Activision seeking $400 million in damages from West, Zampella, and EA as Black Ops exceeds $1 billion in sales

Technically, I am on vacation, but the news never sleeps and nethier do I.

Pretend you didn’t see me.

(Don’t worry, Steph. We Americans understand. Long vacations aren’t in our blood But of all the things to set off a compulsive relapse…)

Don’t pay too much heed to the $400 million number. The US civil tort system is kind of like Reverse Poker. You start with the highest number you can possibly write down on the paper without giggling and try to settle for something over zero.

@2 Exactly! $400 million could easily turn into $400 dollars in the blink of an eye

Activision is right, they deserve all that money and more. They deserve your money and my money and all the money ever made in the world ever.

EVER BITCHES!

/s

Ea sucks

I really would like to be a fly on the wall with Zampella & West/Activision/EA, just to see what the fuck happened.

Needless to say, it’s shit like this which makes me love my job.

This morning I decided that Black Ops was the best CoD yet.

I never thought I’d like a Treyarch CoD, but that’s not the case.

But lets face it. I think the only game that can break CoD’s dominance is one made with these two guys in charge.

Can you sue another company for luring talent away?

Isn’t there a bloody recession or something?

I’ve been reading various comments threads about this story and the new information revealed. It seems to me that there’s a pretty clear cut case that these guys were not acting properly and thought they could get away with it. Yet somehow, the comments threads are still full of people laying into Activision about this. They stole documents, tried to sabotage colleagues’ games… what a joke.

The Internet never ceases to amaze me with its blinkered approach to pretty much everything.

Yeah, sure…

You must be one of the only people in the entire world to have all of the absolute facts about this case to be able to back up those “clear cut” claims.

I get the feeling that this is one of those situations where nobody involved is innocent.

It’ll probably all get settled behind closed doors and we’ll never really know what happened anyway.

Reading what Joystiq posted of the court docs Acti have everything they need to backup their claims. This dosnt bold well for EA/West, Zampella.

Going off that i have to side with Acti, West & Zampella come off as being complete dicks who deserved to get fired and sued.

BO breaks records again….and then they are still greedy as fucking hell. Of course EA damaged their possible profits…if EA hadnt lured the two dudes away…COD:BO would sell like 2 Billion Dollars.

Let’s just face facts, all 3 parties are guilty.
I can understand the hatred over ActiVision, mainly for releasing a sub-par CoD every year & the overpriced DLC & for the fact that their boss is an outspoken Pretentious douche, but most of what he says is out of context & misleading.
Let’s rememeber that EA also releases yearly games from their franchises, just look @ their whole sports division & the NFS series, but if it works, it works.
@8, They were under contact, so yes, all 3 parties were doing unethical actions.

“doing unethical actions.”
well, thats the purpose of capitalism.
so noone should be suprised by this, realy.

wow IF what activision says is true than that means kotick is the good guy here?

WAT???!! =O

Yeah, good luck with that.

@11 Of course not. Presuming you don’t either. I do however have access to court filed documents…

It just strikes me as naive that the gaming community instantly rallies around these two characters and clearly takes their side.

I don’t like any of them.

So much focus is placed on Online MP FPS that so many other generes get left in the dark. I am really sorry to sound like an old guy, but enough already. These things are just mirror images of each other. Clones with slight settings and gameplay tweaks to differentiate from one another.

You know what I want?

I want a couch co-op, internet co-op, AAA RPG. Something that can do what Champions of Norath did, but on an epic scale. Something with amazing depth and longevity that says, “yes, I am worth every penny and more”.

I want generes that don’t get any attention. I want new games. New ideas. I just bought Kinect for the wife, I want a triple AAA game for that from a top teir talented studio, I want to see what the gadget can really do. I want things that get shelfed because everyone is trying to be king of OMPFPS.

Sorry for the rant, but I don’t care about these guys.

@20, MS stated that they’re not going to do any 1st party AAA games for Kinect in the near future, i don’t have the link, but it seems that noone, even MS, has the balls to create a high quality kinect game.

I was very much against Kinect or Move from the get go.

