Call of Duty creators increase damages claim against Activision to $1bn

Recently we saw Activision and EA come to an out-of-court settlement over the alleged headhunting of Infinity Ward developers Jason West and Vince Zampella.

That may be over, but West and Zampella themselves are still locked in a lawsuit with previous employer Activision, suing the publisher for unfair dismissal, unpaid royalties and damages.

This originally began with a $36 million case back in 2010, and it was revealed earlier this week that Activision has paid $42 million in royalties to the Infinity Ward employees.

However, the waters were muddied when a leaked court document emerged this week which suggests that Activision was trying to boot the developers back in 2009, going so far as to imply that Infinity Ward’s emails were being monitored at the request of senior staff. It even had an ominous codename – “project Icebreaker”.

The originally $36 million case has inflated drastically, and the ex-employees are now asking for damages of a billion dollars – that’s nine zeroes for those counting at home.

The trial is going to start on May 29th as newly hired Activision attorney Beth Wilkinson asked for a 30-day extension to familiarize herself with the case. A fair request, since she is fighting to save Activision a tidy billion dollars.

Since leaving Activision West and Zampella set up a new studio cheekily dubbed Respawn Entertainment under EA, and when they’re not doing legal stuff they’re getting a team together and working on a new game.