The iPhone and iPod Touch game Doodle Jump may be one of the hottest paid video games on the planet. One month after passing the three million mark worldwide, the game has now sold more than four million ($.99) copies.
"Those are all paid downloads as there never was a 'lite' free version and Doodle Jump never had a 'free for a day' or similar promotions," the game's co-creator ,Igor Pusenjak of development studio Lima Sky, told Kotaku. That four million mark represents sales on the iPhone/iPod's App store. The game is also available for other portable platforms.
The Doodle Jump creators said in March that they had passed three million in sales. The game was released in the fall of 2009.
While Doodle Jump may be very cheap, it thrives despite the challenges of being sold in a crowded App Store marketplace.
The game may succeed both due to its prominence on lists of hot App Store games and also because of its enjoyable simplicity. It is a basic vertical jumping game controlled by gentle tilts of a vertically-held iPhone or iPod Touch. The lead character jumps and jumps and jumps up from one floating platform to the next, until you allow him to miss just once. One failure and it's over, an ideal game to cram into a random 60 seconds of free time.
I firmly believe someone should pop out a game about how to raid the Activision vault, and fast.
Something having to do with the whole Infinity Ward guys being the main characters, and the lawsuits being like power ups. A simple 2d side scroller or something.
It would just feel right. Someone contact Adult Swim to make it so...
I've obtained a copy of a lawsuit filed this morning in the Los Angeles Superior Court by 38 plaintiffs, calling themselves the "Infinity Ward Employee Group," against Activision. The Infinity Ward Employee Group (whom I'll refer to as IWEG throughout the rest of this story) alleges breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, violation of California labor code and more. The group is after a large amount of unpaid royalties.
"Activision owes my clients approximately $75 million to $125 million dollars," said Bruce Isaacs, one of the IWEG's attorneys at Wyman & Isaacs LLP, over the phone this afternoon. "Activision has withheld most of the money to force many of my people to stay, some against their will, so that they would finish the delivery of Modern Warfare 3. That is not what they wanted to do. Many of them. My clients' entitled to their money. Activision has no right to withhold their money -- our money."
The IWEG contains "a significant portion of the members of the creative team" who "designed, developed and delivered" Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to Activision. According to the lawsuit, $28 million has been delivered to Infinity Ward employees for bonuses related to Modern Warfare 2, but the suit alleges at least $54 million is still due from 2009 profits alone.
They want more than $54 million, however. The IWEG is looking "to recover between $75 million and $125 million, if not more, in compensatory damages." That number's derived from:
* Unpaid bonuses from 2009 and 2010 sales generated by Modern Warfare 2 -- fourth quarter 2009 and first quarter 2010, specifically.
* Bonuses "due and owing to them" past first quarter 2010.
* "Bonus/royalty/profit participation" related to "technology/engine" royalties, "other special performance bonuses," "other studio bonuses" or "any other bonus/royalty/profit participation."'
* Lost value on "restricted stock units" that Activision "promised" would vest (read: own it in your own name and purchase it from Activision) when Modern Warfare 2 sales eclipsed Modern Warfare 1, which "has long ago occurred."
* Money owed as it relates to Modern Warfare 2 "sister games, including but not limited to" the oft-mentioned Modern Warfare 3, "if Modern Warfare 3 is ultimately delivered and marketed."
* Interest rates related to the above sums of money.
The lawsuit focuses on royalties generated for Modern Warfare 2 following release and the agreement between Infinity Ward employees and Activision for receiving the subsequent bonuses. The IWEG contends the only condition for becoming eligible for said bonuses was delivering Modern Warfare 2 in time for the game's intended November 10, 2009 launch. Modern Warfare 2 did launch as scheduled on November 10 last year, generating $1.1 billion in 2009.
Modern Warfare 3 has been mentioned during the legal back-and-forth between ex-Infinity Ward leadership Vince Zampella and Jason West and Activision, and it's brought up again here, too.
