IW rebels defect to Respawn

In what is fast becoming a stabbing PR attack on the biggest game publisher in the world, a group of ex-Infinity Ward employees have rushed to join Zampella and West’s Respawn Entertainment – the indie studio formed out of a high-profile and ferocious legal row with Activision.

In a perfect demonstration that the whisper is louder than the scream, last night seven ex-Infinity Ward designers, engineers and animators quietly changed their job statuses on the social networking site LinkedIn. Where there was once the name of the Modern Warfare studio sitting atop the developers’ CVs, today there is Respawn.

It’s no coincidence that each developer happened to change their profile pages at the same time. Like with the protagonists in Activision’s lucrative war-FPS series, this was a synchronised, swift and staged assault.

Those joining Respawn from Infinity Ward are lead designer Todd Alderman, lead animators Mark Grisby and John Paul Messerly, lead environmental artist Chris Cherubini, software engineer Rayme C. Vinson, programmer Jon Shirling and lead designer Mackey McCandlish.

For more details, head over to Develop.