For those of you who haven't kept up with the Activision vs Infinity Ward (Makers of the Call Of Duty series).

It started with the firing of Infinity Ward's two bosses.

They started a new studio called "Respawn".

EA said, "Here have a shitload of money to make games, and we'll publish them"

Then a few Infinity Ward employees quit, and were soon scooped up by Respawn.

And, as of today:

[From Kotaku]
The exodus from Modern Warfare developers Infinity Ward continues at a breakneck pace, with news today that a further eight employees have left the studio in the wake of the "Legal Warfare" showdown.

In addition to the five men who left on Friday, we've learned that three more - level designer Keith Bell, designer Charlie Wiederhold and level designer Preston Glenn - also packed up and left the Activision-owned Infinity Ward at the end of last week.

Adding to these are five more, all of whom left yesterday: lead character artist Joel Emslie, weapons artist Ryan Lastimosa, artist Brad Allen, lead programmer Robert Field and our first non-developmental one of the bunch, HR/recruitment specialist Kristin Cotterell.

That brings us to a staggering 26 employees in total to have left Infinity Ward since the drama began, a tally which constitutes the bulk of the studio's creative and programming "brains trust".

There's no official word yet on where these ex-employees have ended up, but...yeah. (Respawn)

Maybe because they were working for Hitler?

I mean seriously. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick doesn't care about the products his company makes or the people who buy them, he only cares about profit. Unfortunately, he works in a industry where the customers are very passionate about the products. Not only is it bad enough that he acts this way, but he came out and publicly said it.

This guy is R. J. Fletcher (UHF) in the flesh.

Remember RJ's speech about how the community means as much to him as a festering bowl of dog snot?

Kotick, gave damn near the same speech.

Not to mention the famous "I want to take the fun out of making video games." speech.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94711-Bobby-Kotick-Wants-to-Take-the-Fun-Out-of-Making-Games

Well the new COD 7, is being handled by Treyarch, (Who made COD 3 and 5:World At War) so it shouldn't be to different from the series. Treyarch usually takes the already made engine from Infinty Ward, and reskins it. "World At War" was just a retextured Modern Warfare 1 set in WW2, so I expect COD 7 to be a reskinned MW2 set in Korea or Vietnam.

It's sad to say, since I hate Activision and what MW2 was, but I am very excited for COD7 if it is set in Nam, as I have a weird fasination with the Vietnam War (Or conflict, depending on who you ask, since Congress never declared war.) and Nam games. So far out of the very small handful available only to have been worth a damn. ("Battlefield: Vietnam" and "Vietcong")

Also, it appears that Activision has already replaced Infinity Ward. I just read today that they signed a 10 year deal with.... Bungie. Yep, the Halo guys.

The largest irony, is that Activision was the first 3rd party puiblisher, and it was made up of disgrunted programmers from Atari who felt they should be recognized for their work, and paid better. And, now Activision apparently doesn't want to pay it's programmers and software staff. This is why companies are good. Corporations are bad. Fuck publically traded company, and the ancient and obsolete stock market. Nobody who serious buys stock (investors) care about what a company does or makes, as long as it is profitable. A good company goes public, get taken over buy majority shareholders who fire the people that started the company, and replace them with glorified accounted with Harvard MBAs and not the first idea about what the company does.