EA Added As Defendant To Activision's Infinity Ward Countersuit

[mjc0961]

Even if it is a joke, that's just not the kind of shit you joke about. Either way, EA did something wrong here. It just comes down between trying to sabotage Activision or making incredibly stupid jokes that shouldn't be made.

Whereas Activision has released COD and some very mediocre james bond games no new IP's or interesting sequels.

No new IPs? So Prototype a few years back... What was that a sequel to exactly? Nothing? Okay, that's what I thought.

 

[Living Contradiction]

Having gone over the motions that Activision threw into their suit (they're up on Joystiq) and snuck at peek at the email referenced above, either Activision is throwing whatever it has at the wall to see what sticks or it's been spending a while gathering evidence against EA before widening their suit. I'm leaning towards the latter, since Activision isn't just saying, "Oh, EA tried to poach our talent."; they're saying, "EA worked with Infinity Ward to kill Call of Duty."

Heh. What's funny is that presumably this all took place back in July 2009, eight months before Activision kicked Zampella and West out. Hey, whattaya know? Bob Kotick was justified in the firing and it's all thanks to confidential emails discovered by Activision when they demanded records from EA. Except...hold on...that map pack was announced in March 2010...after the heads of Infinity Ward were already fired...and the whole conspiracy is supposed to have started five months before the actual game came out? So if Infinity Ward really had planned on screwing Activision, they were in a position to ensure the game didn't reach market at all or at least reached it in a condition that would wreck any hope Activision had of making back its investment.

Your addendum doesn't pass the smell test, Activision, and I'm pretty sure that if you don't find iron clad proof that Infinity Ward wanted to rip you off with EA's help, you be fucked. And it's going to take a good deal more than an EA director saying Vince Zampella "owed him a favour" in an internal email.

The final insult? That email is dated the day Zampella and West got fired. Hmmm. Now why would EA executives be talking about two executives of Infinity Ward the day they got fired? Oh yeah! It was in the news!

 

[LokiSeto]

You know I only have one question about this whole thing.

Why are we looking at the email and not the production/marketing schedule for the DLC? Was it actually delayed in some way by Vince or was it actually already meant to come out at that time?

Also you have to think why would they release a DLC on the same day that their rival releases it's next big game? I can't see it working out too well if it happened on the same day but if it happened beforehand by a week then things could have been very good. But really we need to stop looking into what "he/she said" and get down to what actually happened! Was the DLC delayed in any way, shape or form?

 

[UberMore]

The call against EA is complete bullshit.
Modern Warfare 2 was still the best/fastest/etc selling game of all time, so it's not as if they needed more money than they made, while BC2 still did a good job off of it's own reputation and fan-base.

 

[IckleMissMayhem]

either Activision is throwing whatever it has at the wall to see what sticks

There's almost a little bit of logic behind that. Something's gotta stick, if they cover the entire wall, right?! ;O) Smacks a little bit of desperation, methinks. But hey! We'll see what happens come the court cases. May, you say? Bring it on!

 

[DTWolfwood]

EA, meanwhile, is claiming the email was a joke. According to spokesman Jeff Brown, "this was obviously sarcasm. It's clear from the email this was a joke and they never spoke. We explained this to lawyers at Activision - who apparently don't have much of a sense of humor."

epic fail on EA's part. Trying to read Sarcasm in text without the proper use of emoticons is impossible. Anyone who uses IRC or any IM service can attest to this.

O wells at least Zampella and West maybe getting some legal finance backing from EA.

 

[hansari]

Dammit all.

Can we all just stop speculating until the trial actually begins??

As another poster said, the email could be taken out of context and EA saying "its just a joke" as an excuse isn't legit until its said at trial and on the record...yeesh.

 

[MercurySteam]

Don't let me down EA.

 

[JDKJ]

Joke or not, I don't see where the problem is. Its not like they would of made a substantial loss if this was the case, people who would buy the stimulus would have bought it at some point regardless.

It's a shame that it seems that Kotick wants to take the camaraderie out of the studios.

I think the problem here is that you have the heads of a studio under an exclusive contract who (if true) are making a deal with a studio making a similar game for your publisher's biggest rival. That's probably in violation of all sorts of parts of West and Zampella's contracts, and it's not hard to see where this rubbed ATVI the wrong way. "It's just a joke" is one of the weakest potential defenses you can have in something like this - if you're part of a large corporation, you need to take that sort of thing seriously.

I'm really interested in how EA will respond.

They have added EA as a party under tortious interference and on the face of it EA are in trouble. The only thing in EA defence is that anyone would have to pretty dim to conspire by email when Activision effectively owns the mail server. This kind of case is not uncommon is large multinational companies, however normally its about poaching of staff.

I would like to remind people that senior management are under a legal duty to protect the shareholder interest, so that in the real world Actvision hasn't got much choice about taking legal action in this case. If they didn't and that facts came out they almost certainly face legal action from disgruntled shareholders themselves. Before you say thats just a bunch rich guys, most the shares are indirectly owned the general public. The biggest investors are pension funds and life assurance companies. So that $100 million could mean 10000s of people have slightly large pensions than they otherwise would have and thats a bad thing?

Actually, most of Activision Blizzard shares aren't owned by the general public. More than 50% of its shares are owned by Vevendi, with whom Activision merged to form Activision Blizzard. In fact and in the wake of that merger, the general public shareholders sued, claiming that the merger had forced them into the unfavorable position of being minority shareholders. And I suspect that the largest shareholder in Vivendi is still the Bronfman family. So, technically, any returns on investment that may accrue to the shareholders of Activision Blizzard will tend to benefit Vevendi more than they will the general public shareholders (and more so the Bronfman family than anyone else).

 

[(LK)]

I wish I could easily guess which party is in the wrong, but given the infamously asinine personalities of both company's CEO's I can imagine both publishers have a pretty entrenched corporate culture of misconduct and, more generally, being a freaking ***hole.

It's quite likely everybody did something they shouldn't have, and Infinity Ward management made the mistake of getting caught being dicks without high enough status to make someone else take the heat for it.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Gah ... Activision evidently doesn't like a free market ;

You know ... EA has a right to compete on the market, right Activision? You also know that a publicly traded company also has a responsibility to it's shareho0lders to release it's products when they'll receive greatest attention and purchases, right Activision?

They did not act on Bad faith ... either on the market or to their sharehiolders. They did not commit fraud. If West and Zampella did approach EA it is hardly EA's fault to act on market data they believed to be true (albeit I find this claim to be ludicrous to begin with).

Please .... take a breath Activision ... you're making a mockery of trade laws ... the open market is your friend *pats*.

 

[Jelly ^.^]

This is even better than the Tim Schafer-Bobby Arsewipe exchange of insults.

I feel like Finland on the sidelines in the Cold War here. Both sides are dicks of roughly equal proportion from where I'm sitting.

 

[Mr.Numbers]

TO the people who keep quoting me:
I got a bit confused, I apologize, by the name Infinite and Irrational Games. I was a bit confused for a moment there, and by confused I mean I completely mixed the two up, what with it being Bioshock Infinite and all *Facepalm*. I'm removing the post now, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Full appreciation to those who forgive me for my moment of complete retardationification but I still stand by the fact that there must be more to this lawsuit that is presented, and definately more than meets the eye. Only time, and the Judge, will tell.

 

[luckycharms8282]

Zampela and West dun goofed. They broke the contract with a very large and powerful company they had been worken for. They made Activision lose money, and big business is out or blood