'Call of Duty' Co-Creator Vince Zampella Was Worth Millions at the Time of His Death

When it comes to gaming, a few big names are always in the mix. Folks like Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear), Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy), and Shigeru Miyamoto (Mario) have been instrumental in creating franchises that are still popular today. Those three developers are from Japan, which has long been leading the way in gaming, but America has certainly had its fair share of icons.

For better or worse, American video game developers have put a lot of energy into war games. One that frequently takes the top spot is Call of Duty, which was co-created by Vince Zampella, Jason West, and Grant Collier at their company, Infinity Ward. All three have done well for themselves. Sadly, in December 2025, Vince died in a car crash at the age of 55. Let's take a look at his net worth at the time of his death.

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Vince was worth $40 million. How did he get there? In a February 2002 interview with Gamezilla!, Vince revealed that he was always an avid gamer. He started out in graphic design and digital video at GAMETEK, then went to Atari to help launch its PC division. The then-32-year-old was working at Panasonic Interactive Media.

His first breakthrough in video gaming was his work on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in 2002 while at 2015 Inc. This is where Vince met Grant and Jason, who left the company in 2002 to start Infinity Ward along with more than 20 other employees, per Kotaku. In the early days, Infinity Ward was partially funded by video game giant Activision. In 2003, they released their first game for PCs: the World War II shooter Call of Duty.

That led to Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which were all for Activision. Grant left in 2009 to work exclusively for Activision while Vince and Jason stayed. However, Infinity Ward and Activision were having a lot of disagreements, specifically about the direction of Call of Duty.

Things came to a head in March 2010 when Vince and Jason were fired from Activision for breach of contract and insubordination. Vince and Jason sued Activision, who filed a countersuit. While this was going on, the duo was chatting with Electronic Arts (EA) who would go on to fund 30 percent of their new studio: Respawn Entertainment.

Activision eventually settled for an undisclosed amount. In March 2013, Polygon reported that Jason was retiring from Respawn Entertainment for family-related reasons. In 2017, EA fully acquired Respawn for $151 million, per Polygon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Vince was tapped to "head up the Los Angeles outpost of DICE, a game studio headquartered in Sweden that is best known for the Battlefield and Star Wars: Battlefront series." This was where Vince was working when he passed away.