Activision ditch Infinity Ward. Future COD games will suck!

Django x2

Django x2

Django x2

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In a series of swiftly developing events, it appears that the Chief Technical Officer of Infinity Ward, the studio behind the record-breaking blockbuster game Modern Warfare 2, has been fired by parent company Activision. Though the lucrative series will no doubt continue at Activision’s behest, Infinity Ward’s contributions have always been of a higher quality and so the series’ reputation is now at stake.

According to a report published by Activision on March 1, 2010, the company was “concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward,” which would “involve the departure of key personnel and litigation.”
The absence of those key personnel will be a concern to those who have been following the Call of Duty games, and in particular Infinity Ward’s contributions which have provided the backbone for the seies.

Since coming up with 2003’s Call of Duty, Infinity Ward developed three further associated titles: Call of Duty 2 (2005), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009). The rest, including 2010’s expected iteration, were handled by other developers.
Review aggregation sites such as Metacritic or Game Rankings show that Infinity Ward’s games routinely scored higher than their franchise counterparts. Though other games in the series sold well, they were unable to emulate the stratospheric success so far enjoyed by Infinity Ward.

Modern Warfare 2 was the best-selling game in both North America and Europe for 2009, despite its November release, and the fastest grossing video game of all time after making $310 million in one day, $550 million in five days, and $1 billion by January 2010.

Jason West, the company’s now ex-CTO, was said to have met with Activision on Monday morning accompanied by fellow studio head and Chief Creative Officer Vincent Zampella. However, neither returned to the company’s offices in Encino, California.

Instead, Jason updated personal profiles on social and business networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn respectively, both confirming that he was no longer holding a position at Infinity Ward. Zampella later did the same with his own LinkedIn profile.

Meanwhile, employees reported that several minders from a security firm had turned up at the offices, but were refusing to explain their presence outside the building.

It is thought that over the last few months, a good number of studio employees had become agitated by the prospect of solely developing for the Call of Duty series.

Though it’s not known what lies ahead for West or his colleague, he is no stranger to forming breakaway companies. Infinity Ward itself was set up after his previous company were taken over by Electronic Arts, another publisher known for its emphasis on franchise development.
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Kotaku.com said:
While something rotten has definitely gone down between publishers Activision and the bossmen of Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward, it seems the studio itself is still a key part of the franchise moving forward.

An internal memo distributed to members of Infinity Ward earlier today says that while the "brains" of the operation, Vince Zampella and Jason West are out, "Infinity Ward remains central to Call of Duty's future and we rely on the combined talent, expertise and leadership of the team there for its success."

That'll sound good to investors today, but really, how much is it going to mean going forward? Decapitate one of the most successful development studios in the world and you eliminate a lot of its worth. You also run the risk of a mass exodus of talent, as other key personnel involved in the Call of Duty series leave Infinity Ward and follow Zampella and West, just like they did eight years ago when they split from 2015.

Leaving Activision with, well...look, how many times have you heard from 2015 since the big Medal of Honor split?

Exactly.
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Source
 
If Activision ditched Infinity Ward I'm pretty sure that they'd easily be able to find another publisher, maybe one that doesn't allow a 6 month old game to still retail at £39.99 on PC.
 
Bad news to be honest. I always hoped that Activision wouldn't turn out to be another EA, but I'm afraid it sure is shaping up to be just that. I don't understand why the studio heads of game developers allow their company to be absorbed into their publisher. It always ends badly. It never worked for Westwood, it didn't work for 2015, and now Infinity Ward are the next victim. If they don't stop, soon we'll be left with no decent developers and we'll just get crappy sequal after sequal like EA are now in the habit of churning out yearly.
 
K1LLSW1TCH said:
If Activision ditched Infinity Ward I'm pretty sure that they'd easily be able to find another publisher, maybe one that doesn't allow a 6 month old game to still retail at £39.99 on PC.
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Yeah quite frankly that is an utterly ridiculous price for it still. I can't believe that other games (eg Gears of War II) drop to around £20 after a month of sale time, yet CoD MW2 is still at the same price that it retailed for on release. Unfortunately there is a lot of greed that is coming into play from Activision now.

Given that they already make a huge amount of money from World of Warcraft, you'd think they would be happy to drop the price of the game after a few months. It's just pure greed now :(
 
Why do you guys think that this is infinity wards fault???


