HAHAHAH Tactical Insertion.

Either Treyarch will take it over or Activision will create yet another CoD studio to develop it.

I think it has to be intentional.

Puns are always appreciated.

You're welcome, I have some more if you want them Jonhman?

Well I don't really care. MW2 was pathetic on too many levels:
- dropping servers
- obviously focussing more on consoles
- smaller maps
- less players
- Steam required for online play
- ridiculously short single player
- gratuitous Russian airport massacre
- etc. etc. etc.
And then all this commotion! CoD is overrated anyway, and to see the huge fuss made about a game that should get 75% at most, it's apalling when so many really greater games don't get 5% of the attention. When they finally make a proper FPS again instead of a console abomination, THEN we'll talk.

you know what?
I believe IW were dicks and Activision were cheap. Normally i would side with Act. Contracts signed and there is nothing act. can or should do. It would create too much chaos. Normally that is.
Act. are danger to gaming industry. We called EA evil years ago but nothing they did even approached what Act. is doing.
It is not about closing westwood or sierra (this little rant comes from me finding out today that sierra is closed and soon for sale (the brand only) )
It is making gaming industry franchise driven, milking everything to maximum potential. For that they destroyed all those companies while EA did that out of simple "profit < costs"
By saying that they will make employees fear for their job so they can buy more sports cars (if my boss told me that he is going to make sure i feel miserable and fear each day I sure would do everything i can to hurt him and to quit as soon as possible (the hurt i mean legally)
So my heart goes to these guys. they are dicks but they are fighting assholes!

I didn't know that about Sierra and Westwood... Such good memories. Granted they were both down on their luck but still. Something has to break, people will start to leave Activision and in the end they will only hurt themselves.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/04/more-talent-leaves-infinity-ward-bonuses-held-in-litigation.ars
more people leaving

Holy shit, what a mess. More power to Respawn, some good stuff could come out of them with the backing of EA. The rumors of Activision's bullying are becoming more and more believable. If it was just a little hissy fit with Vince and Jason why would talent still be leaving IW?

Because they suspect that public opinion will side with Vince and Jason and that it could hurt their future income?
Because they want to follow the bosses they direclty worked under?
Because EA/Respawn will probably give them a nice signing bonus (again, public opinion)?
Lots of reasons that don't necessarily have a single thing to do with Activision. Not saying that is the case, but whatever. And either way, it is a moot point. Because as we can clearly see, people are going to side with the explanation they want ("Activision bad").

That is true. Probably a nice little signing bonus from EA/Respawn. I'm not siding with either one just the rumors of how Activision does business kinda puts a new spin on things. Im not a IW fanboy, just I had some fun with MW and MW2 and hate to see a company who clearly has some chemistry become a run of the mill little company.

Alright, I've got a question for anyone who would care to answer. I've seen several claims made in this thread that West and Zampella violated their contract with Activision, and I'm curious to know what the source of these claims is. Maybe I missed a chapter in this saga, or there's some key information buried in Activision's filed complaint, but from the various reports I've read on this drama I haven't even come across any outright claims of contracts being violated aside from that by West and Zampella that Activision fired them to avoid paying contractually owed royalties. If anyone could shed some light on this matter it would be appreciated.

Well, that is one of the MANY grey areas on this.
To my knowledge, it is not clear if West and Zampella were contractually owed those royalties. Much of what has been said would suggest that they felt they deserved more for MW2 than they were contractually obligated to get (which isn't too out of left field, since everyone and their mother purchased a copy of that).
This is further supported by the nature of W&Z's lawsuit (it uses things other than a simple 'breach of contract'). If it were a simple matter of them not getting what they were contractually supposed to get, it would be an open and shut case. Although, keep in mind that I am not a lawyer.
What Activision DID do is withold pay/royalties of some form to the peons of Infinity Ward. The nature of that is unclear.
Where does breach of contract and the like come from: Recent events (and the countersuits) strongly suggest that W&Z were in talks with EA even before this fiasco. And if they were trying to get some of their peons to jump ship with them (which is strongly suggested by recent events :p) that would count as taking assets with them. Which would also explain why the security guards were called in.

Hence why I only referred to claims of contracts being violated. The extent to which those claims have merit is for the courts to sort out if the case is allowed to get that far.
If they had jumped ship in violation of their own employment agreement then such claims may have been valid (although even this is questionable as pretty much all variants on non-compete agreements are automatically void in California, where IW is headquartered). Additionally, employees are not considered owned assets, so that claim also falls flat even if it had occurred (there are sometimes contractual terms preventing direct recruitment of ex-coworkers, but these are almost always either part of a termination agreement (usually in exchange for a severance package), or are part of the conditions for employment offered by the new employer). However, regardless of all this, the fact remains that whatever they may have been planning, they didn't jump ship. Possibly planning to do so is incredibly different under contract law from actually doing so. So we're back to the question of what claims were made of them violating their contract.

Well, just got my copy of GameInformer and they have a huge article on this. When they were fired they were not told on what grounds except they "Already have a clear understanding of what they have and have not done" but the rumor mill says it was acts of insubordination against Activision. Also before making MW2, Jason and Vince renewed their contract with Activision on the condition a new Memorandum of Understanding was drawn up (MoA), in it was written that Vincce and Jason would have:
- Creative authority over the Modern Warfare brand or any "Call of Duty" game set in the post Vietnam era, the near future and distant future.
- "Complete control over the Infinity Ward studio" and the right to operate it Independently.
- The chance to develop a new intellectual property (IP) after MW2.
- Royalty and other Compensation to West (Jason), Zampella (Vince) and IW employees.
Apparently before the signing and the release of MW2, Activision was pressuring them to keep the titles rolling one after the other even though IW was "Not Eager" to jump into MW2 so fast. Whats drawn up in the lawsuit is that Activision continued to pressure IW for more titles after MW2 released instead of the agreed to new IP. So Activision fired both Vince and Jason so they could keep the MW titles rolling in by eliminating the two men to whom it gave final authority over those brands, and removing any road blocks they could throw up.