The videogame industry's a big business -- and sometimes, companies don't see eye-to-eye. And what happens when a dispute goes to court, and gamers get their grubby hands on fancy-sounding legal documents? Why, wild, inane, forum-fueled speculation, of course. That's where California-based corporate attorney and GameSpy writer Eric Neigher comes in. Objection! is your one-stop destination to learn what all that legalese means in plain English, straight from someone who knows the twisty-turny language of the law.



Alderman, et al v. Activision

Hi folks! Your friendly, neighborhood shyster here, with some more exciting analysis and fact-finding to funkify your brain. This time, we again visit the hullaballoo surrounding Activision and its suddenly erstwhile employees at Infinity Ward -- although, for once, we don't have to talk about frickin' Jason West and Vincent Zampella (very much).

Facts

A couple dozen recently fired Infinity Ward employees filed suit jointly against Activision in California State Court. Their complaint, which was leveled against Activision as a corporation and against 100 John Does as individuals (the John Does are Activision executives and agents whom the disgruntled former IW guys haven't yet been able to identify specifically, but whom they definitely want to sue, anyway), alleges a complex series of infractions, which I'll get to in some detail below.

Not specifically named as a John Doe, but probably is.
Simultaneously, the former IW guys filed a Notice of Related Actions along with their complaint, which asks the court considering their case to take note of the similarities between it and the current suit from West and Zampella against Activision. A notice of related actions is typically filed for two reasons: to lend credence to a claim by showing that other people have similar claims currently under consideration, and to create a synergy between related lawsuits in terms of sharing facts and rulings. Sometimes, notices of related actions can backfire, if the court handling the related case rules against the side you were hoping they'd rule for. If that happens, you can end up digging your client a hole that he wouldn't have had to deal with, had you just kept your big mouth shut. Time will tell in this case.

Anyhoo, all of the causes of action (the things that the IW guys are saying Activision did wrong) in the actual lawsuit center on the IW guys' claim that Activision knowingly and with intentional malice withheld bonuses due to them from the sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The IW guys are alleging that, based on the massive sales of the game, they're owed at least $75 million in bonuses, plus interest to the tune of $30,000 a day, every day since the time Activision was supposed to pay up. They're also saying that, according to their contract, their Activision stock options automatically vested ("vested" here means that their stock options go from mere options to actual stocks that they own) -- whether or not they're still employed by Activision -- when MW2 outsold Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. For the record, MW2 outsold its predecessor almost immediately, so if their interpretation of the contract is correct, the IW guys stand to gain a grip of equity from their Activision stock options. And, on top of all this, they're also asking for bonuses and royalties from the sale of any "sister" games of MW2, including the as-yet undelivered Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.