Infinity Ward, the game studio that built the bestselling Modern Warfare 2 game, has lost a couple more of its key personnel in the wake of the firing of the company’s founders.
Kotaku reported that Todd Alderman, a lead designer of Modern Warfare’s story and multiplayer mode and Francesco Gigliotti, lead software engineer, left the company last week, according to update information from their LinkedIn profiles as well as a source familiar with the matter. They follow Vince Zampella and Jason West, who were fired a month ago after a dispute with the parent company, Activision Blizzard.
While founders like Zampella and West are indispensable, equally important are the people who get the work done such as these lead engineer and lead designer types. Alderman was at Infinity Ward for eight years, Gigliotti for seven.
Activision Blizzard said it fired Zampella and West for “insubordination.” But the co-founders sued the company, saying it got rid of them because they had a big $36 million profit-sharing check coming due. West and Zampella have since signed up with Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency.
Clearly, Zampella and West are going to be magnets for talent if they start a new company. Meanwhile, Activision Blizzard has said it has plenty of studios to work on the Call of Duty franchise, including Treyarch and the newly established Sledgehammer games. And so far, we’ve only heard about a handful of departures at Infinity Ward, which has more than 100 people.
[Image credit: Kotaku]