According to Polygon's Michael McWhertor, Modern Warfare creators Jason West and Vince Zampella lawsuit against Activision has been resolved. The L.A. Times' Ben Fritz reports confirmation from both parties'' lawyers.

Kotaku has reached out to both parties for comment and will update once we hear more.

Update: West and Zampella's Lawyer has told Kotaku the following: "Trial is not going forward. All parties have reached a settlement of the dispute. The terms are confidential."

Meanwhile, Activision has issued the following statement:

Activision Blizzard, Inc. (ATVI) today announced that all parties to the litigation have reached a settlement of the dispute, the terms of which are strictly confidential.

The company does not believe that the incremental one-time charges related to the settlement will result in a material impact on its GAAP or non-GAAP earnings per share outlook for the current quarter or the calendar year, due to stronger-than-expected operating performance in the current quarter.

In news certain to delight indie games fans, Minecraft has done something that has not been seen in a long time—knock a Call of Duty game out of the top two on the Xbox 360's most-played list.

To put this in perspective, the only thing that knocked Call of Duty: Black Ops out of the No. 1 spot from its release in 2010 was the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in 2011. And those two have run No. 2 and No. 1, respectively, ever since. Until Minecraft elbowed Black Ops out of the way last week.

The figures are according to Major Nelson's regular listing of the top Xbox Live activity. It counts numbers of unique users, worldwide, that are playing the game while connected to Xbox Live—so it's not just multiplayer figures (although one can assume that's the bulk of Call of Duty's total here.)

The last time I could find something other than the two most recent releases of Call of Duty holding the top two was in 2010, after the release of Halo: Reach (Halo 3 was a steady No. 2 before that, to Modern Warfare 2). Whatever the case, the idea that Minecraft—a downloadable title, no less—did that to a position that has been dominated by a retail big-budget first-person shooter since forever, is rather damned remarkable.

And, oh yeah, the 360 version was the most purchased Arcade title—by a mile, one expects.

LIVE Activity for week of May 14th [Major Nelson]

Lt. Col. Oliver North is a polarizing figure in American history and, we found out, earlier this month, an advisor on the next huge Call of Duty game, Black Ops II.

North isn't your average video game consultant. He was one of the main actors in the Iran-Contra scandal that wracked America in the '80s. North helped the U.S. government sell weapons to Iran with the intent to free hostages, while transferring the money earned to back rebels in Nicaragua who were accused of human rights abuses. Both ends of the deals were suspect and potentially in violation of U.S. law. North testified to Congress about the affair in widely-televised hearings that marked one of the worst moments of the popular Reagan administration. He was later convicted on charges related to the shredding of documents relevant to the scandal but his convictions were reversed on appeal.

Since then, he rehabilitated his image, ran for Senate, wrote books and became a fixture on Conservative news shows and a favorite of the Republican party.

In early May, North appeared in a Black Ops II mini-documentary. In the documentary, he speculated about a dark future where America's most high tech weapons are used against us. He was, we reported, essentially shilling for the game. Some readers didn't mind. Others were irate, labeling him a traitor to the nation. One of our writers wrote an editorial lambasting North's involvement.

In late May, I got a chance to chat with Mark Lamia, the head of Treyarch, the studio that makes Black Ops II and consulted with North. What follows is, with some interruptions, our exchange on the matter, one I thought was illuminating enough to present in full, with minor edits made for clarity's sake:

(It's relevant to the exchange to note the set-up. Lamia and I sat across from each other backstage at an Activision showcase event. An Activision public relations rep sat nearby. Lt. Col. Hank Keirsey, who has served as military consultant for multiple Call of Duty games and who I have interviewed before, stood at the ready to the side, next to me.)

Kotaku: Let's talk about Oliver North. That was controversial when you guys used him in the roll-out. A lot of our readers and even some of our writers had strong reactions to him, felt he was a politicized figure and some of our readers were angry about his inclusion in the promotion. Did you guys expect it to be controversial to be using Oliver North as a consultant?

Mark Lamia, head of Black Ops II development studio Treyarch: So, we used him for the game. When we create the fictions that we create, we do a bunch of research and try to talk to subject matter experts on it. And part of that research is reading and watching documentaries and movies and everything else. What can be a part of it is talking to people who've been through the experiences, people like Hank, and when you're talking about doing something in the ‘80s, black ops, when we were doing research in the conflicts that we were covering and everything else and some of our conflicts … in any event he rises to the top as someone who was probably, obviously the most well-known covert operations [person]. So it made sense for us from a game development point of view to spend the time and be able to talk to [him]. One of the things we do is we have these brushes with history in our Black Ops fiction. That's a signature, I think, to the way we create our historical fiction. We set you up with that. We put you in this place where it's, ‘Ok, I'm in that part of history,' and we have sort of that fiction we weave right through. Part of doing that has been and is getting a first-hand account whether that was last time in Black Ops, when we were highlighting parts of Vietnam, meeting with someone who was a real S.O.G. who did black operations in Vietnam and in this case with Lt. Col Oliver North.

