I saw a few people mention that they think this may be a publicity stunt. While I don't work there personally or know anyone there, I'm pretty sure it is not a "publicity stunt". The only people that are even aware of this whole lawsuit are people in the industry or enthusiasts (Kotaku readers, Gamasutra readers, etc.)
Johnny Gamer accounts for most of Call of Duty's sales, and he is never going to hear about this lawsuit, or care if he did. Activision knows this, and that's why they wouldn't make up some elaborate story (especially a negetive one).
EA was brought up as well. I would be genuinely suprised if they went back to work for EA considering they left EA after they were frustrated with the way EA was handling the Medal of Honor franchise. But who knows... Maybe they will male a new studio and go under the EA partners thing... Stranger things have happened in this industry.
I remember playing the first CoD and thinking "Wow, this is just as good as Allied Assault!" This was before I even knew what a developer was.
Good times.
Sad to see the core people no longer being in IW, hopefully they'll go and start another new company. They can do the whole "from the makers of Call of Duty" to get more publicity for whatever game they work on.
Well unless IW had a non-compete clause in the employees contracts (which afaik is extremely rare in this industry) I'd expect a good chunk of the studio to leave over the next couple months.
I dont get this attitude at all. Yes, Activision are being a huge bag of dicks here, but these two exiting execs are not "little guys", they're executives. They get paid big bucks to make money off the hard work of everyone below them.
If they were shopping around a brand they didn't own then they're not heroes. If they were shopping around a studio they didn't fully own then they technically were being quite insubordinate.
The top guys leaving IW, and Activision alike, are both going to end up (or is it remain?) rich as hell. The people that are going to get fucked are the hard working regular joe artists, programmers, etc. That sucks.
I hear ya sandbag, "little guys" probably wasn't the right term to use (we are talking in comparison to Activision though), but as far as studio heads go, these guys seemed pretty cool:
Infinity Ward has lost another key employee today, as programmer Jon Shiring announced his resignation.
Shiring announced he was leaving the Modern Warfare developer on Twitter today, saying "After almost 6 years at Infinity Ward, I resigned today. I'm incredibly proud of everything we accomplished and I'm going to miss everyone."
Shiring has been at Infinity Ward since June 2004, serving as programmer on Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2. His personal website also shows that he worked at Namco Hometek prior to its closure.
Infinity Ward's two founders announced a new studio, Respawn Entertainment, this morning. Two additional key figures left the company earlier this month.
It is unclear if Shiring's resignation is related to the formation of Respawn. 1UP has reached out to Shiring for clarification, and will update this story if any new information becomes available.
[Photo: Jon Shiring]
Update: Shiring has responded to our inquiry, saying he has "no announcements" other than the resignation itself. We'd like to take this opportunity to wish him the best of luck in his next move, whatever it may be.
According to an interview I read earlier they were inspired to name their new company "Respawn" while playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Wonderfully ironic, I think - the DICE guys were cheering them on via Twitter today.
It's almost like working in the game industry makes you a celebrity among nerds. I feel like I should be collecting trading cards of all the game dev's and their stats on the back.
Anyways, I hope everything works out good for them. Kinda eager already to see what Respawn comes out with.
Who knows, maybe this will start a trend with Publishers treating developers nicer and not forcing out so much shovelware and bad sequels.
Not blaming pubs ENTIRELY for this but, still.
Yesterday Infinity Ward lost their Lead designers - Steve Fukada and Zied Reike, Lead artist - Chris Cherubini, Lead character animator - Paul Messerly, Lead animator - Marks Grigsby and some other dudes.
Looks to me like Infinity Ward 2.0 is around the corner
its middle of April now and they still haven't paid out the royalties ? If that's the case they will probably hold out for another month to weed out more people. It's in their best interests not to pay out to people they suspect to leave the studio..
Not really, you would only be entitled to royalty payments as long as you are an employee of the company. When you leave, dismissed or resigned you surrender all the claims on royalties.
Think of it as a performance or holiday bonus. You may be promised one, but if you leave they surely wouldn't pursue paying you that bonus. You are only "owed" it if you are with the company. Which is probably why they could be withholding the royalties from IW staff.
I am sure the Activision execs already got their MW3 bonuses
Goes to show these people are idiots working for these companys, if they think those are reasonable terms.
