding of the bonuses, which the suit says was tantamount to holding "employees hostage so that Activision could reap the benefit of the completion of Modern Warfare 3." as stated by the
popular games website Gamespot.
Added on top of this comes the news that this has now lead to Activision's CEO
Mike Griffith stepping down from his position to take a job as vice chairman of Activision Blizzard. Whether this move is inspired by all the troubling news around Activision is not really clear, but one could argue that this might be a precautionary measure following the recent string of bad news.
This development has put a big questionmark over future Call of Duty releases but it has already been stated that Respawn Entertainment will work on a "Call of Duty inspired" game. If this might be the end of the succesful Call of Duty series is certainly not known yet but with everybody fighting over the profit of the past installments and the rights for any future releases producing a Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 3 or similar might prove too tricky too handle.
+1 first comment!!!
hpy with 4
Anyways, greed self-destroys just another example.
edited 2010-04-28 17:34:49
Life cylce of Call of duty series
edited 2010-04-29 00:21:44
CoD1 (Neanderthal) devolved into CoD2 (homo erectus) which devolved into CoD 3 (homo habilis) which magically evolved into CoD4 (homo sapiens sapiens) which devolved into CoD5 (sahelanthropus tchadensis), CoD5 fucked its mother giving birth to a retarded incest-child: CoD6 (mentally and physically disabled chimpanzee)
COD 1,2,4
stick with cod4
and follow cs 1.6 example
MAPS