Just two days after being removed from their postitions at Infinity Ward by Activision, Jason West and Vince Zampella have filed a lawsuit against Activision. The press release accompanying the suit says that they were fired just days before the first royalty payments for the biggest entertainment product of all time were to be paid out. Their attorney Robert Schwartz puts it like this:
“Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public, last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual ‘investigation’ into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of ‘insubordination’ and ‘breach of fiduciary duty,’ which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st.”
We really didn’t think West and Zampella were going to be the first to fire legal rounds, it seemed that Activision was going to be first, seeing as how in their SEC filing they said as much. It should be interesting to see how this all shakes out, ESPECIALLY since part of the lawsuit would see the rights to Modern Warfare revert to Mr. West and Mr. Zampella. Interesting, indeed.