Activision Adds EA To Its $400 Million Infinity Ward Lawsuit

That’s a lawyer underneath all that armor

Tis the season to be suing the pants off your nearest rivals. Activision’s lawsuit against former Infinity Ward gents Jason West and Vince Zampella has expanded to include—you guessed it!—EA. Activision claims that EA “set out to destabilize, disrupt and to attempt to destroy Infinity Ward.” Ooh! West and Zampella left Infinity Ward earlier this year, and have since formed a company called Respawn Entertainment, which will create games for EA. Oh: the lawsuit against EA is worth a cool $400 million. Why innovate (or even iterate) when you can litigate?

Activision has essentially accused EA of sabotaging the inner workings of Infinity Ward, thereby costing Kotick & Co. many dollars of revenue. (That’s somewhat difficult to believe, given the success of Call of Duty: Black Ops.) Hopefully Activision is as tenacious in ensuring the next 800 editions of Call of Duty are as appealing to people as the previous 300. We all saw what happened to the music games genera: releasing too many, too quickly turned people off (even if the games aren’t too bad).

Part of Activision’s case is a series of e-mails that would *seem* to suggest that EA had courted West and Zampella, with one such e-mail saying: “JR cooks a mean BBQ. I think we could accomplish some interesting chaos.”

“JR” refers to John Riccitiello, EA’s CEO. “Interesting chaos” refers to… I have no idea, but it certainly doesn’t look good.

Incidentally, you can find all the old Doom games on sale on Steam right now. They’re just as much fun as all these new-fangled Call of Duty games, and they’re much cheaper.