Gamers are sounding the call for a remastered version of one of the best Call of Duty games in the franchise.
Modern Warfare 2 is apparently overrun with hackers on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A gamer named Ramez Zahra created a petition on change.org on Saturday and addressed it to Jason West at Infinity Ward and Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision. As of the publishing of this story, the petition has more than 99,000 signatures.
Jason West hasn’t been the CEO of Infinity Ward since he and partner Vince Zampella were summarily terminated from Activision in March 2010, however. Jason West also retired from his and Zampella’s follow-up studio, Respawn Entertainment, in 2013. Zahra should have addressed his letter to Zampella, who remains at Respawn.
The gamers who lined up to sign the petition are also ignoring some pretty obvious questions related to remastering Modern Warfare 2, not least of which is the potential to open up a can of worms related to one of the most publicized lawsuits in the history of the video games.
West and Zampella were fired from Activision amid allegations that they’d been courting rival publisher Electronic Arts. Activision wanted another Call of Duty game and West and Zampella wanted to move on to a different project, reportedly a sci-fi game.
Activision cited breach of contract and insubordination as the motivation for firing West and Zampella, who sued for wrongful termination. Activision countersued West and Zampella, claiming that the pair had conspired to take the Infinity Ward team out from under Activision, to form another, different studio. In June 2013 Variety reported that the pair made a similar move at development studio 2015, shortly after Medal of Honor: Allied Assault had shipped, when West and Zampella wanted to work on their own game.
The Activision suit was settled out of court in May 2012. The terms of the settlement remain undisclosed. Activision clearly owns the publishing rights to the Call of Duty franchise, having published five CoD games on Xbox and PlayStation since Modern Warfare 2. Activision also likely has the rights to remaster Modern Warfare 2 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Even so, remastering Modern Warfare 2 could still represent time, resources, and potential hassle that Activision has no reason to deal with, considering how much money the publisher is making off new Call of Duty games.
It is also in Activision’s best interests to keep the CoD player base focused on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, especially as the wave of downloadable content for Advanced Warfare continues to roll out.
Screengrab via Infinity Ward/YouTube