EA and Call of Duty Developers Had Talks Before the End of 2009

Recent e-mail messages that have been introduced by publisher Activision in their lawsuit against Vince Zampella and Jason West suggest that, despite initial claims, the two had been talking with Electronic Arts for quite some time before they were ousted from Infinity Ward and they set up their own development studio.

E-mails point to efforts from Electronic Arts to recruit the two Infinity Ward leaders going as far back as 2009, with John Schappert, who is the chief operations officer of EA telling John Riccitiello, the CEO, that “looks like Seamus has it in hand and Vince/Jason are aligned, which is good.”

A few days later Zampella and West were flown via private jet to the home of the CEO where they had a talk about breaking off with Activision.

The man who represented the two developers at Creative Artists Agency, Seamus Blackley, also suggested that Electronic Arts be more aggressive in its recruitment efforts and another set of e-mails suggests that in November 2009 the publisher had already made a formal offer to the duo, with clear terms, and was waiting to find out what their answer was.

It gets worse for Zampella and West with other messages, which have been dismissed as humorous by EA, saying that they should delay the launch of the first map pack for Modern Warfare 2 to improve the launch prospects for Bad Company 2.

Now West and Zampella are leading Respawn Entertainment and are collaborating with Electronic Arts on a new video game franchise while Infinity Ward is rebuilding and is still involved with Call of Duty.

It's not clear what impact the lawsuit could have on their future plans, but aside from asking for damages linked to the possible sabotage of Modern Warfare 2 and breach of contract, Activision could also ask a judge to enforce a non-compete claim.