Activision pays out $42 million, Infinity Ward Employee Group says they owe more

In a move that lawyers called "cynical," Activision sent out a payment of $42 million today to the group of former Infinity Ward employees that are alleging Activision skipped the bill on Modern Warfare 2 employee royalties.

"I can confirm for you that it happened today," a lawyer for the Infinity War Employees Group said to Polygon. "I can also tell you that although it is a meaningful payment, it is only a small portion of what we are seeking in litigation. It is outrageous that they made us wait, they obviously knew they owed the money and this just shows that they breached the contract."

For Activision's part, they're saying the payment has nothing to do with the law suit, and that this is natural process of their "discovery phase." The Infinity Ward Employee Group's lawyer called it a ""cynical attempt to look good before the jury trial."

When this issue first flared up in 2010, G4 reported that the Infinity Ward group was seeking between $75 million to $125 million in unpaid royalties as well as $75 to $500 million in punitive damages. Should they win, the loot will be divided (unevenly) between 40 plaintiffs.

So depending on how the trial goes (two weeks from now,) Activision could owe quite a bit more scratch. Though these things tend to get appealed and dragged through the courts for years. This is likely still just the beginning of a much longer story.

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CD Projekt Red hiring for "RPG in Brand New Setting"

It looks like CD Projekt Red, the highly lauded Polish developer of The Witcher 2, is looking to expand in light of their new found success. Their website now has an entire category of their job listings page devoted to an "RPG in a brand new setting."

The listings are pretty standard for any project - environmental artist, gameplay designer, quest designer, animator etc - so it's difficult to glean any information from those listings. However, given that the "RPG in a brand new setting" stands alongside another category called "RPG in a dark fantasy world," makes us think CD Projekt Red is beginning work on a non-Witcher-related project...as well as a Witcher 2-related project.

We wont know anything until the developer decides to make an official announcement, but as always, we'll be looking forward to E3 for a potential announcement. Last year the developer had a fairly large presence at the show, so we wouldn't be surprised to see them make another announcement now that The Witcher 2's Xbox 360 version is out in the wild.

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