The playground antics of Activision and ex-Infinity Ward bosses Vince Zampella and Jason West have been pretty embarrassing overall, but the evil publisher today revealed that it's always willing to sink one step lower and truly drag us into cringe country. Activision has announced it will be redistributing the money it owes Zampella/West to loyal IW workers as a petty parting shot.
"Vince and Jason had very large bonuses; those bonuses are being redistributed to everybody else, to the people who did not allegedly attempt to steal company secrets," reveals Dam Amrich. "Activision is not pocketing that bonus money; it's still going to the people who work at IW. But you have to work at IW to get it, see? :) I don't want to see talented people screwed out of a paycheck any more than you do."
Considering the fact that Activision has happily demonstrated sneering indifference toward its audience, it's amazing that Activision thinks the gaming community has its back. Comments like these make an already despised publisher look even worse, and the best thing its employees could do is keep their mouths shut.
This whole thing has been childish and pathetic on both sides of the fence. An incredibly sordid slapfight among considerably sleazy people. I can't believe anybody involved is over the age of fifteen.
Zampella/West bonuses go back to Infinity Ward [CVG]
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Contest:
9:20 AM on 04.22.2010 | 
I would hope that any IW employees to get this money would give at least half of it to West and Zampella out of loyalty.
I would.
f those guys, they got plenty of cash and a shiny new dev studio. I'm sure the little folk still at IW could use it more.
Sorry Dev's, but your publisher just screwed you out of at least one sale. These games will be bought used if at all. I just dont want to give Activision my cash, no matter how enjoyable the games look.
The Blur demo is fun, but oops, it's being published by Activision, so I guess I can have just as much fun with Split/Second and Criterion's Need For Speed game.
And as for Singularity, well we all know there is no lack of good First Person Shooters on the market.
This is really getting out of hand, and for them to publically announce such a thing is impossibly asinine.
Stay classy, Activision.
Company does amazingly well. Rightly or wrongly the two heads get fired. Why shouldn't the money be rolled down throughout the rest of the staff? What would you prefer, Activision keep it?
If Zampella and West win their case, and we all hope they do, they'll still get the bonuses anyway! Win/win. If they lose, it's because they broke their contracts. Regardless of whether they delivered a huge selling product or not, if they break their contracts they don't deserve it.
The whole reason for the suit against Activision was about the royalties West/Zampella and the rest of IW were owed. Now Activision is publicly saying that those who jump ship, wont get the money they were originally being sued over in the first place?
Even in my own career I was with an HR outsourcing firm and we lost 3 high level employees to a competitive firm (all at the same time in a group migration)... yeah, slap fight and legal issues... and quarreling over bonus payments.
This is normal business... it's just being played out under a media lense.
Did it not occur to anyone that if West/Zampella win the lawsuit, Activision is going to try and take all that redistributed money back? That's EXACTLY something those jackbooted goose stepping funny mustached f***heads would do.
Yeah. I went there.
I stopped buying Activision games new after the Brutal Legend lawsuit. Thanks for giving me more reasons to stick with that boys! Bet Gamestop just loves you for it.
Even activision wouldn't fuck with Blizzard. They have brought in way more money than Infinity Ward, plus their fans would cause insane backlash in a similar vein to Muslims and South Park. Death threats along with attempts to Activision CEO's and such I'm sure.
"Vince and Jason had large executive bathrooms. We're opening them up so that all the IW employees will now get you use them! ;-) We have to get some professional cleaners loose on them first though because they smell! Poo-ey! O_o Lots of Love Dam."
Pot calling the kettle black doesn't really resonate all that much.
I wonder how that's going to go over with the legal team?
try looking at this form Activisions side. What if West/Zampella truly was trying to make the jump and take the cod/MW brand with them over to EA. I'm not saying this is the case, just saying that we don't know. If that was what they were trying it would be a huge breach on the contract with Activision. And to make it even worse apparently they were corresponding with EA from the place they work on computers owned by Activision. It all sounds pretty stupid, but people will do much to get there hands on more money. And I don't think West/Zampella are better than the next guy.
This could also explain the huge lag of support for MW2 post lunch. If they have been planing on moving out for a while then why would they support a game that is owned by Activision.
its all very entertaining :D
Then why are people other than Zampella and West leaving IW AND leaving money on the table? Sure there may be a grain of truth to the "insubordination" of the two heads, but that doesn't explain why a bunch of others have just upped and left IF the two were causing problems for the studio.
of course I know nothing, and this is purely speculations. But I am in no way saying that Zampella and West were causing trouble for IW. I think that they are very talented and that their starff were/are loyal to them. this might just as well be IW as a whole that were agreeing on making the shift, or maby just the top imployes(those that have left IW) again I know nothing, but do give the podcast a listen if you are interested.