Changes at IW, New CoD Dev and Pachter Calls Blog Out

Here’s the update on the Activision/Infinity Ward situation, full of all the speculation and unconfirmed reports that you demand! Not much that can be confirmed has come out in the last 24 hours, but at least it doesn’t look like there are any security personnel around the Infinity Ward offices today.

According to G4‘s Patrick Klepek, Activision Publishing CTO Steve Pearce and head of production Steve Ackrich are temporarily in charge of Infinity Ward.

Infinity Ward will continue to work on map packs for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with the next Call of Duty game still being developed by Treyarch, developers of Call of Duty 3 and Call of Duty: World at War. Also of interest is the announcement that Sledgehammer Games will be developing an action-adventure Call of Duty game due for release in 2011.

In an alleged internal memo obtained by G4 it is also suggested that Infinity Ward will still be close to a Call of Duty game in the future. According to the memo, ‘œInfinity 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.’

One often cited report making the rounds comes from Binge Gamer, although through unnamed sources. It claims the reason for the tension between the developer and publisher is a lack of royalties being paid out to Infinity Ward from Modern Warfare 2.

However, according to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, the problem with their report is that although they’re called royalties, they are actually more akin to bonuses. The fiscal year just ended, so paying out bonuses, especially in the midst of all this might not be a priority. The Binge Gamer piece also mentions that Infinity Ward’s contract with Activision runs out in October, but Patcher says Activision owns Infinity Ward outright, and has done for several years.

“It is a shame that this dispute is playing out on blogs, especially those run by such financially unsophisticated guys like the ones at Binge Gamer,” said Pachter. ”They don’t understand employment issues, and are not accurately portraying facts.” This gets even more troubling when you consider how widely their report is being cited.

This whole messy situation was hinted at in Activision’s annual 10-K report, a report US corporations have to file each year with the Securities and Exchange Commission which oversees financial goings on. The only mention of the current situation is as follows:

The Company (Activision) 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. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company.

Which is kind of ironic given some earlier statements in the report which says:

Our success depends to a significant extent on our ability to identify, hire, and retain skilled personnel, particularly personnel with the specialized skills needed to create the high-quality “hit” titles upon which our business is substantially dependent.

Sacking two of the top IW bosses hardly seems like a good way of ‘œretaining skilled personnel’.

I think Tim Schafer, who has had his own issues with Activision, summed up the situation best when he made his feelings known on Twitter:

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.