Infinity Ward

Activision Blizzard Inc. came out with guns blazing Friday in its legal battle with two former lead developers of Call of Duty, the video game publisher's multibillion-dollar franchise. In a lawsuit that read like a dramatic Hollywood script, Activision claimed it fired Jason West and Vincent Zampella in March because the two "morphed from valued, responsible executives into insubordinate and self-serving schemers who attempted to hijack Activision's assets for their own personal gain."

Video game giantsActivision Blizzard Inc.and Electronic Arts Inc. have settled their litigation as a larger trial over the Call of Duty video game franchise prepares to go ahead this month. Santa Monica-based Activision and Redwood Shores, Calif.-based EA announced their settlement at a California Superior Court hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The long-running rivalry between the two companies heated up in 2010 when EA agreed to fund a new studio headed by Jason West and Vincent Zampella, the co-creators of Call of Duty whom Activision had fired that year.

Activision Blizzard Inc.'s testy relations with the two creators of the Call of Duty franchise dated back at least a year before the company fired them, according to emails recently unsealed in the company's $1-billion lawsuit against the developers. Publicly, their relationship fractured in March 2010, when Activision fired Jason West and Vincent Zampella, the former heads of the Infinity Ward studio responsible for making the Call of Duty titles, which have generated more than $6.75 billion in revenue for the Santa Monica game publisher.  West and Zampella, along with 40 other former Infinity Ward developers, sued Activision for withholding royalties.

Ever since Activision Blizzard Inc. fired two top developers of its blockbuster Call of Duty game franchise in March for alleged "insubordination," the word on the Web is one of sympathy — for the developers. The former employees, Jason West and Vince Zampella, were heralded as heroes for suing Activision, while the company's executives were branded "dimwitted morons" for dismissing the two from their jobs at Infinity Ward, the studio that makes Call of Duty games. Activision struck back with a countersuit that tried to reverse the popularity tide, accusing West and Zampella of being "self-serving schemers" by trying to start their own independent studio while still working at Activision.

One day before trial was set to begin in a trio of lawsuits with claims totaling more than $2 billion, video game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. reached a settlement with the co-creators of the "Call of Duty" series and 40 developers who worked on the games. The last-minute agreement Thursday ended two years of litigation during which nasty accusations flew back and forth and Santa Monica-based Activision endured the embarrassing disclosure of private contracts and a plot, code-named Project Icebreaker, to secretly monitor developers' email and voice mails.

On a cloudy Friday afternoon on Venice Boulevard in West Los Angeles nearly two weeks ago, about 50 people were waiting to buy a video game that wasn't supposed to go on sale for four days. "Do you have it yet?" an eager customer asked an employee of the store Game Play. The object of his desire, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, officially launched Nov. 10. But despite the recession that has crimped consumer spending, demand was so high that many stores started selling it as soon as shipments arrived.

In the video game world, "respawn" means a character that was killed off has come back to life. So when two of the top creative talents in the industry form a new independent company called Respawn Entertainment, they are sending an unmistakable message to colleagues, competitors and fans. The pair, Jason West and Vincent Zampella, who played key roles in the development of the multibillion-dollar military shooter franchise Call of Duty, have been embroiled in a bitter dispute with their former employer, Activision Blizzard Inc., which fired them a month ago in a move that shook the industry with the force of a rocket-propelled grenade.

A court hearing to prepare for the multibillion-dollar trial between the makers of blockbuster video game series Call of Duty and publisherActivision Blizzard Inc.was postponed at the last second Tuesday morning following a conference in the judge's chambers. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle announced that the court would be in recess until Wednesday morning. Asked whether the delay was to allow for settlement discussions, lawyers said afterward that they were under strict instructions not to discuss the matter.

A pretrial hearing in the multibillion-dollar "Call of Duty" lawsuit was once again delayed  as lawyers for all parties huddled in private talks that could result in a last-minute settlement. Proceedings were set to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday after a similar delay on Tuesday , but attorneys for all parties involved in the case --Activision Blizzard Inc., "Call of Duty" co-creators Jason West and Vincent Zampella, and 40 developers who worked on the series -- instead spent most of the morning talking behind closed doors in conference rooms at a Los Angeles Superior Court building.