http://kotaku.com/5491675/rumor-why-call-of-duty-developers-are-sticking-around
"Sources tell Kotaku that Activision continues to delay royalties to other employees in order to keep them at the company. The morale at Infinity Ward is reportedly extremely low."
If this is true, then I'm never buying another game from these motherfuckers again.

How would not paying employees make them stay at the company? If I were an employee I'd leave that shithole and work somewhere where my skills and talent are appreciated. Have these bastards seen Office Space? They should burn the fucking place down, keep the stapler, and work at Intertrode!

Well the point is apparently to get them to leave so they're not employees and therefore not entitled to what would be a fucking big royalty cheque

It is basically an incentive to stick around through the IW-head mess thing. If they just got given all their money, they would likely jump ship immediately (even if it ends up being the IW-heads who are in the wrong). Activision can't win the PR war when they are limited by a crapload more lawyers and interests.
That being said, it is a dick-move.
Furthermore: I am going to hold judgement until we get a better source than "Sources told kotaku"

"Jason West told his mom, who told her Scrabble club, where one of her friends told her husband, who told his friend, who told his son, who told his girlfriend, who tweeted it, and one of her followers was a barber who told everyone in his barbershop, where on of the customers told his son, who posted it on his blog, which was picked up by a guy on Reddit, who tipped Kotaku."

This sort of thing is, by the way, the reason I wasn't as excited about a company I love (GoG and Blizzard before that) partnering with these trolls.
I wish I had a more "wait-and-see" mentality about this, but Activision has become known as this type of company. It's taken some hard work to make EA look like the nice guys, but the tables have certainly turned in the industry.

I knew what kind of company Activision would become back in 2006 or whatever, when Kotick proclaimed that gambling was the holy grail of the industry.

I'm also sceptical about Kotaku's sources. It does sound like the Activision we know and loathe. But that's exactly it. It could just be them telling us what we expect to hear.

Okay, so you're sceptical about Activision being dicks now?

Activision are dicks, no doubt about that. But they are usually "used car salesmen"-dicks, not "kicking babies"-dicks.
Most of the stuff they do makes sense from a business standpoint. Killing dedicated servers saves on development of dedicated servers, encourages a more "pick up and play" mentality, and makes it less likely for people to not patch.
Firing IW's heads, if half the stuff that was said is true, was good (for Activision) in the sense that they got rid of/blacklisted the primadonnas before they jumped to EA (although, this one is much murkier).
This? One can argue it is an attempt for damage control, but it just seems like it supports the IW-heads a bit too much. And it is obvious which way Kotaku is leaning on this subject...

Like I said. It's telling us what we expect to hear - that Activision are dicks. That unto itself is nothing new. But that doesn't make every story about Activision being dicks true.
If this is true then the whole company could go the same way as its heads. In other words, if it's true then Kotick just just effectively resigned. As there's no way Vivendi or Activision's shareholders are going to tolerate that. They put up with him because he gets the job done. This would kill any reason there is left to keep him around.

Don't you think that the way Activision treats its employees might have had something to do with it? Regardless of the truth behind this Kotaku story, Kotick talks quite openly about how he treats the people under him. I don't think there's any scope for calling them prima donnas over this, in any case.

I'm fairly sure that royalties are royalties earned, whether or not you stay at the company. You'd have to look at the contract, but even if it said, as a condition of employment, that royalties earned would only occur when the employee was at the company, it would still be possible that a court would rule in the employee's favor, as Activision lies in a relative position of power.

Firing the IW heads in an attempt to extinguish the fires he most likely started is one thing. But acting illegally by not paying the whole company - killing any reason they have left to want to stay there - is another. The chances of Kotick's influence not being the root cause is next to nil. He's spelled out that much himself.
Even if shareholders agreed to this form of damage control, it doesn't mean they don't recognise where the real problem lies. At this rate Activision is on a mission to burn itself out completely. It's raking it in now, but most can see where it's going, and it's not up.

Well, the royalties have already been earned. They just haven't been paid. If it's contractual then Activision might be able to cease paying royalties to people who have left the company. But only in cases where the revenue was taken from sales made after their departure.
What they make while they work there is owed to them no matter how long Kotick stalls. Which is why the heads are still in a position to pursue their royalties and why the Kotaku story doesn't ring entirely true to me. They'd just wind up with more people departing IW and more lawsuits.

Yes, definitely.
Agreed. It would be such a stupid move by Activision that I can't really see even them doing it. For all the talk about the justice system favoring the big guy, it really isn't all that true. They certainly wouldn't rule for Activision, as allowing companies not to pay royalties would create a precedent that would destroy several industries, and I'm sure that if they formed a class action lawsuit they would be able to get a lawyer to represent them for a percentage or perhaps even for free, depending on the press it gets.