Sacked Infinity Ward Founders Sue Activision

In a story that gets more dramatic as it progresses, Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella have filed a lawsuit against Activision. The suit cites “breach of contract” as the reason for legal action, after both Zampella and West were removed from senior positions at Infinity Ward on Monday.

The suit centres around Zampella and West not receiving “royalty payments” from Activision as well as “wrong termination in violation of public policy.”

The pair’s lawyer said that Activision was “intentionally flouting the fundamental public policy [...] that means employers must pay their employees what they have rightfully earned.” In the statement, there’s no mention as to what Activision’s allegations against the two were, only that the publisher “hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual ‘investigation’ into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of ‘insubordination’ and ‘breach of fiduciary duty’.”

Activision has hit back already, saying that the suit is “meritless” and that they are “disappointed that Mr Zampella and Mr West have chosen [to start legal proceedings].” The statement continues: “While the company showed enormous patience, it firmly believes that its decision was justified based on their course of conduct and actions.” Again, Activision makes no mention as to why the two were sacked, so we’re still in the dark over that.

Over at Gamer/Law, (via: MCV) there’s also a suggestion that the pair are claiming they have “contractual creative control over the Modern Warfare brand.” This stems from a line in the press release which states: “The suit was filed to vindicate… the contractual rights Activision granted to West and Zampella to control Modern Warfare-branded games.”  Gamer/Law continues to say that depending on the strength of their case,  they could seek an injunction on Modern Warfare titles, preventing Activision using the brand while this suit continues. However, this is all speculation and opinion, so take it as just that.

This is clearly going to get messy before it gets better, Activision is refuting the claims and Zampella and West obviously feel hard done by. We’ll see how far this goes, but by the look of things we’ve got a rather hefty legal battle on its way.