Three more leave Infinity Ward

Three additional long time members of Infinity Ward have left the studio this month, according to various sources.

Jon Shiring, six year programming veteran of Infinity Ward has announced via his twitter page that he has left the company. According to the tweet, Shiring is "incredibly proud of everything we accomplished and [he is] going to miss everyone." According to his Linkedln profile, Shiring left the same day Infinity Ward's former studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella announced their new EA backed studio, Respawn Entertainment.

IGN reports that Senior Animator Bruce Ferriz has also confirmed he left the studio this month. He has found new employment working on an unannounced project for Big Red Button Entertainment, a company based in Santa Monica.

Mackey McCandlish, a lead Designer on Modern Warfare 2, also "gave his goodbyes" to his coworkers at Infinity Ward via Facebook yesterday. McCandlish was with the company for eight years.

Infinity Ward suffered more losses earlier this month, with the departure of another Lead Designer, Todd Alderman, and Lead Software Engineer, Francesco Gigliotti Todd Alderman, and lead software engineer Francesco Gigliotti left. Alderman and Gigliotti had been with Infinity Ward for eight and seven years respectively.

All of this comes after Activision's sacking of Infinity Ward's studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella. "It has a certain irony to it," said EA's president Frank Gibeau, in regards to his companies publishing deal with the former heads' new studio. "But the fact that they were in this situation was a stunning opportunity for us."
Does all this mean better Call Of Dutys in the future?

http://twitter.com/iwslothy
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/108/1083218p1.html

"Various sources" has lately meant that their LinkedIn profile says Infinity Ward is a former employer. For those of you that don't know; Jason West and Vince Zampella (formers leaders of IW before Activision fired them) have formed a new studio and signed with Electronic Arts.

yep... Respawn

UPDATE:

Modern Warfare 2's lead animator Mark Grigsby and lead character animator John Paul Messerly have updated their Linkedln profiles, confirming that they have also left the company. Both are long term veterans of the studio, with Messerly having worked on every Call of Duty title produced by the studio.

For those of you keeping score, this brings the total to 11 lead developers who have left the studio since the ousting of its heads.

According to Infinity Ward's Linkedin company profile, they have lost more than 10% of their employees in slightly more than a week.

In his update, Messerly left a note reading "So long and thanks for all the COD."


http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-paul-messerly/1b/720/393

seems like IW is collapsing from the inside

No it's not. Activision fired founders and leaders of the company, and most of these guys have been working together since day one. If Activision wants to be dicks, they can be dicks right back.

What axe said

They're not collapsing, activision started trying to screw IW over, the more experienced weren't going to take it