Up to 20 more staff could leave Infinity Ward, says Pachter

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has said that up to at least 20 staff could decide to leave Infinity Ward.

Pachter's comments come as two more people, animators Mark Grigsby and Paul Messerly, left the Modern Warfare 2 developer yesterday, leaving the total amount of staff that's left the studio up to 12 - including ex-bosses Vince Zampella and Jason West.

"We think that recent Activision share weakness has been compounded by additional departures at Infinity Ward which accelerated this week, and we expect another 10 – 20 employees to depart over the next few months," he said in a note.

"In the past month, Infinity Ward has lost eleven employees (a designer, a lead animator, a lead artist, a lead character animator, three lead designers, two programmers, a senior animator, and a software engineer)."

He further added: "In our view, the company will likely replace the departed employees with skilled developers, and while increased competition may impact sales of future versions of Modern Warfare, we expect the company to put out a competitive product."

Zampella and West were fired from Infinity Ward last month, but this week founded Respawn Entertainment, with its first game to be published EA Partners.