The IWEG alleges Activision has "improperly withheld this specifically identifiable sum of money from the members of IWEG in order to force them to keep working for Activision so that Activision could receive delivery of Modern Warfare 3." The suit alleges Activision "made a calculated, purposeful and malicious decision" to withhold proper bonuses "in an attempt to force employees of Infinity Ward to continue to work at a job that many of them did not want just so Activision could force them to complete the development, production and delivery of Modern Warfare 3."
The legal language gets harsher, too.
"In short," reads the lawsuit, "Activision withheld the property of the IWEG in an attempt to keep the employees hostage so that Activision could reap the benefit of the completion of Modern Warfare 3."
What does the IWEG want in return? "At least in the additional amount of $75 million to $500 million as an award for punitive damages," continues the lawsuit, citing a number calculated from the blockbuster sales of Modern Warfare 2 and "Activision's net worth."
The IWEG also believes Activision violated California Labor Code during their alleged failure of payment.
"Activision has a duty to pay all of the members of the IWEG all of the money they are owed [...] within 72 hours of the termination of their employment," reads the lawsuit. "Activision, however, has failed to do so."
The full list of plantiffs mentioned in the suit (not all of them have left Infinity Ward): Todd Alderman, Frank Gigliotti, Roger Abrahamsson, Brad Allen, Mohammad Alavi, Richard Baker, Chad Barb, Keith Bell, Chris Cherubini, Taihoon William Cho, Chris Dionne, Joel Emslie, Robert Field, Steve Fuduka, Robert Gaines, Chance Glasco, Preston Glenn, Joel Gompert, Chad Grenier, Mark Grigsby, John Haggerty, Jacob Michael Keating, Chris Lambert, Ryan Lastimosa, Fairfax S. McCandlish IV, Jason McCord, Brent Mcleod, John Paul Messerly, Stephen Miller, Zied Rieke, Jon Shiring, John Slayback, Richard Smith, Geoffery Smith, Jiesang Song, Todd Sue, Rayme C. Vinson and Lei Yang. All are represented by Wyman & Isaacs LLP located in Los Angeles.
Bold claims. I've reached out to Activision for comment.
Clearly, however, the drama involving Infinity Ward is far from over.
A copy of the lawsuit, which was obtained by IGN, states a group of 38 Infinity Ward employees, both past and present, are still owed several large sums of bonus payments as a result of the sales of Modern Warfare 2. Activision allegedly breached its agreement regarding bonuses, and still owes the group between $40 million to $55 million in fourth quarter 2009 payments, between $30 million to $45 million in first quarter 2010 payments, and additional $5 million to $25 million in other royalties.
The suit also states Activision allegedly has already payed upwards of $28 million in owed bonuses, but purposely and knowingly withheld additional payments to force the team to complete Modern Warfare 3.
Even though the investors usually don't give a shit what Kotick does as long as it earns them money, they'll pretty much have to notice this. Especially since the amount being asked for is most of what Activision earned last quarter ($113 million)
Thats a shitton of money to be handed out to 38 employees for a quarterly bonus.
I mean, I'm saying that with no criticism towards the employees. Good for them.
That's just nuts.
I wonder how much of an idea Activision had that it would be so huge. Perhaps they budgeted for something much smaller, and are balking now that they've received the real numbers?
Of course, that also means that they received far more profit then they expected as well. Unless they really screwed up the formula for the bonuses, they should be easily able to afford them. They probably just hate paying people that much on principle.
Thats a shitton of money to be handed out to 38 employees for a quarterly bonus.
I mean, I'm saying that with no criticism towards the employees. Good for them.
That's just nuts.
I wonder how much of an idea Activision had that it would be so huge. Perhaps they budgeted for something much smaller, and are balking now that they've received the real numbers?
Of course, that also means that they received far more profit then they expected as well. Unless they really screwed up the formula for the bonuses, they should be easily able to afford them. They probably just hate paying people that much on principle.