It should be illegal to with hold payments, even if they leave. No one banks on a higher ups, generosity. Anyone whom does are fools and you cant blame anyone for treating them as such.
But I doubt these people are fools or idiots, I'm betting they were contractually agreed to be paid a certain amount at completion of the project, not a bonus or holiday payment or whatever, but an amount whether they leave or not(as long as its after they complete the agreed job)that they must be paid.
Not really, you would only be entitled to royalty payments as long as you are an employee of the company. When you leave, dismissed or resigned you surrender all the claims on royalties.
Think of it as a performance or holiday bonus. You may be promised one, but if you leave they surely wouldn't pursue paying you that bonus. You are only "owed" it if you are with the company. Which is probably why they could be withholding the royalties from IW staff.
I am sure the Activision execs already got their MW3 bonuses
Im not so sure that a payment of that sort could be considered royalties
I think i said made a similar analogy earlier in the thread, but if a band leaves a label they do not forgo royalties for works created whilst with a particular label...why would games be different?
Now if it was a bonus ...
If employees were told by Activision that once they hit a set level of sales, each person would receive X%, then they would still be entitled to the money promised to them as long as they worked for IW when the target was reached.
If they then leave IW and a month later the next target was reached, they would not be entitled for the money for that target.
But anyway lol
I really hope everyone get the money that is owed to them
It will be interesting where everyone ends up
Royalties = payments due to you as a revenue from sales.
these exist outside of your standard bonus contracts and such. saying they aren't entitled to them because they no longer work at that studio is idiotic, it's like... if Metallica moved away from their record label, and were told they'd recieve none of the royalties due to them up until the day they left.
guarantee that record label would be sued to hell and back and would LOSE the suit.
I think you are trying to distinguish between a royalty payment and a bonus. But to a regular staff member they are essentially the same thing. They are just calculated and negotiated differently. But in the end all it is, is an additional cheque for you hard work.
Regular working staff don't sign contractual agreement where they are owed an established amount of money for completing a project. What you do get is quarterly bonuses in terms of royalties which are calculated from the sales of the product in the marketplace. The terms of such royalties are negotiated between the developer and publisher. You usually have to hit a certain "break even" mark before you are owed any royalties. The amount of actual money you get is not up to you. You are not promised any specific amount of money but it's safe to assume that if your company has a royalty/profit sharing scheme and you shipped a very successful product then you should expect a decent cheque.
You have to remember though, the royalty agreement is not between you and the company but it's between developer and publisher. Once you leave you are not entitled to any future bonuses which include royalty bonuses, studio profit sharing bonuses and any other performance bonuses.
The 2 head honchos at IW ward may have had separate contracts with Activision which would guarantee them some kind of a completion bonus and a decent chuck of royalties after shipping. But you have to remember this doesnt apply to regular working staff.
The analogy of a relationship between a recording artist and recording label doesn't apply because often times the recording artist likes to keep the ownership of the music and negotiates royalties accordingly. If you are an employee of a studio all the work you do is the property of the studio, you can have credit over the content but not ownership.
So think of the money as a royalty agreement between a developer and publisher. When it passes hands onto the developer it's then distributed as a bonus and can be called "royalty, profit sharing, performance bonus".
Now usually a publisher does these kind of calculations quarterly so IW's royalty payments would roll around March. It's well into April now so they seem to be holding out
To reiterate.. Royalty is something that's negotiated between the developer heads and the publisher. The money that comes out of it is a simple bonus to the working staff. How that money is distributed depends on the company. Some spread it evenly among all the developer staff, other times it depends on seniority and contribution.
well no, a royalty is NOT anything like a bonus. it's a payment to you, for someone else making a profit from your work.
example: i write a song, i can't sing, but i know someone who can. they can purchase the song from me at a rate of 10% royalty per sale, this agreement would end if i sold the rights to that song to another artist.
example of a bonus: i write an album, and it sells better than expected, my record label give me a £100k bonus because i went platinum.
I dont want to seem like an arse here so please dont take this the wrong way.
You are correct that i am distinguishing between royalty payments and a bonus as by definition they are quite different, though they both result in a cheque. (which is what really matters)
Royalties "Compensation for the use of property, usually copyrighted works, patented inventions, or natural resources, expressed as a percentage of receipts from using the property or as a payment for each unit produced"
Bonus "payment over and above salary given to an employee as an incentive or reward"
A situation where an employee gets an amount of money due to a sales target being hit is a bonus where a situation when a pre-set guaranteed percentage (after any advance is recovered) for each and every very unit sold are royalties.
