Jason West Has Left Respawn Entertainment

HOT SCOOPSZZ!!1!

does anyone actually still care? they've been silent so long i forgot they were still around.

Oh snap son

@patrickklepek: Don't mean to be that guy, but there's a typo. Says "resond" when I'm pretty sure you mean "respond" =)

Who cares is kinda how I feel, if he hasn't been apart of the game for a reported 10 months, then the game should be fine, also not into FPS games so really don't care I guess

My first response upon seeing that title: "Who and what?" Not a good sign for the people behind....Call of Duty.

What the living hell is popin off at that studio?.... will we ever get a book for everything that happened there?

@wes899: We were and are again Victory Games. No relation to Respawn.

Then GIT TO IT.

Not to be that other guy, but it should be "respond to," as well. Or maybe "return."

The core of the team is what matters. 1 guy departing isn't going to ruin anything.

Never expected either of them to leave though.

Highly related: he looks like a weird amalgam of a couple of my uncles. I bet he's into motorcycles and baseball.

huh- well ain't that some shit.

probably doesn't have any material impact on the release, but it is kinda like bill bailing on ted. if it is due to family matters, i wish him good luck.

e3's going to be super interesting this year...microsoft, sony, respawn...a lot of big names with a lot to prove.

Be real messed up if he went back to Activision.

Interested in the sci-fi game Respawn comes up with. If it be truly family issues, my best to West. I enjoyed the old CoD games, subverted me temporarily into military shooters. I'm cleaning that out of my system now, but no offence to him or the other guy/ppl. CoD 2 especially was just too good.

Man, they really gotta announce that game at E3...

/thread

Will his streak of game development one-night-stands never end? Stay tuned!

I blame ERTS. Their bumbling and stumbling HAS to be involved in some way.

Just cancel the thing already

The actual impact on the game itself has to be minimal but I can't imagine this helps them put forward the image of "we're the Call of Duty guys here to bring you the ACTUAL next Call of Duty type game."

I like to think that his exit from the building was a long protracted slow motion sequence full of button prompts and explosions.

I hope this guy is OK and everyone at Respawn can keep working hard on their game.

SCOOPS!!

Well he's rich now. Although the total sum of money he got from Activision was never disclosed, I'll bet it was massive. It'd have to be, given how he dropped the suit. And he made a pretty penny off his Infinity Ward days, even without the bonuses. If I was as rich as he was, I'd probably leave the game business as well.

Will this affect whatever game Respawn will put out? Maybe. But to be honest, I don't really care very much, since all we've seen is a single hyper-blurry screenshot.

The article makes it sound like Respawn has been sitting on/suppressing this information for a while. E3 is three months away, and they're confirmed to be showing something there, so maybe they felt like it was best to for this story to break now so it has time to cool off and then get completely swept away by a strong E3 demo. It's definitely disconcerting news, but I'll hold off worrying until I know/see what they've been working on.

To those already calling doom on the first game by respawn, sources, according to Kotuku's story, say he's been gone for a while and hasn't been involved in the development of the game.

Hope they don't pull a Flagship Studios

Not to be dismissive, but at the end of the day. Does anybody who plays Call of Duty or first person shooters for that matter care about one guy leaving a newly formed studio? So far, I heard about all the drama involving Jason and Vince's dismissal from Activision. Then the anti-climatic litigation following Respawn creation. They have yet to show anything in last two years. Which is why I'm indifferent to the whole story.

If he had to leave to attend to something else, that's his business. I wish Jason West the best of luck in his future endeavors.

Can't report something you don't know/aren't told and/or sending your audiance to a compeditor isn't a wise move. Just the facts ma'am.

[coffee cup with "Respawn" printed on the bottom falls to the floor]

I'm mostly just wondering where he has moved on to really. I doubt him leaving will have much of an effect on the next game they are going to put out but it seems odd for him to just leave (and not go to another game company, I guess).

"Zojarushi... "

Considering we've heard literally nothing about Respawn's work, i'm not too surprised. Things are, obviously, not going as planned.

That doesn't sound like good news to me. I hope his former partner can keep the news studio alive.

Oh no, we will now miss out of yet another MMS.

So, did West actually retire? What were the family-related reasons for leaving?

Crazy how this comes out almost exactly three years that the Infinity Ward fiasco happened.

Wow that's really crazy news. I guess if it is "family issues" it would explain the abruptness of the whole thing. Maybe he was behind the founding of the company more than the game itself. That would at least explain why he hadn't been working on the game for months.

GOOD.

The way you worded the banner makes it seem like he died.

I find this Incredibly hilarious.. Holy fucking shit.

he joined with electronic arts. that was something i wasnt aware of. silly move.

Leaving the company he founded before the first game is announced....odd.

The guy's had it rough and though this whole partnership with EA has probably been the brightest thing he's seen in years, sometimes it's too much and you have to walk away for personal issues.

@klei said:

I wouldn't say that. You'll see that kind of "talk about it, show a TINY little tease, and then disappear" a lot in this industry. Or at least, more than you might think. Sometimes, it's just weird stuff. Plus I'm guessing that the title has been next gen for a while now.

One guy leaving doesn't mean that things aren't going as planned, and some silly jump of the gun on marketing doesn't really mean that either. It'd be different if we knew jack shit about the title they've been working on, but remember that most games aren't created a month before being announced, they are concepts that have been hanging around for months or even years at the studio or in someone's mind before they take off. We have little insight into what was going on at any point in time within Respawn and what stages the title was at during any period of time. We never saw anything, so it may just be that prototyping was taking a long time, or it may have just been the company knowing it wouldn't have anything to show any time soon and trying to give people something to think about and feed off of the attention in the press garnered by the Activision fiasco.

Wow. This bodes ill. I wonder what Respawn's next game is going to look/play like?

Hmm, this made me wonder, were they responisble for the CoD franchise from it's roots? 'cuz if they were I wouldn't hold too much confidence in them. Sure, CoD 4 was revolutionary, but the ones before that....

That's pretty shitty for Respawn.

Considering the whole point of the studio was that the two guys behind COD 4 were doing something without Activision's interference, him leaving before the first game is even announce is like shooting the studio in the foot before a 100m dash.

I don't know if there is bad blood, but it is clearly not something to do to a friend.

Respawn just got spawn-camped.

Let's remember though before leaving IW to found Respawn with an EA deal because of their problems with Activision, West and Zampella formed IW with Activision money after leaving 2015 Inc., supposedly because of issues with EA.