Does Black Ops 2′s Setting Spell Legal Trouble For Activision?
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 could be feature an unexpected adversary, one not powered by future tech or robot stuff: Modern Warfare developers Infinity Ward. It seems that Black Ops 2′s setting – the far away year of 2025 – may violate the contractual agreement between Activision and Infinity Ward, and looks to complicate the ongoing lawsuit between Activision and former infinity Ward honchos Jason West and Vince Zampella.
At issue in this case is a Memorandum of Understanding included in Infinity Ward’s contract:
In short, they assert ownership, so to speak, of any Call of Duty title set after the Vietnam war era (essentially anything modern enough to be considered Modern Warfare). Note the “modern day (post-Vietnam), the near future, or distant future” language? Yeah, Black Ops 2 kind of gave that sentence a big middle finger.
Game Informer, in a pretty detailed breakdown of the matter, notes that Treyarch, makers of the Black Ops series, and Infinity Ward, have long had a contentious relationship. Treyarch tried and failed repeatedly to tie what eventually became Black Ops with the Modern Warfare series, even going to far as to attempt to slip in some anachronistic weapons into that game’s Cold War era setting.
The aforementioned lawsuit is currently ongoing in Los Angeles, though its details are not yet public. We’ll soon see if this complicates things for Activision.