Royalties are also counted in law to be personal property and are passed on to the next of kin when a person dies, so its doubtful that any regular staff members get them otherwise Activision would definitely not be legally entitled to withhold payment.
If staff members do in fact get royalties, they would be entitled to payment regardless of where they work and if they get a bonus they would only be entitled to any monies owed if the targets were hit whilst they were working for IW and no further payment.
Im only stressing this point because the two terms are vastly different in law.
If Activision are withholding royalties (by definition) then they would be in serious trouble as they would be stealing from employees.
Its funny this kind of thing "build a studio sell it to a publisher, walk away to start another studio" was pretty common, but was done pretty quietly. Too bad its getting more press this time.
This time around though its one of the most successfull studios in the world, include that, and everyones favorite to hate bobby kottick, along with the fact that it just didn't go like activision had hoped.
It does happen, but this time its on quite a big scale since its activisions golden goose, and so many other volatile factors included.
since Activision is accusing the founders of not fairly distributing the royalty money to the rest of IW I think that's the setup they have: IW gets the royalty money which it then distributes as it chooses.
Its funny this kind of thing "build a studio sell it to a publisher, walk away to start another studio" was pretty common, but was done pretty quietly. Too bad its getting more press this time.
Too bad? You're kidding right?...this is great that its getting the attention it deserves
I dont want to seem like an arse here so please dont take this the wrong way.
You are correct that i am distinguishing between royalty payments and a bonus as by definition they are quite different, though they both result in a cheque. (which is what really matters)
Royalties "Compensation for the use of property, usually copyrighted works, patented inventions, or natural resources, expressed as a percentage of receipts from using the property or as a payment for each unit produced"
Bonus "payment over and above salary given to an employee as an incentive or reward"
A situation where an employee gets an amount of money due to a sales target being hit is a bonus where a situation when a pre-set guaranteed percentage (after any advance is recovered) for each and every very unit sold are royalties.
Royalties are also counted in law to be personal property and are passed on to the next of kin when a person dies, so its doubtful that any regular staff members get them otherwise Activision would definitely not be legally entitled to withhold payment.
If staff members do in fact get royalties, they would be entitled to payment regardless of where they work and if they get a bonus they would only be entitled to any monies owed if the targets were hit whilst they were working for IW and no further payment.
Im only stressing this point because the two terms are vastly different in law.
If Activision are withholding royalties (by definition) then they would be in serious trouble as they would be stealing from employees.
Yep, you are correct .. The confusion stems from the fact that the term royalty is used where a "bonus" is probably the more appropriate term.
Royalty is something that's negotiated between Infinity Ward and Activision. The money recieved by the IW development staff from those royalties is distributed as a bonus. I hope that clarifies things.
Royalties and right to the royalties were likely negotiated between two heads of Infinity Ward and Activision under specific contracts. Thus, they may in fact be owed a significant amount of money especially since their employment has been terminated.
However that does not apply to regular development staff who are due to recieve their bonuses from their royalties. However they do not own any rights to the property of Call of Duty thus they would not be receiving such bonuses if their employment at the company ends before such bonuses are distributed.
I hope that clarifies things. These royalties arent actual royalties to the development staff, think of them as simple bonuses that are calculated out of royalties recieved by IW Execs from Activision.
Activision is in fact withholding royalties (by definition) from IW execs that they fired. However they are not withholding them from IW development staff since the staff holds no rights over the property and there is no direct contractual obligation between Activision and IW development staff regarding royalty payments.
At my previous company I was signed to a salary that could be negotiated on yearly basis. In addition there were also bonuses that were based off of royalties and usually distributed on quarterly basis. But you have to remember that these are bonuses. I am not guaranteed them to be regular or to be a specific amount. Our boss received them as royalty payments under specific contracts he negotiated between his studio and the publisher. He then distributed them among the development staff equally. This is common in the industry. However they are just bonuses. They are not royalties (by law) to me.