Seemed a complete waste of time to me.

Then my wife demod one at walmart. Then we walked out of the store with an early Xmass gift. She loves the thing. I am impressed with what it can do, just not the games it has to offer.

I also own a Move, but am not impressed with it. It is a Wii with better tracking. Been there done that.

But Kinect has real potiental to be something truly different and unique. And if the industry allows something like this to fail due to lack of trying that is sad.

I just feel like so much focus is placed on the same ole generes that we are left drowning in a sea of metoos. Stale, flat games that never stray from the tried and tested formula that we have come to expect.

I am not saying Kinect is revolution. It is more of a breath of fresh air.

And I am not promoting Motion Games over traditional ones. I just keep gaming, waiting and hoping for something to come along and really grab me. It has been a long long time. I think i would have to go back to the Dreamcast to find a line up of exciting game sthat felt fresh, exciting, and were fun to play.

It is prolly just part of getting older. You have no idea how many times I go to the game store and get asked if I am buying this or that game for the grandkids(not joking).

I just try and keep looking for something I would enjoy, and the shelf is filled with CoD and the countless wanna bes.

Thank goodness for Steam and XBLA/PSN/Wii Ware. And I hope I say the samething about Kinect down the road when better games come out for it.

@ 15 sub-par COD. BWAHAHAHA!! The millions of people, MILLIONS who play this game daily beg to differ. I’m not saying cod is the most innovative gaming experience but sub-par it is most certainly not. @ Oldergamer mp is the way of the future, we should all get used to it because it’s not going anywhere. Especially the fps mp games. After seeing the cod numbers it would be foolish to NOT expect other devs to try and cash in. The thing about genres that don’t get any attention is that they also don’t make any money! These corporations are all about their bottom line.

While that maybe true, I would like to remind you that this generation the Wii has outsold the xb360 and the PS3. And while big name games like CoD sitting on big name shelves like Gamestop are high profile and draw most of the game media attention, Cell Phone apps, ipod apps, Casual Game sites from yahoo to facebook to others, sell just as much or more then said big name stores.

Can’t wait to finish collegeand start making some indie games personally. I admire the big names for the technology they produce, but in terms of design there really is little flare or risk. With something like the Iphone or Windows Phone 7 a group of people like me and my friends from college can get together and make a game we all really want to make.

Heres to hoping we can re-produce the success of angry birds or super meat boy! lol

Oh, and with regards to the thread, they are all money grabbing wankers. Merry Christmas.

@ 24 I would say that the success of those (not denying their quality) android/iphone/facebook games is largely due to accessibility (and low price point). As far as facebook type games go, people spend insane amounts of time on those sites, and these micro-transaction based games are really an ingenious way of making revenue. As basic as they are I guess they are addicting. However, i don’t really think I would ever consider playing something like Farmville. I’m not much of a facebook guy but my wife is.

@ OG:

RE: ‘A breath of fresh air’

When I get bored of CoD (it happened at least once before… …I think) I play some demos from XBL to see what else I might like to buy.

Then I realise that none of them interest me as much as winning games of Free For All over and over again, so I go back to CoD.

Sometimes I spend time on XBLA Tetris Splash or Bomberman LIVE, but neither of those could really be called new or innovative, I suppose.

Best of luck to you and your endevours Callum, I always enjoy a good indie game.

And Fair enough G1GA, I used to spend a plan crazy amount of time playing(and placing top 25 on the world wide leaderboards, mind you) in Mechassult(xbox one). I loved that game, the first one not the second – hated the second. I used to be a “chicken Mech”, and end up top of scoreboard and zero deaths. One of the best online action game experiences I have ever played – well that and a good BattleGrounds(ret pally) in WoW.

Tinker around with Pinball FX2 next time you put the CoD controler down for a break. See if you can top Frosty, M. O’Conner, or myself in score. Might be more fun then you think.

@guapo, CoD is a very mediocre shooter with gamepay so simple that a 5 year old could actually play & know what to do, it has very little added onto it each year & imo, should have been released as Add on content but also with a standalone retail release similar to what R* did with RDR with Undead Nightmare & GTAIV with Liberty City Stories, but ofc not, they would rather sell it as a seperate game & leech much more money from us.

