themadlionsfan
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What leads up to your termination?
Schwartz: [West and Zampella] were negotiating [a new contract with Activision]. [Activision has] Harold Brown, a top-flight Hollywood entertainment lawyer. They were making progress. They're giving up their right to do their own game [of their choosing], they're going to do Modern Warfare 3. This is February 2010 - a month before they got fired. So, fine - the same bonus arrangement, same everything. Activision guarantees them a big chunk of bonuses if the game is delivered on time and gets a 90-plus Metacritic score - so it's not much of a guarantee. At the end of the game, Activision will let them go off on their own and be independent. By the way, their contracts would have been up anyway, so it's not giving them anything. The dispute they are trying to get around is that these guys are saying, "Look, when we set up a new company we'd like to hire up to 10 people from Infinity Ward."
These people should be free to go wherever they want. And, if they leave, all the stock options and whatever - they should vest and they should not be hurt if they are going with us to make games for [Activision]. It should be a non-event. Activision is saying, "No, no, no." And, by the way, Activision is saying you have to sign new employment agreements for these remaining two years.
This is the third day of meetings between Activision's lawyers and their lawyers. Their lawyers go over, and Activision comes out of their lawyers' office and they are talking and talking. Their lieutenant counsel says, "I just don't think we can come to an agreement on this. Give this to Jason and Vince." He shoves across the table a piece of paper.
What does the piece of paper say? "You are hereby being notified that you are being investigated for improper conduct and breach of fiduciary duty. You may not talk to anybody about this and must cooperate in full or that in itself will be potential grounds for termination. We haven't made any decision about what we're going to do in this investigation - whether there is any discipline to be had or termination - but you better take us very seriously. Thank you very much."
West: The thing that blows my mind is that they showed up to the meeting with that thing printed out in their briefcase already. It wasn't an email. It was hours of conversation, then reach in and pull out the paper. This was all very surprising, by the way. You're waiting for the call to be like, "Did they take the offer?" Well, actually, they gave me this piece of paper. That was a surprise. [Laughs]
Schwartz: In court they said this is a completely neutral investigation - "We just wanted to get the facts and see if these guys had done anything wrong because we were concerned they might have been talking to a competitor and we needed to know where we stood." Well, they started a secret investigation about a year earlier called Project Buzz and later was called Project Icebreaker. It was a secret task force. It was to look at what these guys were doing and see if they should fire them [and] if we fire them, who's going to take their place?
This is a task force that has paperwork?
Schwartz: Yes, Project Icebreaker. They have these PowerPoint slides in October and November that say, "Here's what we project the Modern Warfare 2 launch quarter bonuses to be for Infinity Ward studios. Here's Jason and Vince's share that we save if they are not there anymore. Here's what we need to do to retain the other guys that might leave if these guys aren't there anymore."
How is this even going to court?
Schwartz: Spin - lawyers will spin.
Vince: When they handed us that paper across the table, they already had a room booked the next day and they started showing up at the studio and pulling people out of the studio.
Schwartz: They'd already hired the law firm. The whole Icebreaker group that had been investigating them for months rounding up all the data, the documents, the emails, and whatever, and in a matter of days dumped it all on the law firms, including a 19-page, single-spaced [list of] questions to ask these guys - by topic - all ready to go. That's not very independent, or neutral.
They told the investigators who to talk to, when to talk to them, what to ask them, what issues to talk about.
What else can you tell us about Project Icebreaker?
Schwartz: You'll love this. Summer 2009 - May 2009. Before E3, the big [event] for Modern Warfare 2. Do you know who George Rose is? He was the head lawyer for [Activision].
So George Rose goes into the office of this guy named Thomas Fenady. He's some kind of IT whiz at Activision. He's sitting in his office and has no idea what is going to walk in his office. [Rose says], "Hey, this comes right from the top. I have a project for you from [Activision Blizzard CEO] Bobby Kotick. Jason and Vince - you know those guys? We're really sick of them. We want to get rid of them; we want to fire them. You need to break into their computers and dig up dirt to be used to justify firing them." [Fenady] testified to this.