I've been following this thing since the beginning, and I can't express my rage with Activision. It seems to me, that Activision clearly was investigating the two heads of IW for dirt in order to fire them forinsubordination in order to take control over a starting rebellious studio wanting control over their work. I cannot comprehend how much of a asshole move this is by Activision, clearly saying "screw you" to the studio that has made them more money then most of us will ever set our eyes upon. Surely there must be some laws in America that actually protect the drones, and not only the queens? If not, damn I'm glad for that I live and work in Denmark where corporations get punished for doing asshole moves.
Replies
Johnny Gamer accounts for most of Call of Duty's sales, and he is never going to hear about this lawsuit, or care if he did. Activision knows this, and that's why they wouldn't make up some elaborate story (especially a negetive one).
EA was brought up as well. I would be genuinely suprised if they went back to work for EA considering they left EA after they were frustrated with the way EA was handling the Medal of Honor franchise. But who knows... Maybe they will male a new studio and go under the EA partners thing... Stranger things have happened in this industry.
Can't wait to see what they do next though (not EA, the little guys!)
LOL!!!!
gogurt, man I haven´t heard that in forever.
I remember playing the first CoD and thinking "Wow, this is just as good as Allied Assault!" This was before I even knew what a developer was.
Good times.
Sad to see the core people no longer being in IW, hopefully they'll go and start another new company. They can do the whole "from the makers of Call of Duty" to get more publicity for whatever game they work on.
"Jason West and Vince Zampella Form 'Respawn Entertainment'"
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jason-West-and-Vince-Zampella-bw-1906793642.html?x=0&.v=1
Get your job on - http://www.respawn.com/
I don't know how many will wait until the legal stuff is taken care of.
Pretty sure you are right on this one.
KARTS OF DUTY
Never played the game, so I can't validate this, but I do find it rather amusing.
Modern Warfare 3
I dont get this attitude at all. Yes, Activision are being a huge bag of dicks here, but these two exiting execs are not "little guys", they're executives. They get paid big bucks to make money off the hard work of everyone below them.
If they were shopping around a brand they didn't own then they're not heroes. If they were shopping around a studio they didn't fully own then they technically were being quite insubordinate.
The top guys leaving IW, and Activision alike, are both going to end up (or is it remain?) rich as hell. The people that are going to get fucked are the hard working regular joe artists, programmers, etc. That sucks.
[ame]
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178771
Anyways, I hope everything works out good for them. Kinda eager already to see what Respawn comes out with.
Not blaming pubs ENTIRELY for this but, still.
Looks to me like Infinity Ward 2.0 is around the corner
Think of it as a performance or holiday bonus. You may be promised one, but if you leave they surely wouldn't pursue paying you that bonus. You are only "owed" it if you are with the company. Which is probably why they could be withholding the royalties from IW staff.
I am sure the Activision execs already got their MW3 bonuses
It should be illegal to with hold payments, even if they leave. No one banks on a higher ups, generosity. Anyone whom does are fools and you cant blame anyone for treating them as such.
But I doubt these people are fools or idiots, I'm betting they were contractually agreed to be paid a certain amount at completion of the project, not a bonus or holiday payment or whatever, but an amount whether they leave or not(as long as its after they complete the agreed job)that they must be paid.
Or maybe they are idiots.
Im not so sure that a payment of that sort could be considered royalties
I think i said made a similar analogy earlier in the thread, but if a band leaves a label they do not forgo royalties for works created whilst with a particular label...why would games be different?
Now if it was a bonus ...
If employees were told by Activision that once they hit a set level of sales, each person would receive X%, then they would still be entitled to the money promised to them as long as they worked for IW when the target was reached.
If they then leave IW and a month later the next target was reached, they would not be entitled for the money for that target.
But anyway lol
I really hope everyone get the money that is owed to them
It will be interesting where everyone ends up
these exist outside of your standard bonus contracts and such. saying they aren't entitled to them because they no longer work at that studio is idiotic, it's like... if Metallica moved away from their record label, and were told they'd recieve none of the royalties due to them up until the day they left.
guarantee that record label would be sued to hell and back and would LOSE the suit.
edit: metalliandy got their first...
Regular working staff don't sign contractual agreement where they are owed an established amount of money for completing a project. What you do get is quarterly bonuses in terms of royalties which are calculated from the sales of the product in the marketplace. The terms of such royalties are negotiated between the developer and publisher. You usually have to hit a certain "break even" mark before you are owed any royalties. The amount of actual money you get is not up to you. You are not promised any specific amount of money but it's safe to assume that if your company has a royalty/profit sharing scheme and you shipped a very successful product then you should expect a decent cheque.
