Four more key staff desert Infinity Ward
All MW2 design leads have now left.
Kotaku reports that four more key staff have left Infinity Ward, including the last remaining lead designers of Modern Warfare 2.
The designers, Steve Fukuda and Zied Rieke, had been with Infinity Ward since its inception, and Fukuda had arrived with founders Jason West and Vince Zampella from their former home at Medal of Honor developer 2015.
According to Kotaku's sources, programmer Rayme Vinson and lead artist Chris Cherubini also left the Activision-owned developer yesterday.
They follow four other high-profile departures, including designers Mackey McCandlish and Todd Alderman, Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer lead.
All eight had long histories with the studio. In its messy divorce with West and Zampella, Activision has now lost all four credited lead designers of Modern Warfare 2: Fukuda, Rieke, Alderman and McCandlish. Jason West was the director of the smash hit game.
Activision told Gamasutra earlier this week that it retained a "deep bench of proven talent" at the studio.
West and Zampella announced the formation of a new studio, Respawn Entertainment, this week. It's not known if any of their former colleagues will be joining them yet.
"We're literally turning on the email, setting up the website, and tonight we'll hopefully be reading a lot of resumes and figuring out where to go from there," the pair told Eurogamer when we interviewed them on Monday evening.