Jason West and Vince Zampella, the creators behind popular first-person shooters such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, are big names in today's $25 billion game industry. Over the last couple of years, the creative duo has been engaged in legal battles in Los Angeles County Superior Court with one of the leading men in the game industry - Bobby Kotick.
Kotick is the chief executive of one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world, Activision, which publishes, markets and distributes Call of Duty games. West and Zampella filed a lawsuit in March 2010, claiming that Kotick and Activision had unjustly fired them from their positions as chief technology officer and chief creative officer, respectively, at the Santa Monica-based Infinity Ward owned by Activision.
According to the plaintiffs, they were fired just before Activision would have to pay them millions in bonuses for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which generated industry sales records of more than $1 billion. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was the top selling game of all time, until it was eventually surpassed by 2010's Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Activision Responds with Own Lawsuit
Activision, in return, filed its own lawsuit, alleging it was fully justified in firing West and Zampella because they had breached their contracts and had become disloyal, despite creating its biggest money-making franchise, USA Today reports. "They were small-minded executives almost obsessed by jealousy of other developers," said the lawsuit.
Activision posted a record $1 billion annual profit in 2011, which included the release of Modern Warfare 3, developed by Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games. Modern Warfare 3 set a new first-day sales record of more than $400 million. If the jury sides with the duo and rules against Activision, there could be as much as $1 billion in damages.
Jack Lerner, director of the University of Southern California Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic, said Activision almost certainly owes West and Zampella money from bonuses, USA Today reported. "But the harder question is who will have a stake in future games in the Modern Warfare franchise," said Lerner. West and Zampella "may be able to get a lot more money based on what they could have expected to earn" if the court decides that Activision has wrongly terminated the two, added Lerner, according to USA Today.
'Project Icebreaker'
According to the court filing, West and Zampella's legal teams claimed there is evidence that George Rose, chief legal officer at Activision, wanted to break into West and Zampella's computers and email accounts in order to dig up some dirt on the two. Such efforts, referred to as "Project Icebreaker" in court filings, reportedly occurred in 2009 - a year after the two extended their contracts, but only a few months ahead of Modern Warfare 2's release. "Activision began preparing to terminate them once the game was delivered," read the court filings. Meanwhile, Activision insisted in court filings that West and Zampella were "conspiring" with rival game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) to leave and convey much of the Infinity Ward talent.
Celebrity Lawyers
In an unexpected move earlier this month, Activision added notorious attorney Beth Wilkinson to its legal team. Wilkinson is the former assistant U.S. attorney notorious for prosecuting and convicting Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently appointed Wilkinson to lead its investigation of Google. Activision has also asked Judge Elihu Berle to postpone the trial for a month so that Wilkinson could have enough time to prepare. The Judge denied Activision's request and jury selection is set to begin shortly. West and Zampella have added their own celebrity lawyer - Daniel Petrocelli, the entertainment and intellectual property lawyer who won the wrongful death trial against O.J. Simpson back in 1997.
The case against Activision is closely followed by the game industry, Hollywood and the legal industry. West and Zampella have a new independent video game development studio in Van Nuys, California, called Respawn Entertainment. "We get a lot of support from people in the industry that say, 'We want you to set things right,'" said Zampella, as cited by USA Today. The two developers hope the court will give them justice and decide they were unjustly treated by Activision.
