Activision vs EA

[maxy]

From Eurogamer

Activision has filed suit against Electronic Arts seeking $400 million in damages as part of its ongoing litigation against two former Infinity Ward executives.

The Call of Duty publisher alleged that EA began luring Jason West and Vince Zampella away from it in late July 2009, with COO John Schappert tapping the pair up via email.

Former Microsoft executive Seamus Blackley, an agent at talent agency Creative Artists, then helped brokered a meeting that saw the duo flown to EA CEO John Riccitiello's home by private jet, according to Activision's filing.

lol

Somebody should make a game about this

Joystiq has even better quotes
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/12/21/activision-claims-ea-and-former-iw-execs-schemed-to-inflict-ser/

Activision alleges that West and Zampella continued colluding with Electronic Arts, going so far as to "covertly copy certain materials." Quotes from an email between West and Zampella include comments like, "Dunno how to scan secretely" and "Probably better to just photocopy and fedex."

 

The amendment also alleges that West and Zampella refused to cooperate with other studios at Activision; one scenario -- also reinforced by documents, in this case, some text messages -- saw Infinity Ward releasing a Modern Warfare 2 video on the same day as a World at War DLC video, with the intent to "crush and destroy" Treyarch's marketing efforts. A series of text messages between West and an unnamed Infinity Ward employee reveals another story. The unnamed IW employee texted West, "treyarch released their mp dlc video." West responded, "Super nice? We release our video? Crush and destroy with our video." The unnamed employee replied, "We already did. And . . . we already did" to which West concluded, "Nice."

[Vizzys]

activision slams EA/battlefield pretty damn hard in these documents

[ManaByte]

I say we give each side a nuke and see who fires first.

[maxy]

are full documents available?

also - you can pretty much proove anything with carefully selected emails.

Joystiq has them

[Eel O'Brian]

infinity ward guys have been pretty public about their feelings towards treyarch in the past, while treyarch has almost always taken the higher public route by not responding or blowing it off

i've known some of the infinity ward guys are arrogant assholes for a while now, simply by the tone given off in interviews, responses on forums, public sniping at other companies, etc.  (some, as i am sure there are plenty of polite people there who quietly did the smh at all that)

if there's any truth to some of the things in the quoted emails, those dudes are sort of fucked

[Howard Alan Treesong]

the lawsuit couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of developers

[Howard Alan Treesong]

lol, the funny thing is though : seeing internet forumites suddenly jumping to Treyarch's defense.

hey, I've never taken IW's side!

they are fucked, and they deserve it, because they did rather bad things

[Brehvolution]

[Eel O'Brian]

lol, the funny thing is though : seeing internet forumites suddenly jumping to Treyarch's defense.

How many people doing that now also spouted the "their games are fucking shite!" route in the past  i wonder?

 

not me, pal, i've always liked treyarch's COD games better, and aside from the botched release of Black Ops they have always been on the ball about responding to PC player complaints/suggestions

[maxy]

People that can(will) benefit from this

Kottick
Riccitello
IW bosses
lawyers

The rest will get shit

[iconoclast]

The unnamed IW employee texted West, "treyarch released their mp dlc video." West responded, "Super nice? We release our video? Crush and destroy with our video." The unnamed employee replied, "We already did. And . . . we already did" to which West concluded, "Nice."

 

Awesome. I love arrogant developers.

[Sho Nuff]

I have hung with the Treyyarch peoples before and they were super nice dudes. I never heard them once talk shit about IW when they had eeeeevery right to do so.

[Robo]

(Image removed from quote.)

I fucking love this picture.

[Cravis]

I've always enjoyed Treyarch's games. To this day I'm pissed Dead Rush was cancelled.

[duckman2000]

I can see them being bugged by sharing the future development of their own creation, as in not actually being in charge of what is put out with that name on it and basically designing the city plans and paving the road for others.

It's just, they talk big game about the Call of Duty brand but give treyarch the Call of Duty 4 engine and tell them to fuck off. Perhaps I'm alone on this but if I spent years working on making Call of Duty one of the biggest brands in gaming, I wouldn't sabotage the franchise by not sharing assets.

Maybe if they were actually in charge of the content and design of those other games in the franchise, they would have been happier to share technology.

After locking things down once they had lifted enough user created content to fit into a sequel and lazily defending the dumbing down of gameplay features I don't have a whole lot of respect for the IW dudes, but in this case I can understand both elitism and irritation.

[GilloD]

BREAKING NEWS: Studio that makes best selling frat-boy game of all time fully staffed by frat boy jerkoffs! We turn now to Stan Winston for more, Stan?

"Oh yes, hello, Kelly, I'm standing here outside the studios of Infinity Ward, makers of the world's best selling online douchebag magnet. Unbelievably, it turns out the the company itself may be staffed by douchebags"

(montage)

[chronovore]

I've always enjoyed Treyarch's games. To this day I'm pissed Dead Rush was cancelled.

Yeah, I've heard it was actually quite far along when it was canceled. I wonder what the story was there.

It's just, they talk big game about the Call of Duty brand but give treyarch the Call of Duty 4 engine and tell them to fuck off. Perhaps I'm alone on this but if I spent years working on making Call of Duty one of the biggest brands in gaming, I wouldn't sabotage the franchise by not sharing assets.

I feel pretty bad for shitting on Treyarch then finding out that they're tasked with doing every other call of duty but don't get access to the improvements IW does to their engine and such. Most of my complaints with them in the past are easily explained with "Yo, IW was ran by a bunch of dicks."

Treyarch has been stuck with a lot of crap situations over the years. Dead Rush, the Minority Report game with no access to Tom Cruise's likeness or the storyline, and being an also-ran to Infinity Ward in Kotick's rush to take every available brand into a several-times-yearly, all-languages, all-platforms-at-once that hammers the vibrant flesh of any genre into a flacid schnitzel. Their output isn't super great, but they're doing something right if Activision hasn't sent them to the unemployment lines like all their other studios who don't consistently manage to crank out high-rated games.

[Joe Molotov]

BREAKING NEWS: Studio that makes best selling frat-boy game of all time fully staffed by frat boy jerkoffs! We turn now to Stan Winston for more, Stan?

"Oh yes, hello, Kelly, I'm standing here outside the studios of Infinity Ward, makers of the world's best selling online douchebag magnet. Unbelievably, it turns out the the company itself may be staffed by douchebags"

(montage)