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It was The Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley who first blew the lid on West's new job, claiming that the latter has been in the office for about a month now.
Multiple news outlets have since confirmed that West is indeed an Epic Games employee now, although his exact position in the company is unclear at the moment.
It's said he's been tasked with Epic's game development efforts, but that's pretty general and doesn't really make his role any clearer. I mean, it's not like we were expecting him to design a fashion line, right?
West has retired back in 2013, leaving Respawn and the industry for what he claimed are family reasons, and his move to North Carolina seemed to support his claims.
Nevertheless, subsequent reports pointed at a deteriorating relationship with Respawn's other co-founder and close associate of 15 years, Vince Zampella. Asked to comment why he parted ways with West, Zampella said only that it's difficult working with one person for 15 years.
The duo has quite the history, having worked for a studio called 2015 in developing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and moving on to create Infinity Ward and Call of Duty, which has grown into one of the most popular and best-selling franchises around.
West and Zampella's relationship with Activision eventually went so south that the two were escorted out of the company's building in handcuffs. It all ended in a settlement, whose details were confidential, but the aforementioned scenario shows just how high the stakes were.
Thankfully, West changed his mind and has come back from retirement, although it's pretty strange seeing the two on different sides.
With Fortnite and Apex Legends being among the most popular games around, if not the most popular, Zampella and West on the opposing sides is not something we thought we'd see. Oh well, it's all in the call of duty we guess.
