Confused Infinity Ward Argues Whether It's Dead Or Not

With all the trouble that has hit Infinity Ward recently, it doesn't help that the studio itself seems confused about the situation. An anonymous source told Kotaku that the Modern Warfare 2 developer is "dead and will continue to crumble", shortly before a separate source debunked that claim by saying it is, in fact, "not dead."

Eh? A source close to Infinity Ward originally came forward and said that Activision management was "scared shitless" and "never saw" the chaos coming. Such chaos was the fallout of firing former studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella, which resulted in litigation, the establishment of Respawn Entertainment with publishing rival Electronic Arts and the leaking of many key employees at Infinity Ward.

But another anonymous source later appeared and defended the studio, admitting that a lot of key people had left the Modern Warfare 2 developer in the past week, but "we still have the talent that will get us to where we need to go, and now is the time to find our new leaders."

"There are two kinds of people left: ones that are sticking it out for the money, and others who want to make something work." Let's just hope those two motives don't clash too much. With a studio this confused, anything can happen.

Activision has also chimed in to tell the LA Times that it has treated all of its employees "extremely well," and that the publisher has paid "millions of dollars" for its developer's work. "We have an independent studio model that provides them a lot of creative freedom while we take care of the back office stuff so they can focus on making games," said COO Thomas Tippl.