It’s been a rocky road for Respawn Entertainment, despite being headed by the two co-founders of Infinity Ward, the designers who headed the studio through the development of its ridiculously successful Modern Warfare series, it has been sued by Activision, managed to get out on a settlement, and despite being formed three years ago has yet to announce a single game project. That may finally change.
Vince Zampella, one of the aforementioned studio heads, has announced through Twitter that the team will be on hand at E3.
More below.
This won’t be the first E3 which Respawn have visited, they were present at last year’s expo, too, though I imagine they must have been pretty tight-lipped considering they didn’t have a game to announce and they were wearing t-shirts saying “No, we won’t talk about the settlement”. Scratching off the two post pressing subjects from any curious visitors’ lists.
The settlement in question is the one that ended a months long legal battle between Activision and Vince Zampella & Jason West. Zampella and West filed a suit against Activision claiming thatInfinity Ward had received no royalty payments for their work on Modern Warfare 2, a substantial pile of cash. Activision counter-sued saying thatthe two had breached their contract by meeting with rival publishers. If Zampella and West won then they would assume ownership of the Call of Duty franchise. Activision then updated itscounter-suitto include EA, saying the publisher had schemed with the two developers to undermine Infinity Ward’s work on the Call of Duty franchise.
Then, just as it was unclear who would come out as a winner in court, the two parties settled. This settlement is what Zampella and West refuse to talk about.
Let’s hope, for their sake then, that they have a game to show off this year.