Kotaku: But he's a controversial figure. Some of our readers said explicitly they consider him a traitor.

Lt. Col. Hank Keirsey, military advisor for the game: Did they really?

Kotaku: Yes

Keirsey: I think it's because he's on Fox News. Probably. Do they know what he really did? I guess I'm out of line even coming into the interview, but the man was involved in a crux of history… [Note: Keirsey pauses as he is waved off by a public relations person and excuses himself]. He wants me out of there.

Lamia: So, you know we're not trying to make a political statement with our game. We're trying to make a piece of art and entertainment. … If you're trying to create that fiction, for us to have met with him as we're creating our fiction is totally appropriate.

Kotaku: I understand his relevance. The question was on whether you expected the controversy. Like I said some of our readers and at least one of our writers – you may have even read the piece that he wrote about it – considered Oliver North as somebody who sold weapons to the Iranians, who supported a distasteful regime in South America and said this guy is somebody I grew up watching testify in the ‘80s. I'm very uncomfortable about him. I don't agree with what he did. And in the past, Call of Duty has used military advisers that have not drawn that kind of reaction from any of our readers. People had, just by default, respect for those leaders. So it feels like you guys, in working with him, have taken a risk in how people respond. But, not a risk you guys felt was a barrier?

Activision spokesperson: Ultimately it was to lean on him for his experience and insight.

Lamia: We chose to take on that late ‘80s time frame and when you think about that late ‘80s time frame… you know, we're not trying to put anyone on a pedestal. We're trying to create our fiction as game developers, as creators. Choosing this person, somebody who has met with leaders, and has run black operations, and understands that was really valuable to have that sort of first-hand account from him... Even down to people who he's met with in terms of understanding this is somebody who has sat at these tables. Let me give you an example. It doesn't have anything to do with the story fiction, per se, but deals with another game, if you're a character artist, and this person has met with someone you want to portray in your game, a historical figure…

Kotaku: ... you're going to talk to him.

Lamia: You can talk to him. That's if you're a character artist. You can say, ‘how did he look?' And if you're an animator, you can say, ‘how did he act?' And he can tell you. These are things you can't get very well from anywhere [else]. There's no source material I can get that's going to give me that kind of thing. And if you're an audio guy, you say, well how did he sound? You might say, ‘well if you don't know how is anybody else going to know?' But that's our form of art and entertainment.

Kotaku: That makes sense.

Lamia: We actually do that kind of stuff. That's an example that's just outside of it, but if you want to talk about an historical scenario that we want to set up, our Black Ops fiction is here's history, ours is the one you don't know about. It's helpful to have somebody who has first-hand accounts of those situations.

Shortly after this part of our conversation, as we were winding our discussion to other matters, such as the game's multiple endings and the advice of its other main consultant, future-weapons expert P.W. Singer, Lamia added an important distinction between the North-Singer documentary which had prompted our earlier North coverage and the game-making Lamia and I had just discussed. "That's not a game development piece," Lamia said of the video. "That's an advertising piece."

Call of Duty was always popular, but became a cultural phenomenon only in 2007 thanks to a revised multiplayer system that hooked players with a then-innovative ability-unlocking level-based system.

That year's Call of Duty IV: Modern Warfare became the new GoldenEye, the new Halo... the new multiplayer game that it seemed like everyone who had a console was playing.

Call of Duty multiplayer has become only more popular, now stretching new games of in the series into nine-month-long multiplayer-based "seasons" of new map packs and competitions.

So why, I asked the head of the studio behind this year's Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, are you even bothering with a single-player campaign? Couldn't you just skip that and still be huge?

"We want to create a campaign," Treyarch studio chief Mark Lamia said. "We have a whole team that's focused on creating the campaign. It's what we do. It's what we want to create. We want to create a campaign, multiplayer and zombies."

Surely there's a business reason, too. Not everyone connects their consoles online, some people (me!) predominantly play the campaign, but I figured this was a good thought experiment at least—and a good test to see if one of the masters of the franchise would bite on the suggestion that Call of Duty could thrive without its story mode.