So Fenady gets really nervous. He goes to his boss and his boss finds out about it and his boss says, "You should not get involved in something like this - this doesn't sound right." George Rose finds out about this, comes into his office, and goes, "Look, this comes from Bobby Kotick. If you do this, Bobby will protect you if anything happens. But remember, the number one priority is do not get caught."
So he tries to break into the Infinity Ward server to read emails. He sees there is a firewall there, but he breaks through the firewall. He's now seeing their email server, but he can't make any sense out of it. So he calls Microsoft and says, "Hey we have this Microsoft Exchange server out at Infinity Ward. Can you help us figure out how to break the password and read the emails?"
Microsoft said, "Do you have a court order? This makes us feel very uncomfortable."
What happened at that point?
Schwartz: Then he goes to a vender that does penetration testing called InGuardians and they said, "Hmm, this sounds like some black bag operation, we'll help you but you have to give us an indemnity and a get out of jail free card against any criminal or civil liability." Then, they realized they can't do anything unless they have physical access to the premises.
They then go to the facilities guys and they say, "Look, we need to get into Jason and Vince's computers and the other computers at Infinity Ward. Can you stage a mock fire drill or something to get them out of the building so we can go in and grab the computer's image [Editor's Note: This refers to the process of cloning a computer's contents.] and get out before they know what's happened?"
They tried to keep that evidence out. Two weeks ago they had a motion in front of the judge and said, "This is a sideshow, this is bull----." We said, "No, this is the core of the case, your honor. This tells you that everything they've been telling you and want to tell the jury about why they fired them is complete bull----. It had nothing to do with EA. EA didn't even call these guys up until two months after that."
There's more stuff. In January 2009, now you're 14 months before they get fired. This is after World at War. It's from [Activision executive vice president of worldwide studios] Dave Stohl to [Activision president of publishing] Mike Griffith, and he's saying, "I heard from Bobby that [Activision Blizzard co-chairman] Brian Kelly told you that he's so over Jason and Vince. Is everybody ready for the big PR blowout if we kick them out? What are we going to do to finish the game? Maybe we should just wait." This is 14 months before they get fired.
Head to page two to hear what their odds are in court, and if they would have made Modern Warfare 3.
Schwartz: [West and Zampella] were negotiating [a new contract with Activision]. [Activision has] Harold Brown, a top-flight Hollywood entertainment lawyer. They were making progress. They're giving up their right to do their own game [of their choosing], they're going to do Modern Warfare 3. This is February 2010 - a month before they got fired. So, fine - the same bonus arrangement, same everything. Activision guarantees them a big chunk of bonuses if the game is delivered on time and gets a 90-plus Metacritic score - so it's not much of a guarantee. At the end of the game, Activision will let them go off on their own and be independent. By the way, their contracts would have been up anyway, so it's not giving them anything. The dispute they are trying to get around is that these guys are saying, "Look, when we set up a new company we'd like to hire up to 10 people from Infinity Ward."
These people should be free to go wherever they want. And, if they leave, all the stock options and whatever - they should vest and they should not be hurt if they are going with us to make games for [Activision]. It should be a non-event. Activision is saying, "No, no, no." And, by the way, Activision is saying you have to sign new employment agreements for these remaining two years.
This is the third day of meetings between Activision's lawyers and their lawyers. Their lawyers go over, and Activision comes out of their lawyers' office and they are talking and talking. Their lieutenant counsel says, "I just don't think we can come to an agreement on this. Give this to Jason and Vince." He shoves across the table a piece of paper.
What does the piece of paper say? "You are hereby being notified that you are being investigated for improper conduct and breach of fiduciary duty. You may not talk to anybody about this and must cooperate in full or that in itself will be potential grounds for termination. We haven't made any decision about what we're going to do in this investigation - whether there is any discipline to be had or termination - but you better take us very seriously. Thank you very much."
West: The thing that blows my mind is that they showed up to the meeting with that thing printed out in their briefcase already. It wasn't an email. It was hours of conversation, then reach in and pull out the paper. This was all very surprising, by the way. You're waiting for the call to be like, "Did they take the offer?" Well, actually, they gave me this piece of paper. That was a surprise. [Laughs]
Schwartz: In court they said this is a completely neutral investigation - "We just wanted to get the facts and see if these guys had done anything wrong because we were concerned they might have been talking to a competitor and we needed to know where we stood." Well, they started a secret investigation about a year earlier called Project Buzz and later was called Project Icebreaker. It was a secret task force. It was to look at what these guys were doing and see if they should fire them [and] if we fire them, who's going to take their place?
