Jason West Has Left Respawn Entertainment

@rollingzeppelin: He states that he's going by what he personally was told, he's not writing this because he heard it from other sources online, he's writing this as he heard it from the source. The source could be the same person or a different one, who knows...

Well, that's great.

But who's gonna make games where you shoot people in the first person now?!

ME. Mwahaha.

Well, as long as they can still do the "From the makers of..." thing I'm sure they'll be fine.

Wow, left before Respawn's first game was even shown off. Definitely not good.

I so want Respawn's game to be announced as Daikatana 2! ;)

I don't think this should be a big deal. By the time he left you have to imagine they had the basic design for the new game set up, and I'm sure Zampella and the rest of the ex-IW guys have a decent handle on development.

But we'll have to wait and see, I guess.

Didn't see this coming but he did get a good deal of money from that settlement so he doesn't really need to work again

It's a shame to see someone leave a company before its even managed to reveal anything but these things happen. Hopefully he'll do ok in the long run and we'll at least get to see what he's worked on soon.

I guess this is not really a big deal. Respawn killed themselves by not putting out any sort of game or anything during their entire tenure. It's been long enough, they could have announced or done something to stay up in the media. Even if they pull something out at E3, I don't know if it'll have the same allure as it would have a few years back.

The big hype and buzz for the original COD masterpieces by Infinity Ward is basically just old news now and I don't think matters too much to people these days. "From the guys who made MW and MW2" is just not a really good selling point anymore, and I don't think it even matters that much in 2013.

With or without him, I don't think too many things will change, quite personally. I think the whole quality of Infinity Ward is grossly exaggerated in the first place, considering how good Treyarch CODs have been recently.

I really want to see Respawn's new game and I'm hoping it appears at E3 this year.

Oh snap.

Who is he? ..and why is this important?

Scoops Klepek strikes again.

Maybe he realized that EA and Activision are basically the same company.

Can't help but feel they left it too long to put something out, they kind of lost momentum and failed to capitalise on there ' video game rockstar' cache.

They are working on a game. How could they put out already? Would've been a small project.

Guy who hasn't done anything for years leaves developer that hasn't done anything.

Well I for one struggle to care!

Let's leave out the part with the "family issues" being the reason he's leaving. Quality.

Great reporting as ever!

This may only be interesting from an academic POV, but just think: there's not really been any hype for Respawn's game in like, ever. Now One of the studio Co-Founders have left, all of a sudden we're talking about it. This will put a lot of pressure on the remaining team to ensure that the vertical slice they show at E3 is awesome.

I hope we hear more, I'm curious why he left, he didn't like where the project was going or maybe something else.

Funny enough... this is not surprising to me.

Good for him. I know i wouldn't be bothered to make a CoD "killer". Not after so many years of this meat grinder.

If only patrick had responded to this somewhere in these comments. If only....

EA ladies and Gentlemen.

Thank you and Goodnight!

I think the check from the Activision settlement probably cleared. Maybe he is building a nice bungalow in Bora Bora

:-)

looks like the affects of the lawsuit cause this to happen i think but before the studio first game is shown at E3 this year?!?! sh*T!!!!!

Damn it! Who's going to make an FPS I actually want to play now?

Oh man, twist.

Eh. I guess I always kind of assumed that whatever Respawn was making was going to be similar to Bungie's Destiny in that it'll be very identifiable as a game that those guys would make with bigger "social hooks" or whatever. It was never a game I was particularly interested in playing, so I'm kind of indifferent to this other. Then again, it's pretty crazy that he's leaving his new(ish) company before they even announce, much less ship, a game

That's not how you spell buffoon. You buffoon.

The irony!

It's important to note that he left due to family issues, so let's put speculation to rest.

Haha, might want to run a spell check of your own you buffoon :p

Well Scoops your time to shine, come on dig a little deeper and find out what is really going on :O

How crazy would it be if he ended up back at Activision for the next gen version of Call of Duty? The forums would explode!

Something tells me that @patrickklepek's source might be the same guy who gave him the tip when West and Zampella were being removed from Infinity Ward.

Yep they removed the Bioware part.

I wonder if there was some sort of unknown personal strife between West and Zampella? Why leave Activision together, form a company together, and announce a game together for West to not work on the new product at all , then leave the company. Seems strange, maybe West wanted to make something WAY different than a shooter, but Zampella put the kibosh on it.

People who jump on every single typo in a Giantbomb article are so bizarre. You're not a fucking editor, have a word with yourselves. So awkward watching people chime in with nothing else to say as though they're some journalistic peer helping out.

Its a shame the guy had to walk away from the project, especially if the reasons were non-business related. Still, as people have pointed out, it's hard to get excited/disappointed about something we collectively have little frame of reference about overall

Hopefully he...wait for it...RESPAWNS back at Infinity Ward and makes CoD 16 Blackest Warfare of Modern Ops part Deux.

i'm sure jason west is somewhere right now walking around in his money robe, smoking money cigars, and wiping with money TP. I'm sure he'll be fine. Also, aside from being the co-founder of the studio that birthed the call of duty series, can anyone really mention a particular contribution he's made to games?

yes but will his money keep him warm at night??!!??!!

probably, if he stitched it together into some kind of luxurious flowing money robe :(

i'm so lonely :( :(

Why are people banging on Patrick for not mentioning he left because of family issues? That's a very standard cover story it doesn't mean anything.

The CEO of Groupon even made fun of it in his resignation letter (not really resignation as he had been fired).

No matter why he left, even if it is just to retire, this still can be a cause for concern if you think West was an important part of making Infinity Ward's games good.

Come on, Patrick. Could you not write more than this? It's like something you'd see in a tabloid newspaper for people who don't know jack about video games. I'm pretty sure everyone here knows what happened to Infinity Ward and who Jason West is. I really think news stories like this should just be kept as some sort of short message that appears on the site instead of an actual story.

I'm currently playing Call of Duty 2 for the first time; I only had the demo when it came out.

It's very good.

Having money should make walking away easier, but it never seems to work out that way. I hope his troubles are resolved, and I hope it all works out for him.