Activision is getting sued for $680 million by Call of Duty League players

Two of the biggest names in Call of Duty esports have sued Activision for $680 million in damages, arguing that the company has created a monopoly over its competitive scene by forcing teams to re-register to a new deal that bars them from profiting off sponsorships and endorsements.

The lawsuit was filed by OpTic Texas’ Hector “H3CZ” Rodriguez and Seth “Scump” Abner, two of the more prolific and popular players of the entire Call of Duty League. In the document they demand the spectacular amount of $680 million dollars in damages, and accuse Activision of having created the monopoly after they blocked other organizations and tournaments to their own internal competition.

Apparently, Activision charged every team $27.5 million dollars to participate in Call of Duty League, now their only choice for being professional players, and at the same time denied both teams and individual players the opportunity to take money from brand sponsorships and external endorsements, instead only earning money from investors.

Another of the allegations sees Rodriguez, the owner of OpTic Gaming, claiming that he was forced to partner with investors who wanted 92.5% ownership of his company, and that then he was also forced to pay the multi-million dollar fee for his team to compete in the League. All of the above accusations were seemingly performed by Activision without the consultation of approval of any of the players, resulting in a new configuration of the entire esports division that has led to Activision exploiting professional players while effectively destroying any possibility of them playing in another tournament that isn’t theirs.

Activision and Call of Duty, in trouble?

This new lawsuit is one more controversial hit on the company that owns Call of Duty, alongside many other franchises and IPs, all in the span of a few years. The company is now officially owned by Microsoft after a billion-dollar acquisition that dominated the attention of the industry for a long time, eventually resulting in it and everything under the Activision Blizzard King umbrella becoming part of Xbox Studios.

Now, there are still no details about what could happen to the Call of Duty franchise, or how the eSports situation might evolve going forward. What we do know is that the biggest changes coming to the company might be that its games will be part of Xbox Game Pass.