Modern Warfare

Inside the breakup of Activision Blizzard and its star game developers, Vincent Zampella and Jason West, who created the multi-billion-dollar franchise “Call of Duty”:

“During an hour-long interview in the summer of 2011, [CEO Robert] Kotick, sporting a sweater vest over a white T-shirt, waxed nostalgic about his past and emphasized that he’d negotiated in good faith. But he refused to respond to West and Zampella’s most explosive allegation: that Activision began trying to fire them only months after the 2008 contract had been signed. Court filings reveal that in an e-mail exchange between two executives charged with overseeing West and Zampella in January 2009, one warned that the risks of firing the pair would be great. ‘Is everyone ready for the big, negative PR story this is going to turn into if we kick them out?’ he asked. ‘Freaking me out a little.'”

“The apparent effort to find a pretext to replace West and Zampella became known within Activision’s top ranks as ‘Project Icebreaker’—the code name seemingly straight out of a video-game villain’s playbook. It was undertaken in part by a former I.T. director, Thomas Fenady, who in a deposition claimed he was ordered by Activision’s former chief legal officer, George Rose, to ‘dig up dirt on Jason and Vince.'”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jun 12, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,807 words)
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