This is a task force that has paperwork?
Schwartz: Yes, Project Icebreaker. They have these PowerPoint slides in October and November that say, "Here's what we project the Modern Warfare 2 launch quarter bonuses to be for Infinity Ward studios. Here's Jason and Vince's share that we save if they are not there anymore. Here's what we need to do to retain the other guys that might leave if these guys aren't there anymore."
How is this even going to court?
Schwartz: Spin - lawyers will spin.
Vince: When they handed us that paper across the table, they already had a room booked the next day and they started showing up at the studio and pulling people out of the studio.
Schwartz: They'd already hired the law firm. The whole Icebreaker group that had been investigating them for months rounding up all the data, the documents, the emails, and whatever, and in a matter of days dumped it all on the law firms, including a 19-page, single-spaced [list of] questions to ask these guys - by topic - all ready to go. That's not very independent, or neutral.
They told the investigators who to talk to, when to talk to them, what to ask them, what issues to talk about.
What else can you tell us about Project Icebreaker?
Schwartz: You'll love this. Summer 2009 - May 2009. Before E3, the big [event] for Modern Warfare 2. Do you know who George Rose is? He was the head lawyer for [Activision].
So George Rose goes into the office of this guy named Thomas Fenady. He's some kind of IT whiz at Activision. He's sitting in his office and has no idea what is going to walk in his office. [Rose says], "Hey, this comes right from the top. I have a project for you from [Activision Blizzard CEO] Bobby Kotick. Jason and Vince - you know those guys? We're really sick of them. We want to get rid of them; we want to fire them. You need to break into their computers and dig up dirt to be used to justify firing them." [Fenady] testified to this.
So Fenady gets really nervous. He goes to his boss and his boss finds out about it and his boss says, "You should not get involved in something like this - this doesn't sound right." George Rose finds out about this, comes into his office, and goes, "Look, this comes from Bobby Kotick. If you do this, Bobby will protect you if anything happens. But remember, the number one priority is do not get caught."
So he tries to break into the Infinity Ward server to read emails. He sees there is a firewall there, but he breaks through the firewall. He's now seeing their email server, but he can't make any sense out of it. So he calls Microsoft and says, "Hey we have this Microsoft Exchange server out at Infinity Ward. Can you help us figure out how to break the password and read the emails?"
Microsoft said, "Do you have a court order? This makes us feel very uncomfortable."
What happened at that point?
Schwartz: Then he goes to a vender that does penetration testing called InGuardians and they said, "Hmm, this sounds like some black bag operation, we'll help you but you have to give us an indemnity and a get out of jail free card against any criminal or civil liability." Then, they realized they can't do anything unless they have physical access to the premises.
They then go to the facilities guys and they say, "Look, we need to get into Jason and Vince's computers and the other computers at Infinity Ward. Can you stage a mock fire drill or something to get them out of the building so we can go in and grab the computer's image [Editor's Note: This refers to the process of cloning a computer's contents.] and get out before they know what's happened?"
They tried to keep that evidence out. Two weeks ago they had a motion in front of the judge and said, "This is a sideshow, this is bull----." We said, "No, this is the core of the case, your honor. This tells you that everything they've been telling you and want to tell the jury about why they fired them is complete bull----. It had nothing to do with EA. EA didn't even call these guys up until two months after that."
There's more stuff. In January 2009, now you're 14 months before they get fired. This is after World at War. It's from [Activision executive vice president of worldwide studios] Dave Stohl to [Activision president of publishing] Mike Griffith, and he's saying, "I heard from Bobby that [Activision Blizzard co-chairman] Brian Kelly told you that he's so over Jason and Vince. Is everybody ready for the big PR blowout if we kick them out? What are we going to do to finish the game? Maybe we should just wait." This is 14 months before they get fired.
Head to page two to hear what their odds are in court, and if they would have made Modern Warfare 3.