Also it’s foolish to even try to compare quantity with quality as you did, millions of people use Windows, millions of people buy LG products, but Windows is outdated, superseded by the free to use Linux & LG products are laughably inferior to pretty much everyone else, but because of how many they sell they are good? I think not…

I know i come of as a douche, knocking a popular game, but i just don’t see the value in it.

its nice to know that activision will never stop being the world biggest money whores, they will also try to find away to make/get money even though they’re rolling in it, bathing in it, sleeping in it, etc.

@23: Millions of people playing online would disagree because there’s nothing else to play. COD is barely on par with PC shooters 10, 12 years ago. But the way of the AAA industry — as you point out with MP in general — is not to find the next big thing but to maximize profit for the last big thing. The game market has been multiplying over and over and all those new players are willing to buy the ancient MP arcadey shooter again.

@21 What about Children Of Eden then…?

Oops, not 1st party, damn and dbl damn. Still the only thing that interests me that has been shown so far for Kinect.

@30
Because having alot of money means that your employees are allow to go rogue and try to take something they dont own with them (the MW IP) despite being under contract, and are allowed to leak documents to another company, right?

Gotta love peoples reasoning; Acti make alot of money, therefore they are evil and have no rights.
Could you tell me how much you have in the bank right now? I just want to establish you’re degree of evilness.

The fact that you think you can just take IP like that is rather… silly, Geki. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I doubt that they tried to steal IP, it’s impossible to do. It’s not like you have a printed piece of paper you can hijack and hold to ransom.

lol Where did i say they tried to steal the IP secretly? They tried to win it in a law suit, obviously.

@34, West & Zampella claim they own the Modern Warfare IP, which is kind of ridiculous.

EA response :
“This is a PR play filled with pettiness and deliberate misdirection. Activision wants to hide the fact that they have no credible response to the claim of two artists who were fired and now just want to get paid for their work.”

@ 29 if there is a better online mp experience why is nobody playing that? So millions of consumers are blind sheep and you are the All-knowing god of gaming ? Get off your high horse.#23 didn’t say cod was the best out there he simply said cod was not sub-par. I agree and so does the majority. You are completely overruled. Have a nice day, I’m about to whip some ass in bfbc2: Vietnam. Which is awesome by the way….

“So millions of consumers are blind sheep” That was actually my point, yes they are, just look at Apple products, most notably the iPod shuffle, a VERY basic MP3 player selling up to 5 times the price of a generic brand with smaller storage space.
Back to my point, I am not saying CoD is completely shit, but it’s highly overrated & most people only buy it because their friends have it, if it wasn’t for countless friends of yours playing the MP, who on here would have actually bought the damn game? To any FPS fan, i would reccomend Joint Ops, yes it’s a little dated, but it’s still a superior game when you compare it with CoD Blops, MoH & BF Bad Company, but unfortunately games like this don’t fare too well against big name games so there’s less & less of these great games & all the moneys being put into AAA titles, yearly rehashes & smaller casual/social games, not terribly much inbetween these days.

@38 There is, and they are.

It’s called Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

@40

Amen.

@40 yes it is with bonus map and campaign in one dlc package

And yes ^^Thats my oldest

@42
What bonus campaign is this then?

@44 I assume he’s referring to the Vietnam expansion.

^ …Is there a bonus campaign in that? Not from what i’ve heard.

EVER BITCHES!

@40 did you not read the last sentence of my comment? I’m actually a little better in bfbc2 than I am in cod. But i’ll kick your ass in either bring it on. @ crysis – glad that you know you’re an arrogant elitist…. gotta be worth somethin’ right? Ass.

Easy fellas, if we need to we can settle this on the battlefield!!

And yes, my son just said he was talking about the expac Vietnam.

I wasn’t kidding we enjoy a good round of BFBC2 if anyone wants to add us.

EA wants monopoly? suck it, go and play fairly damn it!!!