One of the ugliest lawsuits in the video game industry's history has been settled just days before going to court, but the legal fireworks may not be over yet.

Activision and Electronic Arts have settled their differences over Jason West and Vince Zampella, former heads of Infinity Ward and creators of the Call of Duty franchise and "agreed to put this matter behind them," the two publishers said in a joint statement.

The peaceful resolution is a far cry from the mudslinging that has been going on since 2010, when Activision accused EA of "poaching" the developers, who were under contract. (It escalated things by suing EA in December of that year.)

Terms of the settlement were not released, though analysts say it was likely for little, if any, cash.

While the agreement concludes one legal battle for Activision, the suit filed by West and Zampella, which accuses the company of breaking its contract when it fired the pair, is still moving forward. It's set to go to trial May 29 — and that fight is still as ugly as ever.

AMD launches new Trinity processor
Adam Oxford at 05:18pm May 15 2012
trinity

AMD’s last processor launch, the FX chip, turned out to be a bit of a damp squib for desktops. But the company is hoping that the CPU architecture behind it will be more of a success on laptops. Today it’s launching an updated version of its hybrid GPU/CPU A-series processor, codenamed Trinity, which uses a revamped Bulldozer core to offer twice the performance per watt of its predecessor, Llano. Or that’s what AMD says, anyway.

Further claims include the ability to build thinner laptops with longer battery life than their Intel equivalents, and that the integrated Northern Isles GPU has three times the graphics performance of the Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU in Sandy Bridge. Trinity’s launch was accompanied by a bold claim by the firm’s Sasa Marinkovic:

“I don’t want you too see Trinity as competing against Ivy Bridge, I want you to see how we’re leading.”

Day Z interview — how zombies + Arma 2 created gaming’s best story machine
Evan Lahti at 01:23am May 16 2012
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day z interview

Day Z will be one of important things to happen in gaming this year. It’s an open-world, persistent, PvP and PvE zombie survival mod built atop a hardcore military simulator. And despite its harsh mechanics, permadeath, and absence of instruction, it’s spreading like wildfire. More than 48,000 unique players are in the alpha, and the thing you need to play it, Arma 2: Combined Operations, hovered at the top of Steam top sellers this week.

I spoke the mod’s creator, Dean “Rocket” Hall, over Skype. We chatted for an hour about player emotions, AI programming, Minecraft, and what features to expect next in Day Z—like dog companions. Hall joined Bohemia Interactive in January as a Game Designer on Arma 3.

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Why is Diablo 3 so satisfying to play? We ask Blizzard for their secrets

Diablo 3 was released on Tuesday. I got to attend the launch and interview Blizzard developers, Julian Love and Leonard Boyarsky, about the secrets of their development process. It seems that Blizzard’s priority is in focussing on “the awesome” – a sentiment I endorse. Click up there to watch the devs spill the beans.

For more on Diablo 3, read Tom’s Diablo 3 review as it happens, or read the rest of our Diablo 3 news. There’s a lot of it about.

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