You have to remember though, the royalty agreement is not between you and the company but it's between developer and publisher. Once you leave you are not entitled to any future bonuses which include royalty bonuses, studio profit sharing bonuses and any other performance bonuses.
The 2 head honchos at IW ward may have had separate contracts with Activision which would guarantee them some kind of a completion bonus and a decent chuck of royalties after shipping. But you have to remember this doesnt apply to regular working staff.
The analogy of a relationship between a recording artist and recording label doesn't apply because often times the recording artist likes to keep the ownership of the music and negotiates royalties accordingly. If you are an employee of a studio all the work you do is the property of the studio, you can have credit over the content but not ownership.
So think of the money as a royalty agreement between a developer and publisher. When it passes hands onto the developer it's then distributed as a bonus and can be called "royalty, profit sharing, performance bonus".
Now usually a publisher does these kind of calculations quarterly so IW's royalty payments would roll around March. It's well into April now so they seem to be holding out
To reiterate.. Royalty is something that's negotiated between the developer heads and the publisher. The money that comes out of it is a simple bonus to the working staff. How that money is distributed depends on the company. Some spread it evenly among all the developer staff, other times it depends on seniority and contribution.
example: i write a song, i can't sing, but i know someone who can. they can purchase the song from me at a rate of 10% royalty per sale, this agreement would end if i sold the rights to that song to another artist.
example of a bonus: i write an album, and it sells better than expected, my record label give me a £100k bonus because i went platinum.
I dont want to seem like an arse here so please dont take this the wrong way.
You are correct that i am distinguishing between royalty payments and a bonus as by definition they are quite different, though they both result in a cheque. (which is what really matters)
Royalties "Compensation for the use of property, usually copyrighted works, patented inventions, or natural resources, expressed as a percentage of receipts from using the property or as a payment for each unit produced"
Bonus "payment over and above salary given to an employee as an incentive or reward"
A situation where an employee gets an amount of money due to a sales target being hit is a bonus where a situation when a pre-set guaranteed percentage (after any advance is recovered) for each and every very unit sold are royalties.
Royalties are also counted in law to be personal property and are passed on to the next of kin when a person dies, so its doubtful that any regular staff members get them otherwise Activision would definitely not be legally entitled to withhold payment.
If staff members do in fact get royalties, they would be entitled to payment regardless of where they work and if they get a bonus they would only be entitled to any monies owed if the targets were hit whilst they were working for IW and no further payment.
Im only stressing this point because the two terms are vastly different in law.
If Activision are withholding royalties (by definition) then they would be in serious trouble as they would be stealing from employees.
It does happen, but this time its on quite a big scale since its activisions golden goose, and so many other volatile factors included.
Too bad? You're kidding right?...this is great that its getting the attention it deserves
Yep, you are correct
Royalty is something that's negotiated between Infinity Ward and Activision. The money recieved by the IW development staff from those royalties is distributed as a bonus. I hope that clarifies things.
Royalties and right to the royalties were likely negotiated between two heads of Infinity Ward and Activision under specific contracts. Thus, they may in fact be owed a significant amount of money especially since their employment has been terminated.
However that does not apply to regular development staff who are due to recieve their bonuses from their royalties. However they do not own any rights to the property of Call of Duty thus they would not be receiving such bonuses if their employment at the company ends before such bonuses are distributed.
I hope that clarifies things. These royalties arent actual royalties to the development staff, think of them as simple bonuses that are calculated out of royalties recieved by IW Execs from Activision.
Activision is in fact withholding royalties (by definition) from IW execs that they fired. However they are not withholding them from IW development staff since the staff holds no rights over the property and there is no direct contractual obligation between Activision and IW development staff regarding royalty payments.
At my previous company I was signed to a salary that could be negotiated on yearly basis. In addition there were also bonuses that were based off of royalties and usually distributed on quarterly basis. But you have to remember that these are bonuses. I am not guaranteed them to be regular or to be a specific amount. Our boss received them as royalty payments under specific contracts he negotiated between his studio and the publisher. He then distributed them among the development staff equally. This is common in the industry. However they are just bonuses. They are not royalties (by law) to me.
I hope that finally clarifies things.
Yea i can see what you mean...in the end i really hope everyone get paid what is owed