Who needs drama sitcoms or reality shows when you can sit back, relax and watch developers and publishers alike lash out at each other?

<3.

Last week’s episode of Gaming Industry Drama consisted of Double Fine’s Tim Schafer calling Activision’s Bobby Kotick a “total prick” in a Eurogamer interview, for which he later apologized for, not before referencing to Kotick as Darth Vader. Remember that Brutal Legend publishing fiasco? Enough said.

There was also that juicy bonus episode where Cliff Harris of Positec Games became extremely ticked off at Epic’s Mark Rein due to comments Rein made during a panel that Harris was a part of at the Develop Conference in Brighton.

Harris and three other panel members were discussing marketing techniques for indie titles. Rein was not a part of this panel, just an audience member in the front row, but proceeded to open his “big mouth” and give his conflicting opinion. This resulted in Harris making a blog post in which he stated he “resented having some triple-a studio jerk come and tell someone whose run a microstudio for thirteen years that he is doing it all wrong”, and concluded with “Triple-A studio bosses trying to lecture me on how to communicate better with gamers? Fuck off.”

This week, we have Glenn Schofield of Sledgehammer games calling out EA. Back history: Glenn Schofield was a part of the subsidiary of EA, Visceral games, before he and Michael Condrey left to form Sledgehammer Games, which Activision owns.

Because all battles are best fought via Twitter, Schofield tweeted the following:

“Wow, a year ago today I left EA. What a day that was. They really treated me like shit even after creating Dead Space 4 them.”

And later…

 “Seems my tweet got some attention. Didn’t mean to. But after a year of EA bashing us it’s good to get it off my chest.”

Well, there you go. Do you really want to know what it feels like to be treated like “shit”? Go talk to Infinity Ward. I’m sure the employees of Respawn Entertainment also have some old stories to tell.

Granted, specific reasons why Schofield was treated poorly weren’t given, so who knows.

Something tells me we haven’t heard the last of it.

On March 30th, Modern Warfare 2 fans will be able to purchase a new MW2 map pack on XBL to cure their case of ‘mapathy.‘ What is mapathy you ask?

(mapathy.com)

The first two map packs for Modern Warfare 2 will be released exclusively for the Xbox 360 & for only a month. PS3 and PC players should expect the first map pack at the end of April or in early May.

[GameSpot]

Jeez, I’ve heard rumors that Activision was headed by a big bunch of jerks but this is absolutely absurd. Infinity Ward’s head bosses Vince Zampella and Jason West were expecting a large royalty check with a “thank you” for making one of the greatest most successful games of all-time. Instead, Activision fired them before the date of their payment.

“Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public,” attorney Robert Schwartz said, “last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual ‘investigation’ into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of ‘insubordination’ and ‘breach of fiduciary duty,’ which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st.”

Dude, I don’t care what happened. Modern Warfare 2 was so utterly freakin’ SWEET and successful, that I think Activision should have just swallowed their pride & kissed some Infinite butts. Does this mean the Call of Duty enterprise will now plummet?