Those of you who follow the doings in the gaming industry may be aware that Activision and the duo that once headed up Infinity Ward (the originators of the Call of Duty franchise) are embroiled in a rather fierce legal battle of late; Activision is suing Jason West and Vince Zampella to the tune of around $400 million after the pair departed Infinity Ward to found Respawn Entertainment…an independent studio seeking a partnership with EA.

Actually, the initial nature of the lawsuit was a simple issue of breach of contract, I gather; West and Zampella still had a couple of years left in their contract with Activision when they left to form Respawn.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

Activision has filed an amended cross-complaint in the legal case between Call of Duty publisher Activision and Call of Duty creators (and Infinity Ward co-founders) Jason West and Vince Zampella. In the complaint filed today in Los Angeles by Activision’s representative, the company amended their initial counter-claim to add Electronic Arts, asserting that EA “conspired” with West and Zampella to “derail Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, disrupt its Infinity Ward development studio, and inflict serious harm on the company.” The suit alleges a systematic “pattern of deception” by EA to “hijack Activision’s assets for personal greed and corporate gain.”

According to Activision, the allegations in their pleading are “supported by documentary evidence supplied from West’s and Zampella’s own communications, from Electronic Arts’s own records and from the files of the talent agents and attorneys who conspired in the scheme to harm Activision.”

The above-mentioned communications include emails sent from Seamus Blackley, an agent at CAA, who wrote: “I’m stoked about your options,” and, in an apparent reference to EA’s John Riccitiello, “JR cooks a mean BBQ. I think we could accomplish some interesting chaos.”

(You can get a glimpse of a screenshot of Blackley’s email here.)

So…what transpired here? Did EA headhunt the heads (heh) of Infinity Ward, snatching them and dozens of their employees away from Activision to found Respawn, in an explicit and deliberate effort to derail the Call of Duty series (a direct competitor of EA’s own Battlefield titles)? It’s not outside the realm of possibility.

Personally, I’m not exactly convinced that is what happened, but that could just be because I don’t think highly of Activision. And either way, this really is a new low point (or should that be “a new height of excess”?) in the ongoing squabble between Electronic Arts and Activision.

Update: EA responds:

In light of last night’s revised lawsuit announcement by Activision, Electronic Arts corporate spokesperson Jeff Brown responded on behalf of his company, characterizing the announcement to the LA Times as “a PR [public relations] play filled with pettiness and deliberate misdirection.” The revised suit added EA as defendants in the case between Activision and West/Zampella, citing several alleged interactions between the ex-Infinity Ward heads and EA, a relationship said to have been fostered by talent agency CAA.

Brown continued, accusing Activision of attempting to “hide the fact that they have no credible response to the claim of the two artists who were fired.” He further contends that West and Zampella “now just want to get paid for their work.”

That’s a rather brutal characterization, no?