Today on Headline
RePLAY: Activision’s corporate espionage attempt with “Project Icebreaker,”
Activision drops its countersuit against EA and Steam remote downloads are now available!
It looks like Activision’s
dismissal of ex-Infinity Ward leads Jason West and Vince Zampella wasn’t the
first time the publisher attempted to do such a thing, newly-released court
documents revealed today.
The documents,
acquired by Giant Bomb, claims that Activision has launched an internal
investigation called “Project Icebreaker” that aimed to “dig up dirt” on the Call of Duty creators in an effort to
see them fired.
Activision’s former
director of IT Thomas Fenady was instructed to “dig up dirt on Jason and Vince”
by chief legal officer (and current chief policy officer) George Rose because “we
just want to get rid of them.” Rose claimed the orders were from Activision CEO
Bobby Kotick, who he said would “take care of” Fenady.
Project Icebreaker
involved breaking into West and Zampella’s e-mail, voicemail and computer. In
order to accomplish these objectives, Fenady contacted Microsoft and security
specialist InGuardians. Microsoft refused to help without a court order and
InGuardians weren’t comfortable with the “legal hurdles.”
When that failed, there
was even discussion to gain access by staging a fake fumigation or mock fire
drill at Infinity Ward.
Rose denied
allegations that he asked Fenady to “dig up dirt”, but did concede on Project
Icebreaker’s existence and his instructions to Fenady to obtain information.
Activision seeks to
dismiss Fenady’s testimony under attorney-client privilege while West and
Zampella’s lawyers want to use it to prove that the publisher sought to remove
the ex-leads prior to the 2010 fallout.
|Source: Giant Bomb
Activision has dropped
its $400 million countersuit against EA today, announcing that the two
companies “have decided to put this matter behind them.”
The publisher accused EA
of “disrupting” Infinity Ward by “luring” away ex-leads Jason West and Vince
Zampella. Activision sought $400 million in damages from “delays” and “disruptions”
at Infinity Ward.
West and Zampella’s
lawsuit against Activision for unpaid royalties and bonuses remains, however,
and is scheduled for trial on May 29th, despite the publisher’s request to
postpone it for 30 days.
|Source: Bloomberg
The ability to remotely
download games to your PC or Mac was inevitable after Valve released its Steam mobile
app, which allowed users to access and manage their library of games outside of
the Steam client.
Steam’s remote downloads
are now available online, and all it requires is a PC or Mac with an active
Steam client and a web browser or the Steam mobile app.
Convenience, thy name
is Steam!
|Source: Steam
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