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Infinity Ward - MW2 news

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This was in the G4 article, but for anybody who hasn't seen it, Tim Shafer had a few choice words regarding Activision:

Getting mad at Activision for this kind of thing is like getting mad at an ape for throwing feces. It's just how the beast communicates.

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Doubt it. They aren't property of Activision like IW. If Activision had any say in Blizzard's business we would have seen StarCraft 4 bundled with plastic guitar by now and Diablo games each year coming from 4 different developers. All games multiplatform too.

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[sarcasm]

I dont know about you guys, but I'm totally stoked to play World of Call of Duty: MMOdern Warfare.

[/sarcasm]

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[sarcasm]

I dont know about you guys, but I'm totally stoked to play World of Call of Duty: MMOdern Warfare.

[/sarcasm]

StarCraft Hero: The World Calls for Duty

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"Should 8 Blizzard executives die with one cycle of the sun, by the blood this contract is signed in, R. Kotick, Lord of Shadows, shall have unchallenged dominion over Azeroth and Outer Space"

Gots to read the small print.

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More like Corporate Warfare...

This last filing is just what was needed to make the shit hit the fan; it is MIND BOGGLING that Activision would fundamentally disrupt the most lucrative of their studios just to avoid paying royalties... maybe they were annoyed by their behavior in the past, but this is taking it way too far.

I sincerely hope West and Zampella get what is due to them, meaning both bonuses and the franchise IP, but I highly doubt it will be the case.

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Wow, read articles 31 and 32 on page 10. I want to sell my shares in this company so bad, but SC2 is about to hit Korea :(

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[sarcasm]

I dont know about you guys, but I'm totally stoked to play World of Call of Duty: MMOdern Warfare.

[/sarcasm]

Jesus christ... what if the MWMMO really is the other MMO Blizzard is working on? Oh god, that would be terrible. (-y hilarious!)

Pretty sure they said it's a new IP, but what if they just meant that it's NEW TO THEM?!

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There have been a lot of rumours stating that the new MMO that Blizzard is working on is FPS based, but there is no way that it's Call of Duty related. It may seem strange to think this way, but Blizzard is untouchable in a way that Infinity Ward was not. If Activision is going to pressure Blizzard to do anything, it's release games that they would typically have pushed a year or two longer.

IW released some successful games, but the marketing team deserves almost as much credit for that as the devs. There was very little original about the experience, they just borrowed from existing games and created a compelling single player experience. Again, credit to them for doing so well, but it's not the most original game out there. Activision knows that the general public can't tell the difference betwen IW and Treyarch, and while this makes waves now they'll still likely sell millions of copies when they launch CoD:Vietnam.

Blizzard on the other hand is much more complex, and brings in much more money. As a general comparison of the disparity between the studios, Blizz has 1,500 employees and IW has 97.

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More like Corporate Warfare...

This last filing is just what was needed to make the shit hit the fan; it is MIND BOGGLING that Activision would fundamentally disrupt the most lucrative of their studios just to avoid paying royalties... maybe they were annoyed by their behavior in the past, but this is taking it way too far.

I sincerely hope West and Zampella get what is due to them, meaning both bonuses and the franchise IP, but I highly doubt it will be the case.

They're certainly due their money, but I can't see how two guys could possibly be due the entire Call of Duty franchise. That's ludicrous. They weren't even the only founders of Infinity Ward, let alone the only creators of the games.

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Apparently, the CoD franchise belongs to Activision. Those two clowns own the Modern Warfare brand or at least that's what they claim their contracts with ATV say.

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Apparently, the CoD franchise belongs to Activision. Those two clowns own the Modern Warfare brand or at least that's what they claim their contracts with ATV say.

That's a pretty surprising claim. Obviously I don't know what their employment contract says but since Activision owns Infinity Ward and Call of Duty, I'd be overwhelmingly surprised if two individuals somehow owned the "Modern Warfare" brand.

Edit: Reading a bit more, it seems like they're alleging they had creative (not legal) control of the Modern Warfare brand, contractually. They're suing for ownership of it now, not because they already owned it as per their contract, but because they believe they're entitled to it as damages.

It's like how when you sue a company for a million dollars, it's not that you had the right to the million dollars before, it's that you believe the injustice you suffered is worth that amount.

I'd be very surprised if they ended up walking away with Modern Warfare, but it's probably standard practice to ask for a lot more than you think you're actually going to get, so when you end up settling in the middle, you're still left with a lot.

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I was surprised as well. Here's the link where I read it from, but it is possible that I've misunderstood something.

http://kotaku.com/5485733/ex+infinity-ward-heads-claim-orwellian-moves-by-activision

This part specifically:

In the suit, Infinity Ward's ousted founders claim that Activision refused to honor its agreements with the development studio, agreements that granted the Call of Duty creators creative authority over "any Call of Duty game set in the post-Vietnam era, the near future or the distant future" and any title under the Modern Warfare brand. No such game, the suit reads, "can be commercially released without the written consent of West and Zampella.

Ninja edits. All this legal talk makes my head spin. Why can't they just get along or at least speak with normal words and expressions?

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I was surprised as well. Here's the link where I read it from, but it is possible that I've misunderstood something.

http://kotaku.com/5485733/ex+infinity-ward-heads-claim-orwellian-moves-by-activision

This part specifically:

Ninja edits. All this legal talk makes my head spin. Why can't they just get along or at least speak with normal words and expressions?

Yeah, so that gives them creative control, but not ownership. Similarly, a CEO of a company is in charge of making decisions that a company will execute, but he doesn't actually own the company's assets. Presumably there's some kind of end date for that control on the part of West and Zampella--after all, they would eventually leave the company sometime, even if it were due to death or something, so it's hard for me to see how they would continue to exercise that control when they're no longer under Activision's employment.

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That makes more sense now, thanks. We'll see what happens, too bad we will never know the truth, though.

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Yeah, so that gives them creative control, but not ownership. Similarly, a CEO of a company is in charge of making decisions that a company will execute, but he doesn't actually own the company's assets. Presumably there's some kind of end date for that control on the part of West and Zampella--after all, they would eventually leave the company sometime, even if it were due to death or something, so it's hard for me to see how they would continue to exercise that control when they're no longer under Activision's employment.
It seems that the majority of those details are buried in the "Memorandum of Understanding" mentioned on page 7. It seems that it gives West and Zampella creative authority over Modern Warfare and royalty rights to all CoD games. It seems that Activision has basically thrown this document out the window, and never really intended to honour it.

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I just realized I started 3 consecutive sentences with "It seems that", and the edit function on the forum isn't working :/

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You have to click the edit button twice to get it to work. Don't do that, though.

Classic evil corporation behavior from Activision there. :tup:

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