Infinity Ward insider: The studio is now “dead”

With its core employees gone, an insider source close to Infinity Ward says that the Call of Duty studio is now basically “dead” and will continue to crumble as the day goes by.

With its core employees gone, an insider source close to Infinity Ward says that the Call of Duty studio is now basically “dead” and will continue to crumble as the day goes by. Speaking privately to Kotaku, the source claims that the recent departures of top developers along with the formation of Respawn studios by Jason West and Frank Zampella is scaring the hell out of Activision:

They’re scared shitless. They never saw this coming. They can’t believe what’s going on. At first they gave us some bullshit about moving up payments of all the money they owe us to sooner increments. That was when [designer] Todd [Alderman] and [engineer] Frank [Gigliotti] left. But with the announcement of Respawn and all the people leaving, they just got there heads in their hands.

They fired the two most amazing leaders we’ve ever seen, and then shafted us all out of a lot of money that was promised to us…there is nothing they can do to gain our trust or respect. And I’m pretty sure they know it now.

The source then revealed that Activision is currently bringing in people from other studios to fill up the vacant positions, in the hopes to start the development of Modern Warfare 3. But that won’t work, according to the insider:

IW as you know it is dead…and it will continue to crumble. There are a lot more veterans who are definitely going to leave.

But on the other hand, another IW insider responded to Kotaku’s post and is taking the whole thing differently:

First off, yes, it is a shitty situation, but there are two kinds of people left: ones that are sticking it out for the money, and others who want to make something work. We are not dead, we definitely lost original team members, but not all of the talent. When you talk about the people who left, they are the best in the business, but equally everyone at Infinity Ward deserves that same credential. We are here for the long haul of keeping the Modern Warfare name alive, but as your article clearly shows, certain people are still pissed about it. We just had this discussion in our Monday meeting, ‘We still have the talent that will get us to where we need to go, and now is the time to find our new leaders.’

Via [Kotaku]