Respawn picks up four more Infinity Ward vets

Out of the four ex-Infinity Ward employees discovered today to be taking up positions at Respawn Entertainment, the new home of former IW heads Jason West and Vince Zampella, two held senior positions and all four are currently members of the "Infinity Ward Employee Group" suing Activision for millions of dollars. Preston Glenn ("designer"), Chad Grenier ("senior designer"), Sean Slayback ("game designer"), and Zied Rieke ("lead designer) have all confirmed on LinkedIn to have made the quick switch from their former bosses' studio to their new, EA-backed startup.

According to G4's report, the tally of Infinity Ward employees that have joined West and Zampella's still nascent studio is up to 16 as of today. The studio has seen a flood of employee vacancies in the wake the co-founders' firings early last month, and a not-so-surprising recent rush of ex-IW developers jumping on to Respawn's staff. West and Zampella's new dev house has yet to announce any projects but, well, all those employees have gotta be up to something.

Reader Comments (49)

So how many are left?

as long as one person is still at IW and not at Respawn, it's one too many left

I'm with you Young Nasty man..... now come fly with me and slice the Hydra's scrote!

-_- you're not Wonderboy

Tu che.... nastyman

@Young: Actually, that's probably not the best outcome. Unless all the developers at IW were really great, this gives Respawn the chance to only hire the great ones, and leave the so-so staff behind, without having to actually fire anyone.

(Of course, especially given IW was part of Activision, you might argue they'd already been ruthless enough to fire anyone below standard... who knows.)

This also means that whoever's left at IW will probably be a pretty bad 'team'. When Activision officially close IW (it's not an 'if', really, is it?), I wonder if they'll just shut it down entirely and ditch all the remaining staff rather than redeploying them to other teams.

Unless that one person is Robert Bowling.

@miamilogin1

Really, they only know how to draw? You obviously don't have a clue...
One of the weakest parts of the call of duty games (that made it a 9/10 for me) was the same rehashed modded q3 engine with no real improvements. Of course the added support for new tech, but even the physics in cod 4 was done by neversoft and not themselves. And with every new cod game a lot of the old mistakes that where patched happened again in the new games and had to be patched again.

Wow it sure doesn't feel like they were fired last month. This drama has felt like its been going on for longer.

Screw the Young and the Restless. This seems way more exciting.

Can we just put up a counter on the front page instead of writing a post about each employee who leaves IW for Respawn.

"Number Of InfinityWard Staff Members Who have, Respawned: 16"

+1 Crimsic +1

Ha, I wouldn't mind having a counter like that, if these updates continue to be so frequent that is...

And by the way, you typed +1 twice, so I will expecting your full payment of +2 in my mailbox.

And could the counter "arrow" actually be the smile on Bobby Kotick's face, that gradually goes downwards into a sad mouth as less people remain in IW?

Team respawn!

sounds like something you yell after your entire team gets noob tubed in mw2 domination

Sounds like someone's a fan of Twilight..... (how do you type shifty eyes?)

Or could be a fan of Pokemon too!

Or a fan of tween singing idols!

@Victoryismine52

_>
¬_¬ (Alt+0172 = ¬)

God all my comment replies fail on this article.

---- what my wife's been reading the books while we're in Costa Rica

---what

--seriously

- It's not like I've started them

¬_¬ Thanks Spike

Joystiq staff save yourselves the trouble and just create a 'ticker' for the amount of people leaving IW to Respawn. Just think of it as Respawn 'capturing Activision's flag'.

Better bring out something good for picking up all these vets.

Sending my "resume".

References include lolcats, pedobear and Chuck Norris.

". . . f***in' Chuck Norris"

"Spare me... I wont that tournament!"

*won

I fail.

You don't fail...you wont! Geeze you said so in your other comment.

Chuck Norris doesn't fail.

That's why he's on my resume.

16 is very average. You gotta save all 100 lemmings to get a perfect score.

Game's not over yet pure black.... My money's on Respawn capturing at least 83 lemmings

Yeah I forgot you have to put up a couple of stoppers in and sacrifice them to get everyone else across.

I hope Respawn calls their brand new game: Announcement of Obligation: Current conflict 3.

Their new game will be "Future Warfare"
and Kothick will go: "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, we should've blocked that name!"

Wondering if Respawn is hiring accountants.

No Seriously!

According to LinkedIn profiles, they start work on May first. I wonder if we'll be hearing some more exciting news tomorrow.

You guys do realize how awesome this is for the gaming community right?

Respawn will have complete control over their IP and more than likely will be making a new franchise on the EA side of things.

Then we have Bungie that just went multi-platform with complete control over whatever they create.

Now two great FPS studios that specialize in different types of FPSes will have creative control over their own IPs.

I really cannot wait to see what each of them come up with.

It would be nice if we saw some games from either studio that wasn't an FPS. Especially Bungie.

Don't be so quick to celebrate. Complete creative freedom can backfire.

It hasn't backfired for valve.

Can we call today Designer Day?

No, because it's Arbor day (at least in Minnesota it is).

I sense a trend here.

Ummm, again, nobody with anything resembling a life cares. Thanks for the warning not to buy games made by Respawn or Activision....

ain't gonna say I told you so but... well I told you so...

Every employee who willingly leaves Infinity Ward for West and Zampella's new company reinforces the notion that West and Zampella are in the right.

W an Z couldn't possibly force all of these ex-IW folks to work for them, right?

using Google Chrome browser FTW!!

Shit FiOS freaks out about malware or something when I try to go to http://respawn.com... Weird.

Respawn picks up four more Infinity Ward vets

Reader Comments (49)

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:03PM TheMichaelJackson said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:08PM Freddie Mercury said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:11PM Victoryismine52 said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:37PM Freddie Mercury said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 6:05PM Victoryismine52 said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 6:22PM xxxsam said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 6:29PM JXCGunrunna said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 9:18PM context said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:04PM Stevetrop Man of Mystery said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:04PM blueskyv201 said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:10PM Crimsic said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:12PM Victoryismine52 said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:19PM Crimsic said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:27PM Pure Black World Tendency said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:05PM Mikedemyx said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:09PM xkaosu9x said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:13PM Victoryismine52 said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:19PM Bluebreaker said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:22PM Crimsic said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:26PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:27PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 6:11PM Victoryismine52 said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:06PM That Burning Sensation said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:07PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:07PM Marco le Polo said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:11PM That Burning Sensation said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:20PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:20PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:23PM Crimsic said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:25PM Marco le Polo said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:12PM Pure Black World Tendency said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:15PM Victoryismine52 said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:22PM Pure Black World Tendency said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:16PM That Burning Sensation said

Posted: May 1st 2010 12:22AM Obienator said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:21PM Joeybeast said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 5:46PM Uphillbothways said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 6:07PM Samael said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 6:27PM Cougarcat said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 7:27PM eat it said

Posted: Apr 30th 2010 7:45PM JXCGunrunna said

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