Frontier Developments chairman David Braben has criticised Activision for its treatment of Call Of Duty creator Infinity Ward.
According to Braben, Activision’s sacking of Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella in March - a move which has since resulted in a string of employee walkouts – was a short-sighted demonstration of “corporate disloyalty”.
“I don't think this situation is damaging to the industry as a whole - quite the opposite - but it will be for Activision," Braben told CVG. "What it highlights is the way the board level management appear not to value their own teams, or even understand what it is they care about.
"This whole saga is not about people moving on after a project - it is about corporate disloyalty,” he added. “It is about giant organisations not fully appreciating where their long term value comes from. They have let some of their 'seedcorn' go, and it won't show on their bottom line for a while, but it will show eventually.”
In a separate interview with IndustryGamers, Laird Malamed, Activision’s senior VP of development, addressed criticism regarding the publisher’s treatment of its development studios.
"I know those questions [about repairing our image with developers] are on people’s minds”, he said, adding that Activision treats its studios with respect. "I think that our record overall speaks for itself. We’ve had an independent game development culture since Raven, our first external studio that came on board; they joined in 1997 and we had a ten-year anniversary with them back in 2007. [CEO] Bobby Kotick talked about how the model came out of that acquisition when working with Raven, and letting people run their own shops. We have a dozen or so developers operate on that principle."
"On the same token, I look at the deal we just did with Bungie in Seattle, and that to me is evidence that we are doing stuff right. They feel comfortable in trusting us to produce their products with them. That’s a pretty big catch; that’s a triple-A team, and that’s really our goal to have triple-A teams."