Activision has a hard time planning for next Tuesday, much less any farther than that. It's entirely possible they botched the amount of money they set aside for the bonus.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Thats a shitton of money to be handed out to 38 employees for a quarterly bonus.
I mean, I'm saying that with no criticism towards the employees. Good for them.
That's just nuts.
I wonder how much of an idea Activision had that it would be so huge. Perhaps they budgeted for something much smaller, and are balking now that they've received the real numbers?
Of course, that also means that they received far more profit then they expected as well. Unless they really screwed up the formula for the bonuses, they should be easily able to afford them. They probably just hate paying people that much on principle.
They would have signed for a percentage. Probably worked for just enough to live on over the development time as well, and the bonus is like their contract wage and they get it at the end. Even if the amount ended up being huge, Activision are getting even more, so I can only see this as them being greedy bastards.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
Wait what's ReSpawn? Are IW guys forming a new studio?
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Wait what's ReSpawn? Are IW guys forming a new studio?
Independant studio (so they own everything they make). EA has picked them up under their EA partners program. Founded by Vince and the other IW head, and a few IW leads are joining too.
Wait what's ReSpawn? Are IW guys forming a new studio?
Yep. The two heads of IW got fired for, apparently, daring to ask when the hell the bonus check is coming, they formed Respawn, and now more and more of IW is jumping ship to them.
And yes, it's more likely Activision's dragging their feet on bonuses because they're greedy bastards rather than an accounting fuckup.
Thats a shitton of money to be handed out to 38 employees for a quarterly bonus.
I mean, I'm saying that with no criticism towards the employees. Good for them.
That's just nuts.
I wonder how much of an idea Activision had that it would be so huge. Perhaps they budgeted for something much smaller, and are balking now that they've received the real numbers?
Of course, that also means that they received far more profit then they expected as well. Unless they really screwed up the formula for the bonuses, they should be easily able to afford them. They probably just hate paying people that much on principle.
Activision has a hard time planning for next Tuesday, much less any farther than that. It's entirely possible they botched the amount of money they set aside for the bonus.
I've dealt with similar situations on a smaller scale before. Its invariably shitty bookkeeping. Now, a company with 5 or 10 stores is somewhat different than a multinational corporation, but I've had friends that have been in work situations working on commision, and it usually goes something like this:
Company hires new employee with a base salary + 10% commission to be paid in lump sum yearly.
New employee makes sales, generates commision to be paid as bonus at the end of the year.
Company thinks "damn look at all this money we've got", spends money on new building, equipment, etc
End of the year comes up, and company tallies up commissions, owes new employee $100,000+ in commissions. Company budgeted $25,000, and no one thought during the year, "hey, this guy is making a lot of sales, we need to put more money back for commission."
Company tells employee that rather than bonus being payed at the end of the year as in the contract, it'll be paid in quarterly installments or some other bullshit. Employee, who knows they can get work anywhere since they've made a million dollars in sales, gets pissed and leaves. Company says "well if you quit I'm not paying you your bonus". Employee sues company.
This happens ALL THE TIME.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Wait what's ReSpawn? Are IW guys forming a new studio?
Yep. The two heads of IW got fired for, apparently, daring to ask when the hell the bonus check is coming, they formed Respawn, and now more and more of IW is jumping ship to them.
And yes, it's more likely Activision's dragging their feet on bonuses because they're greedy bastards rather than an accounting fuckup.
So it was proven (or at least there's evidence) that they were fired for asking about the bonuses? Or is that just something that's been really inferred about?
I expect the bonuses haven't been coming out because the company didn't expect it to be as big a success as it was, and they don't like paying employees too much money. This situation is just so fucked, I really hate the Activision bigwigs.
Thats a shitton of money to be handed out to 38 employees for a quarterly bonus.
I mean, I'm saying that with no criticism towards the employees. Good for them.
That's just nuts.
I wonder how much of an idea Activision had that it would be so huge. Perhaps they budgeted for something much smaller, and are balking now that they've received the real numbers?
