Fifth wave of walkouts at damaged Infinity Ward

The reputation of Infinity Ward continues to sink to new lows as more staff announce their departure from the Modern Warfare outfit.

Activision’s billion-dollar cash cow has seen its workforce chip away after sacking the studio’s co-founders and launching a bitter legal row against them.

Yesterday saw two separate revelations of staff walking out of the studio. Today another four, it is said, have left the outfit.

[TIMELINE – INFINITY-GATE]

The alleged departures of Steve Fukuda, Zied Reike, programmer Rayme Vinson, and lead artist Chris Cherubini takes the walkout tally up to nine.

Yesterday it was confirmed that senior animator Bruce Ferriz, experienced programmer Jon Shiring and lead designer Mackey McCandlish have separately quit the studio.

The unremittingly tense relationship between Infinity Ward and its owner Activision – built up over the past two years – quickly became the backdrop to fierce legal allegations by both Activision and the ousted Infinity Ward co-founders, Vince Zampella and Jason West.

Those two co-founders have now established their own independent outfit and have secured a major deal with EA.

Activision is still putting on a brave face. It says it has a deep bench of proven talent.

It is not know how many of the ex-Infinity Ward staff are on to join Respawn, but pending any legal restriction, expect to see multiple hires over the next few months.