One of the biggest legal battles in the the game industry now has a specific trial date. Forbes reports that May 7, 2012 is when the trial begins that will pit game publisher Activision Blizzard against Jason West and Vincent Zampella, the co-founders of Infinity Ward which created the best selling Call of Duty franchise. For his part Zampella said, “I’m really looking forward to having our day in court."
In March 2010, Activision Blizzard fired West and Zampella, just months after the developer completed work on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. The game went on to sell well over 22 million copies. West and Zampella filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard a few weeks later, claiming the publisher got rid of the duo in order to avoid paying them the massive amount of royalties they would receive from sales of the game. Activision Blizzard later counter-sued, claiming that West and Zampella were conspiring to depart the company with a new publishing deal with Electronic Arts.
Since the firings of West and Zampella, a large number of Infinity Ward's team members also left the developer. They got together again with West and Zampella to form a new team, Respawn Entertainment, and struck a publishing deal with EA to publish its first game. Unlike their deal with Activision, the Respawn Entertainment team will retain ownership of the games they create. However, it may be a while before we get any info about what the new team is working on. West said, "We have new and exciting creativity and development going on at Respawn, to be announced in the future." Meanwhile Infinity Ward, along with Sledgehammer Games, are finishing work on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 which Activision will release on November 8.
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