Though the trial between Activision and Call of Duty co-creators Jason West and Vince Zampella has yet to begin, pre-trial documents released last week claimed that the publisher tried to hack into the duo’s work computers. Thomas Fenady was Director of IT at Activision in 2009 and in a pre-trial deposition he claimed that the company’s chief legal officer, George Rose, had asked him to “dig up dirt on Jason and Vince.”

The project, code-named Project Icebreaker, involved hacking into West and Zampella’s email and voicemail. According to Fenady’s testimony, he was told, “Bobby will take care of you…Don’t worry about the repercussions.”

According to testimony, Fenady reached out to Microsoft for help hacking the duo’s passwords, but the company said they would assist only if there was a court order. Fenady said he then contacted a third-party security company InGuardians who also declined because of reservations about “legal hurdles.” Apparently, they were unconvinced by the promise of Bobby taking care of the “repercussions.”

As a last ditch, Fenady claims there was consideration of getting access to Infinity Ward’s computers by staging a fire drill or a mock fumigation, neither of which came to pass.

In Rose’s pre-trial testimony he denied that Fenady had even been instructed to dig up dirt on anyone, but he acknowledged the Project Icebreaker existed. He claimed it was simply a plan to monitor the email traffic of the entire studio, but that it was abandoned “once it proved to be impossible.”

The documents were sent to the press by a PR firm representing West and Zampella. Activision declined Giant Bomb’s request for comment.

[via Giant Bomb] [img]