Of course, that also means that they received far more profit then they expected as well. Unless they really screwed up the formula for the bonuses, they should be easily able to afford them. They probably just hate paying people that much on principle.
Activision has a hard time planning for next Tuesday, much less any farther than that. It's entirely possible they botched the amount of money they set aside for the bonus.
I've dealt with similar situations on a smaller scale before. Its invariably shitty bookkeeping. Now, a company with 5 or 10 stores is somewhat different than a multinational corporation, but I've had friends that have been in work situations working on commision, and it usually goes something like this:
Company hires new employee with a base salary + 10% commission to be paid in lump sum yearly.
New employee makes sales, generates commision to be paid as bonus at the end of the year.
Company thinks "damn look at all this money we've got", spends money on new building, equipment, etc
End of the year comes up, and company tallies up commissions, owes new employee $100,000+ in commissions. Company budgeted $25,000, and no one thought during the year, "hey, this guy is making a lot of sales, we need to put more money back for commission."
Company tells employee that rather than bonus being payed at the end of the year as in the contract, it'll be paid in quarterly installments or some other bullshit. Employee, who knows they can get work anywhere since they've made a million dollars in sales, gets pissed and leaves. Company says "well if you quit I'm not paying you your bonus". Employee sues company.
This happens ALL THE TIME.
Oh, I'm sure. Though what makes Activision's case more interesting is that IW was supposed to be paid fairly quickly after the game's release, so in theory Activision shouldn't have had time to spend the bonus money on anything.
In theory.
Hell, maybe they keep holding onto it simply so their profit margins won't take a big hit and make the stockholders nervous. Especially since the bonus amount is currently 3/4 of their last quarterly profit.
Edit: Henroid, they were fired for "insubordination." Or for being difficult, in other words. Nothing was said about asking for bonuses, though I'm sure Kotick would qualify that as "being difficult."
cloudeagle on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Hell, maybe they keep holding onto it simply so their profit margins won't take a big hit and make the stockholders nervous. Especially since the bonus amount is currently 3/4 of their last quarterly profit.
Edit: Henroid, they were fired for "insubordination." Or for being difficult, in other words. Nothing was said about asking for bonuses, though I'm sure Kotick would qualify that as "being difficult."
No I remember the insubordination charge, which everyone knew was bullshit since it's corporate speak for, "We needed a vague reason to let them go."
That point you made about the bonus totals being 3/4 of their profit is amazing. Even if they paid out the bonuses, can't they still piece it in as "Here's our profits, which have been so good we've paid out these bonuses"? I thought that's more or less what profits were about. Bonuses. Either way, that would be an extremely shitty thing to do this over, especially since this could come around to bite them in the ass if the lawsuit goes the employees' way.
Wait what's ReSpawn? Are IW guys forming a new studio?
Yep. The two heads of IW got fired for, apparently, daring to ask when the hell the bonus check is coming, they formed Respawn, and now more and more of IW is jumping ship to them.
And yes, it's more likely Activision's dragging their feet on bonuses because they're greedy bastards rather than an accounting fuckup.
So it was proven (or at least there's evidence) that they were fired for asking about the bonuses? Or is that just something that's been really inferred about?
I expect the bonuses haven't been coming out because the company didn't expect it to be as big a success as it was, and they don't like paying employees too much money. This situation is just so fucked, I really hate the Activision bigwigs.
There's a certain kind of bean counter that just loves killing golden geese.
The kind that thinks "We've got 5 salesmen, we're paying 4 of them $75,000 a year with commission, and one of them $150,000 with commission, lets save $75,000 a year by firing the guy we're paying $150,000 and replacing him with someone just out of school".
Again, in my experience, this shit happens ALL THE TIME.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
That point you made about the bonus totals being 3/4 of their profit is amazing. Even if they paid out the bonuses, can't they still piece it in as "Here's our profits, which have been so good we've paid out these bonuses"? I thought that's more or less what profits were about. Bonuses. Either way, that would be an extremely shitty thing to do this over, especially since this could come around to bite them in the ass if the lawsuit goes the employees' way.