Activision are the publishers, they are the ones sitting on 1 billion dollars and set the retail price and wont pay infinity ward. they are the ones that wanted no dedicated servers.

Infinity Ward will be better off without them. Activision are the ***** here.
 
Im wondering how many staff will leave IW after this, leaving Activision with an empty building and a company name. Even if they replace the staff, will the new staff be able to recreate the COD magic, i doubt it?

Activision may have just killed there golden goose, i hope im wrong.
 
future cod will suck ? present COD sucks.... with the constant re skinning of old versions and constant bugs/hacks its not a brand of game i want to ever buy again
 
starfighter said:
Why do you guys think that this is infinity wards fault???


Activision are the publishers, they are the ones sitting on 1 billion dollars and set the retail price and wont pay infinity ward. they are the ones that wanted no dedicated servers.

Infinity Ward will be better off without them. Activision are the ***** here.
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Nobody blamed Infinity Ward so far in this thread?
 
CHokKA said:
Yeah quite frankly that is an utterly ridiculous price for it still. I can't believe that other games (eg Gears of War II) drop to around £20 after a month of sale time, yet CoD MW2 is still at the same price that it retailed for on release. Unfortunately there is a lot of greed that is coming into play from Activision now.

Given that they already make a huge amount of money from World of Warcraft, you'd think they would be happy to drop the price of the game after a few months. It's just pure greed now :(
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Yeah, because they didn't do that with CoD4 did they :/. 2 years after release that game was still retailing for £40 in high street.
 
m0r94n said:
Yeah, because they didn't do that with CoD4 did they :/. 2 years after release that game was still retailing for £40 in high street.
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I picked up the GOTY edition on PC around 10 months ago for £15. One thing I will say against Infinity Ward is that they didn't support COD4 very well, one map pack in the game's life cycle is not good. Compare that to Treyarch and World at War and we had loads of add on content and even a map or two for free.
 
m0r94n said:
Yeah, because they didn't do that with CoD4 did they :/. 2 years after release that game was still retailing for £40 in high street.
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Chill dude, no need for the sarcasm. I had no idea that CoD 4 was still that price for that long after release. Regardless, I don't really understand the point of your post. If the same publisher is doing it over and over again, then surely it just enforces my point more?
 
Also, this news might end up putting any map pack releases in jeopardy. If they're ever releasing them. There hasn't been any further information about these. I don't think we'll see them.
 
ok guys correct me if I'm wrong but aren't a publisher only supopsed to actually print the DVD's, box them and sell them in as many shops as they can.

How can publishers have any impact on game/book content?
 
They do way more than that, theyll have there own producers and designers etc who will get involved with the development of a game. Some are more hands on than others, the more valuable a franchise the more hands on they can get and that can be damaging unless the producer or whoever knows what there doing.
 
“concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward,”
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That's the kicker.

The excrement hit the fan, and someone called HR (it sounds like).
 
Activision haven't ditched Infinity Ward, two of IW's main guys got the sack due to apparently questioning missing royalties. IW only have a contract with Activision until the end of this year anyway so after that they can go and do whatever they like.
 
If I were infinity ward i'd tell activision to get stuffed when the contract is up.I'm sure they'll have no problems finding another publisher.
 
K1LLSW1TCH said:
Activision haven't ditched Infinity Ward, two of IW's main guys got the sack due to apparently questioning missing royalties. IW only have a contract with Activision until the end of this year anyway so after that they can go and do whatever they like.
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Well that doesn't sound like a legitimate reason to be fired? Surely if you were due something, you should have every right to question why you haven't got it? On a small game it might be something you can forget, but for a game that has generated over $1 billion so far, that's a pretty hefty loss of royalties for the developer. I'm sure you'd question it as well, and you shouldn't be faced with losing your job because of it.
 
CHokKA said:
Well that doesn't sound like a legitimate reason to be fired? Surely if you were due something, you should have every right to question why you haven't got it? On a small game it might be something you can forget, but for a game that has generated over $1 billion so far, that's a pretty hefty loss of royalties for the developer. I'm sure you'd question it as well, and you shouldn't be faced with losing your job because of it.
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Yeah you're right there is more to it, they were discussing it in the PC Games sub forum so if you head over there it's probably covered in one of the posts. I think one of the main reasons was that Activision wanted to bring in their own guys to take the franchise in the direction in which they wanted it to go, a kind of mmo fps shooter geared towards small, frequent purchases for extra items and such.
 
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