Lamia doesn't sound like a guy who could picture a blockbuster CoD without a campaign. He sees it as being a crucial third of the experience, along with his studio's co-op zombies modes and traditional franchise multiplayer. "Those all cater to different emotional states," he said. "When you're playing the campaign, you're sitting down to have that sort of epic and cinematic experience, right? You want to have that first-person role in that experience. But multiplayer is all about that competitive and social experience."

Black Ops 2 will have a campaign, of course, one that mostly depicts a near-future cold war instigated by a villain named Raul Menendez who turns the United States' high-tech arsenal of drones and future weapons against itself.

"As creators we wanted to do something new inside the campaign structure," Lamia said, "and make the game play new and unique too and make it something that if you failed, the story would progress and note that you failed." Yes, they're adding failure to CoD campaigns, and, believe it or not, multiple endings.

The failures will be part of the game's unusual new Strike Force mode, which lets players step outside the boots of the game's protagonist David Mason and into the role of black ops squads who must fight proxy wars around the world. You play these missions as a commander and as any of the soldiers, hopping from one to the next as they die. If you fail one of these missions you can try it again, but there will be consequences. "It will actually affect the dynamics of that cold war," Lamia said. He wouldn't explain just how it changes the game, whether it locks off campaign missions, makes the game tougher or what have you. "It doesn't affect difficulty per se," he said, "but it will affect what you experience. It's meant to add non-linearity."

Strike Force adds an interesting wrinkle and argues for the relevance of a Call of Duty campaign. Hell, any sign of innovation on that front does. Just don't expect another trend to infiltrate the campaign. It won't be playable co-op. "For Black Ops 2 and the kind of narrative we're telling it doesn't lend itself well to that sort of situation in terms of creating a co-op campaign," Lamia said. "It was a similar decision point that we made when we were creating Black Ops. It's not a question of technology. We made a game [Treyarch's Call of Duty: World at War] that has that, so we're capable of doing that. It's more about what we're trying to create inside the campaign. We put all of the emphasis about co-op into zombies."

We'll have more on Black Ops 2 soon. The game will be out this November.

All manner of dirty laundry is currently being aired the ongoing ongoing lawsuit between Activision and Vince Zampella and Jason West, creators of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

A series of internal Activision emails indicate the projected 2009 and 2010 earnings of the most well-paid 30 employees at Infinity Ward. In 2010, the year that West and Zampella were fired, both men were slated to make $436,800 as a base salary and a whopping $13 million bonus, which when combined with their vested equity put their total projected compensation at $16.4 million apiece. Good gravy!

In the email attached to the spreadsheet above, Activision's Mike Griffith opines that while the spreadsheet indicated plenty of spare money to retain good employees, "we are paying way too many people way too much," and that "we need to find a way to put caps on our bonus payouts."

There's certainly no denying $13 million is one hell of a bonus.

Internal Email, Exhibit 655 [Court document via James Stevenson]

A stack of emails released as part of the ongoing legal action between Activision and Call of Duty's creators have turned up some hilariously catty exchanges and contingency plans coming from the publisher's top brass.

Posted over on the LA Times, a 2009 email from Activision's president of publishing, Mike Griffith, mentions a plan to reward the top 12 members of Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward other than heads Jason West and Vincent Zampella, "to help ensure we retain the team if things blow up at the top. As you know, this has been a difficult relationship."

Another exchange mentions the fact that, when asked by Grifith to provide a live gameplay demonstration of what would have been Modern Warfare 2, West and Zampella apparently hung up on the Activision executive.

When informed of this, Activision boss Bobby Kotick replied "If they really did I would change their locks and lock them out of their building."

To say the Call of Duty creators and Activision enjoyed a fractured relationship is a bit of an understatement.

Activision clash with Call of Duty developers dates back years [LA Times]

Englishman Lewys Martin thought it would be a good idea to to offer people "hacks" for Call of Duty Games, which not only broke the rules of the game, but also included a virus.

No, Lewys, it was not a good idea, especially since it's now got you some jail time.

Martin, who is only 20, earned "thousands of pounds" operating a website offering exploits for unspecified Call of Duty shooters on the PC, while at the same time including a trojan horse with the program that let him "remotely monitor computer users' keystrokes" so he could snatch things like credit card info.

He'd then sell the stolen credit card numbers for a few bucks a pop.

Here's where it gets really interesting: Martin wasn't caught in the act of selling these dodgy hacks. He was caught with a friend while they were breaking into a school, something he's apparently done a number of times.

So, to recap: he broke the rules of the game, offered others the means to do so, stole their credit card numbers, sold those numbers to shady crims then was himself engaged in repeated break-ins and thefts.