Profits are for Bobby Koticks and the shareholders wallets, not bonuses for employees.
Hell, maybe they keep holding onto it simply so their profit margins won't take a big hit and make the stockholders nervous. Especially since the bonus amount is currently 3/4 of their last quarterly profit.
Edit: Henroid, they were fired for "insubordination." Or for being difficult, in other words. Nothing was said about asking for bonuses, though I'm sure Kotick would qualify that as "being difficult."
No I remember the insubordination charge, which everyone knew was bullshit since it's corporate speak for, "We needed a vague reason to let them go."
That point you made about the bonus totals being 3/4 of their profit is amazing. Even if they paid out the bonuses, can't they still piece it in as "Here's our profits, which have been so good we've paid out these bonuses"? I thought that's more or less what profits were about. Bonuses. Either way, that would be an extremely shitty thing to do this over, especially since this could come around to bite them in the ass if the lawsuit goes the employees' way.
Problem is, U.S. accounting rules state that they can't count bonuses paid out to employees in their overall profit statement. Sure, they can incorporate them into the financial statement somewhere, but not the bottom line. Few people read past the bottom line.
And Jealous Deva, considering what Activision's been up to lately I'm sure short-sighted accountants are winning over treating their employees decently or even making decent games.
Hell, maybe they keep holding onto it simply so their profit margins won't take a big hit and make the stockholders nervous. Especially since the bonus amount is currently 3/4 of their last quarterly profit.
Edit: Henroid, they were fired for "insubordination." Or for being difficult, in other words. Nothing was said about asking for bonuses, though I'm sure Kotick would qualify that as "being difficult."
No I remember the insubordination charge, which everyone knew was bullshit since it's corporate speak for, "We needed a vague reason to let them go."
That point you made about the bonus totals being 3/4 of their profit is amazing. Even if they paid out the bonuses, can't they still piece it in as "Here's our profits, which have been so good we've paid out these bonuses"? I thought that's more or less what profits were about. Bonuses. Either way, that would be an extremely shitty thing to do this over, especially since this could come around to bite them in the ass if the lawsuit goes the employees' way.
Problem is, U.S. accounting rules state that they can't count bonuses paid out to employees in their overall profit statement. Sure, they can incorporate them into the financial statement somewhere, but not the bottom line. Few people read past the bottom line.
And Jealous Deva, considering what Activision's been up to lately I'm sure short-sighted accountants are winning over treating their employees decently or even making decent games.
Oh, I'm sure, this is pretty much what happens whenever you get people who don't know anything about the actual business in question but are just 'business people' running the company.
Someone looks at a balance statement with something like the following;
Developer Amount Paid Revenue
xxxx $100 million $2 billion
yyyy $25 million $250 million
zzzz $5 million $15 million
And the conclusion they invariably reach is "The appropriate budget for a game is $5 million, and every game made should bring in $2 billion."
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
Better to be abusive to employees then. I hope Bobby Kotick dies in a plane crash.
Or from someone shoving a wine glass he's sipping out of down his throat.
Hell, maybe they keep holding onto it simply so their profit margins won't take a big hit and make the stockholders nervous. Especially since the bonus amount is currently 3/4 of their last quarterly profit.
113 million dollars was their profit for 2009. They lost 286 million dollars for the last three months of 2009. It still beat Wall Street's expectations.
Edit: Oh, right. 189 million for the first three months of 2010. Pretty much all of that is probably Modern Warfare 2.
If WiiSports....I mean SonySports is the type of stuff they come up with, then yea, the Swiggle is doomed.
As DarkWarrior said, it's an extra peripheral, and history hasn't been kind to add-ons like that. On top of that the majority the peripheral will get after the initial launch will be Petz clones and other shovelware that the Wii gets flooded with every month.
Major devs will probably ignore it in about six months. Wiis success in that area is partially because it is the contoller to the system, not an add-on.
