Activision Tried to Spy on Former Infinity Ward Heads’ Computers

It seems like Activision is making the most of their James Bond license by trying to emulate some Bond villain-style hijinx – and not one of the cool Bond villains either. Called “Project Icebreaker”, Activision heads employed the head of their IT department to get any incriminating evidence he could from the computers of Jason West and Vince Zampella while they were heading up Infinity Ward.

Giant Bomb received the court filings from a PR rep for West’s and Zampella’s attorneys that revealed the ridiculous plot in question. Six months prior to the release of Modern Warfare 2, Activision’s chief legal officer at the time, George Rose, told then director of IT Thomas Fenady to “dig up dirt on Jason and Vince” because “[they were] sick of dealing with these guys, their ego… [they] just want to get rid of them.” And when Fenady showed hesitation, he was told that the order “comes from Bobby [Kotick] directly.”

Further instructions included “Don’t get caught doing it,” “see what files and documents were on [their computers],” and he was also told that “Bobby [Kotick] will take care of you … Don’t worry about repercussions.” Fenady went so far as to contact third party entities for help getting to their files, including Microsoft, but they refused on legal grounds. It went so far that there were even discussions on staging a fire drill so that they could image West’s and Zampella’s computers.

Ultimately, the project was abandoned when it proved to be impossible to complete. However, the timeline for the project does show that Activision were trying to get rid of Infinity Ward’s heads long before their big falling out in 2010 and two months before either of them made any sort of contact with EA. This failed Bond villain scheme might just change how the case unravels in a big way.