[Pave Low]

http://www.shacknews...article.x/62577

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ListG4tv.com's Patrick Klepek is reporting that a "tense" situation is brewing at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward

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Infinity Ward studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West reportedly met with Activision this morning and have not been seen by Infinity Ward staff members since."

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Later in the day, non-uniformed "bouncers" arrived at Infinity Ward, but would not explain why they were there

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Earlier today, Activision filed an SEC report that mentioned Activision looking into "breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward." The filing also states that "this matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation."

[CR6]

How ironic / coincidental that this news is coming out the same day BF Bad Company 2 is being released?

[Cpl Ledanek]

G4 reports

[Rocky]

Wow, intriguing!!

[Tinker]

Activision Forms Call of Duty Business Unit

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Following the events of yesterday's Infinity Ward firings, Activision formed a new business unit dedicated to producing one new Call of Duty game annually. Their first announced game that we didn't already know about is a 2011 Call of Duty game in development at the newly formed Sledgehammer Games.

A press release hit the wires just moments ago, detailing the news. The company reiterated that the Treyarch-developed Call of Duty game in production is due out this fall, while two downloadable map packs for Modern Warfare 2 are set to release sometime in 2010.

The new game at Sledgehammer "will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre," according to the press release. Sledgehammer is run by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, both Dead Space developer veterans.

The Call of Duty business unit falls under Philip Earl's jurisdiction. Earl currently manages Activision's Asia Pacific region. In that same paragraph, Activision confirmed that "Jason West and Vince Zampella are no longer with Infinity Ward."

The last piece of the Activision press release says that the company is focusing on "a select number of partners" to bring the Call of Duty Franchise to Asia, "one of the fastest growing regions for online multiplayer games."

[CrowmanUK]

Looks like its all moving up a step and the IW bosses are sueing activision

http://www.eurogamer...uing-activision

[Rocky]

Just love this comment at the foot of the linked article about all the legal fighting.

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Now that's modern warfare for you.

[CR6]

Now where is that emoticon for getting out the popcorn ...

Here's an interesting analysis
http://www.gamepro.c...y-ward-shakeup/

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Following the events of yesterday's Infinity Ward firings, Activision formed a new business unit dedicated to producing one new Call of Duty game annually. Their first announced game that we didn't already know about is a 2011 Call of Duty game in development at the newly formed Sledgehammer Games.

Anyways, Activision is doing the same thing with CoD that Microsoft did for the Halo series, except that MS handled things much better.

[CR6]

Just wanted to elaborate on my last comment - I meant Activision's CoD business unit is similar to what Microsoft did by creating a Halo Division (Called 343 Industries) that is seperate from Bungie to oversee all Halo properties (comics, anime, movies, games etc)

http://www.kotaku.co...343-industries/

And MS didn't fire key people at Bungie over the years - some of them left on their own accord which I assume were amicable departures, or at least didn't have such associated and publicized drama.
http://news.cnet.com...040-945578.html
http://news.teamxbox...ms-New-Company/

[NoQuarter]

More trouble?

Marcus Yam said:

As revealed on LinkedIn, Todd Alderman (Lead Designer) and Francesco Gigliotti (Lead Software Engineer), no longer list themselves as being employed by Activision at Infinity Ward. Read more at Kotaku.

[Daywanderer]

Gah.. Being an avid fan of the Modern Warfare franchise, it almost hurts to see more and more Infinity Ward people leave the company.

I still have some faith that there will be a Modern Warfare 3 which continues the semi-cliffhanger ending from MW2, as well as continues to improve on the multiplayer aspect, specifically the spawn system and the utter lack of dedicated servers..

[NoQuarter]

Don't worry...be happy.