Yep. Sadly enough most developers have trained themselves to equate inexpensive to develop with shovelware.
Fix'd.
Though this might have some kind of corollary between the non-HD and HD systems. They probably think they have to spend extra to make it look nice so they put their money on the 'expensive' systems.
This is on the right track but it goes farther than that.
I was talking to a fairly high-up employee at Krome last night for about 40 minutes about the state of the vg industry. He was complaining that business is so hard these days and everyone is closing down, can't make profit, no userbase to sell to anymore etc. These guys have absolute tunnel vision when it comes to choosing a development platform. PS360 is the only thing they see. There's two types of posters on these boards; the type who reasonably discuss matters with researched and knowledgeable viewpoints and the type that constantly spout innacurate myths as though they were fact. These devs are like the 2nd type of poster. He told me when I quizzed him on why, if he wants a larger userbase does he not consider the Wii as a platform, that (blanket statement) "games do not sell on the Wii, a CEO came in and told us" and "when was the last time you turned on your Wii?" Not "I'm excited at the potential userbase I can sell to."
What I'm saying is that you know how some gamers think they're "hardcore?" MOST developers have the same attitude but magnified.
"In a lawsuit where Activision is refusing to produce a witness to substantiate its claims, today's new lawsuit by 38 Infinity Ward employees makes clear that Activision's accusations against Jason and Vince are completely false, Schwartz said in a statement given to IGN. " It's great to see the other Infinity Ward people sticking up for themselves. Hopefully Activision will realize that the time has come to live up to its promises.
The Wii has received its first price drop in Australia and New Zealand. Starting tomorrow, 29 April 2010, the Wii will be sold for AU $299.95 (NZ $399.95).
This price drop of AU $100 comes soon after the AU $50 drop which recently occured for the Nintendo DSi, which was introduced to make space for the DSi XL. Could Nintendo be gearing up for the release of a new home console? However, as many forumers have pointed out, it is more likely due to slowing sales or the strength of the Australian dollar.
Since its launch, Nintendo has sold over 1.79 million consoles in Australia.
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
Bit premature to call 'new Nintendo console!' because they dropped the price in Australia and New Zealand. They probably just want to keep the price below the 360.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Bit premature to call 'new Nintendo console!' because they dropped the price in Australia and New Zealand. They probably just want to keep the price below the 360.
Probably.
At least the Wii was never as much of a ripoff as the PS3 on release. I'll never forget how much I facepalmed when I saw it was $1300 NZ dollars.
The Wii has received its first price drop in Australia and New Zealand. Starting tomorrow, 29 April 2010, the Wii will be sold for AU $299.95 (NZ $399.95).
This price drop of AU $100 comes soon after the AU $50 drop which recently occured for the Nintendo DSi, which was introduced to make space for the DSi XL. Could Nintendo be gearing up for the release of a new home console? However, as many forumers have pointed out, it is more likely due to slowing sales or the strength of the Australian dollar.
Since its launch, Nintendo has sold over 1.79 million consoles in Australia.
That's one console every 12 people, and one every 5 households. I didn't know gaming was that big down here.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
I think it's really bad 'journalism' when someone asks a question to start a rumor, and then points out evidence to the contrary saying "Oh this is more likely." :?
The Wii has received its first price drop in Australia and New Zealand. Starting tomorrow, 29 April 2010, the Wii will be sold for AU $299.95 (NZ $399.95).
This price drop of AU $100 comes soon after the AU $50 drop which recently occured for the Nintendo DSi, which was introduced to make space for the DSi XL. Could Nintendo be gearing up for the release of a new home console? However, as many forumers have pointed out, it is more likely due to slowing sales or the strength of the Australian dollar.
Since its launch, Nintendo has sold over 1.79 million consoles in Australia.
That's one console every 12 people, and one every 5 households. I didn't know gaming was that big down here.