Farcically, he has pleaded with the judge to let him finish a university IT course he's currently enrolled in, "which would allow him to harness his abilities for good and not evil".

Um, no, he's spending 18 months in jail instead.

Hacker Lewys Martin uses Call of Duty virus to sell players' card details [Kent Online, via Eurogamer]

The ugly court battle between Activision and its former employees has gotten even uglier.

According to documents obtained by The Los Angeles Times and released today, Activision hired a man named Thomas Fenady to "dig up dirt" on Call of Duty creators Jason West and Vince Zampella so the company could build up a case to fire them. The newspaper reports that Fenady was asked to hack into West and Zampella's voicemail, e-mail, and computers in an operation code-named "Project Icebreaker."

Sounds like a spy movie, doesn't it? As the Times writes:

Fenady testified that he expressed concern about the project but was told, "Don't worry about the repercussions." Fenady found an outside company, InGuardians, who also balked at the task because of "legal hurdles." Stymied, Fenady approached the company's Facilities Department and talked about staging a "fake fumigation" and a "mock fire drill" in order to get West and Zampella away from their computers long enough to copy files on their computers.

Ultimately, Activision did none of those things. Activision declined to comment on the documents, as did attorneys for the developers.

According to the Times' Ben Fritz, Activision's request to delay the court trial was denied and it will proceed on May 29.

Check out the Times' piece for the original documents.

Key documents unsealed in Activision Call of Duty trial [LA Times]

Activision is facing another big lawsuit over its tentpole Call of Duty series, only this one has nothing to do with people who used to work on the series. It's to do with a rival developer who owns the right to a name that Call of Duty uses a lot.

Fans older PC shooters may be familiar with NovaLogic's Delta Force series, which around the turn of the millennium was OK, but is now the kind of thing you find selling for $5 in giant buckets in a post office.

Quality aside, Novalogic holds a trademark over the use of the term Delta Force, as well as a logo it designed for the series. These date back to the late 1990s.

Call of Duty fans may be more familiar with the term from Modern Warfare 3, though, as one of the units in the game is called Delta Force. Call of Duty's Delta Force not only uses the same term, but has a logo that's very similar to the one Novalogic has been employing.

But wait, you may be thinking, isn't Delta Force a real thing? With Chuck Norris in it? So how can anybody trademark it? Turns out it's not; while there is a branch of the US Army's Special Ops known as the1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, there is no such thing as a unit officially branded "Delta Force", so Novalogic were free to snap it up (the old Delta Force movie was actually called The Delta Force).

Here's the meat of Novalogic's complaints, as reported on Courtroom News:

"The infringing mark's lightening rod is horizontal rather than vertical and a portion of the delta sign is set behind the dagger blade rather than being superimposed," according to the complaint.

"In single player mode, 7 of 16 missions are designated Delta Force missions, in which the only avatar available to players is 'Frost,' a Delta Force operator," the complaint states. "In addition, players fight alongside a number of non-player controlled characters. Several of these characters are members of Delta Force."

"In multiplayer mode, 7 of 16 mission maps have 'Delta Force' as one of the two factions that the player can select," NovaLogic says.

"At the time of this writing, Activision has released 6 additional multiplayer maps with infringing content. Activision plans to release additional content through their 'Elite Content' feature," it added.

"Despite Activision's irrefutable knowledge of NovaLogic's superior trademark rights, Activision created knockoff marks that are nearly identical [to] NovaLogic's design and word marks," according to the complaint. "Activision then shamelessly inserted these infringing marks throughout its competing first person military adventure video games.

"As if this were not enough, Activision has in-turn licensed the infringing marks to Defendants Voyetra Turtle Beach then shamelessly ('Turtle Beach'), Microsoft Inc. ('Microsoft') and the BradyGAMES division of Penguin Books ('BradyGAMES') without NovaLogic's permission. As a result of Activision's unauthorized licensing, Turtle Beach and Microsoft have created special editions of their products where the overall look and feel is entirely dominated by use of the infringing marks. In addition, BradyGAMES, a creator of videogame strategy guides and books, has reproduced NovaLogic's marks in its publications relating to defendants' game."

In terms of what Novalogic wants out of all this, the developer says it is seeking unspecified damages and "an injunction for trademark infringement and unfair competition."

Video Game Maker Says 'Call of Duty' Copies Old 'Delta Force' Logo [Courtroom News, via Polygon]

The lawyer in Activision's case against Call of Duty's creators, Beth Wilkinson, who was only hired last week as a replacement, has asked for the trial's commencement date to be pushed back by 30 days so she can "get up to speed". [BW]