And we still don't get some new big release games on release and instead six months later. I remember reading the thread for Mario Galaxy on this forum six fucking months before they bothered releasing it in NZ/Aus. Hopefully they don't pull that shit again with Mario Galaxy 2 or I will hate them forever.
Posts
http://kotaku.com/5525562/doodle-jump-passes-four+million-sold
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
I'm thinking they're going to be pushing this game fairly.
It is like watching a car crash in slow motion with the car having Hitler in it.
Capcom covered that one twenty-three years ago.
Something having to do with the whole Infinity Ward guys being the main characters, and the lawsuits being like power ups. A simple 2d side scroller or something.
It would just feel right. Someone contact Adult Swim to make it so...
Moar you say?
Kotick's response?
If the other car has Stalin in it it will be just like WWII but without the millions of collateral casualties. I'm all for that.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
http://ps3movies.ign.com/ps3/document/article/108/1086448/Activision%2520Complaint.PDF There is also a copy of the claim.
I mean, I'm saying that with no criticism towards the employees. Good for them.
That's just nuts.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
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As just noticed by Tim Edwards from PC Gamer. On the Activision calender "Activision Blizzard First Quarter Calendar 2010 Results Conference Call" Next week. That'll be fun.
Those 38 employees made Activision 1.1 billion dollars with their game. Apparently. Good for them, and they deserve the money they're owed.
Even though the investors usually don't give a shit what Kotick does as long as it earns them money, they'll pretty much have to notice this. Especially since the amount being asked for is most of what Activision earned last quarter ($113 million)
I wonder how much of an idea Activision had that it would be so huge. Perhaps they budgeted for something much smaller, and are balking now that they've received the real numbers?
Of course, that also means that they received far more profit then they expected as well. Unless they really screwed up the formula for the bonuses, they should be easily able to afford them. They probably just hate paying people that much on principle.
Activision has a hard time planning for next Tuesday, much less any farther than that. It's entirely possible they botched the amount of money they set aside for the bonus.
They would have signed for a percentage. Probably worked for just enough to live on over the development time as well, and the bonus is like their contract wage and they get it at the end. Even if the amount ended up being huge, Activision are getting even more, so I can only see this as them being greedy bastards.
Independant studio (so they own everything they make). EA has picked them up under their EA partners program. Founded by Vince and the other IW head, and a few IW leads are joining too.
Yep. The two heads of IW got fired for, apparently, daring to ask when the hell the bonus check is coming, they formed Respawn, and now more and more of IW is jumping ship to them.
And yes, it's more likely Activision's dragging their feet on bonuses because they're greedy bastards rather than an accounting fuckup.
I've dealt with similar situations on a smaller scale before. Its invariably shitty bookkeeping. Now, a company with 5 or 10 stores is somewhat different than a multinational corporation, but I've had friends that have been in work situations working on commision, and it usually goes something like this:
Company hires new employee with a base salary + 10% commission to be paid in lump sum yearly.
New employee makes sales, generates commision to be paid as bonus at the end of the year.
Company thinks "damn look at all this money we've got", spends money on new building, equipment, etc
End of the year comes up, and company tallies up commissions, owes new employee $100,000+ in commissions. Company budgeted $25,000, and no one thought during the year, "hey, this guy is making a lot of sales, we need to put more money back for commission."
Company tells employee that rather than bonus being payed at the end of the year as in the contract, it'll be paid in quarterly installments or some other bullshit. Employee, who knows they can get work anywhere since they've made a million dollars in sales, gets pissed and leaves. Company says "well if you quit I'm not paying you your bonus". Employee sues company.
This happens ALL THE TIME.
So it was proven (or at least there's evidence) that they were fired for asking about the bonuses? Or is that just something that's been really inferred about?
I expect the bonuses haven't been coming out because the company didn't expect it to be as big a success as it was, and they don't like paying employees too much money. This situation is just so fucked, I really hate the Activision bigwigs.
Oh, I'm sure. Though what makes Activision's case more interesting is that IW was supposed to be paid fairly quickly after the game's release, so in theory Activision shouldn't have had time to spend the bonus money on anything.
In theory.
Hell, maybe they keep holding onto it simply so their profit margins won't take a big hit and make the stockholders nervous. Especially since the bonus amount is currently 3/4 of their last quarterly profit.
Edit: Henroid, they were fired for "insubordination." Or for being difficult, in other words. Nothing was said about asking for bonuses, though I'm sure Kotick would qualify that as "being difficult."
No I remember the insubordination charge, which everyone knew was bullshit since it's corporate speak for, "We needed a vague reason to let them go."
That point you made about the bonus totals being 3/4 of their profit is amazing. Even if they paid out the bonuses, can't they still piece it in as "Here's our profits, which have been so good we've paid out these bonuses"? I thought that's more or less what profits were about. Bonuses. Either way, that would be an extremely shitty thing to do this over, especially since this could come around to bite them in the ass if the lawsuit goes the employees' way.
There's a certain kind of bean counter that just loves killing golden geese.
The kind that thinks "We've got 5 salesmen, we're paying 4 of them $75,000 a year with commission, and one of them $150,000 with commission, lets save $75,000 a year by firing the guy we're paying $150,000 and replacing him with someone just out of school".
Again, in my experience, this shit happens ALL THE TIME.
Profits are for Bobby Koticks and the shareholders wallets, not bonuses for employees.
Problem is, U.S. accounting rules state that they can't count bonuses paid out to employees in their overall profit statement. Sure, they can incorporate them into the financial statement somewhere, but not the bottom line. Few people read past the bottom line.
And Jealous Deva, considering what Activision's been up to lately I'm sure short-sighted accountants are winning over treating their employees decently or even making decent games.
Oh, I'm sure, this is pretty much what happens whenever you get people who don't know anything about the actual business in question but are just 'business people' running the company.
Someone looks at a balance statement with something like the following;
Developer Amount Paid Revenue
xxxx $100 million $2 billion
yyyy $25 million $250 million
zzzz $5 million $15 million
And the conclusion they invariably reach is "The appropriate budget for a game is $5 million, and every game made should bring in $2 billion."
Or from someone shoving a wine glass he's sipping out of down his throat.
113 million dollars was their profit for 2009. They lost 286 million dollars for the last three months of 2009. It still beat Wall Street's expectations.
Edit: Oh, right. 189 million for the first three months of 2010. Pretty much all of that is probably Modern Warfare 2.
This is on the right track but it goes farther than that.
I was talking to a fairly high-up employee at Krome last night for about 40 minutes about the state of the vg industry. He was complaining that business is so hard these days and everyone is closing down, can't make profit, no userbase to sell to anymore etc. These guys have absolute tunnel vision when it comes to choosing a development platform. PS360 is the only thing they see. There's two types of posters on these boards; the type who reasonably discuss matters with researched and knowledgeable viewpoints and the type that constantly spout innacurate myths as though they were fact. These devs are like the 2nd type of poster. He told me when I quizzed him on why, if he wants a larger userbase does he not consider the Wii as a platform, that (blanket statement) "games do not sell on the Wii, a CEO came in and told us" and "when was the last time you turned on your Wii?" Not "I'm excited at the potential userbase I can sell to."
What I'm saying is that you know how some gamers think they're "hardcore?" MOST developers have the same attitude but magnified.
'See? I was right!' says Wedbush-Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. 'Neener, neener' he added when asked for clarification.
Probably.
At least the Wii was never as much of a ripoff as the PS3 on release. I'll never forget how much I facepalmed when I saw it was $1300 NZ dollars.
That's one console every 12 people, and one every 5 households. I didn't know gaming was that big down here.
And we still don't get some new big release games on release and instead six months later. I remember reading the thread for Mario Galaxy on this forum six fucking months before they bothered releasing it in NZ/Aus. Hopefully they don't pull that shit again with Mario Galaxy 2 or I will hate them forever.