A legend within the gaming industry has sadly passed away. Respawn Entertainment’s leader Vince Zampella has reportedly been killed in a car crash.
The single car accident occurred on Southern California’s Angeles Crest Highway in the San Gabriel Mountains around 12:45 p.m. local time on Sunday. The car, reported to be a Ferrari, apparently swerved off the road and collided with a barrier. The driver was killed on the scene, and a passenger has since passed away in the hospital. At the moment, it’s unclear whether Zampella was the driver or the passenger, or who the second person was who passed away.
Vince Zampella mattered because he kept redefining what a mainstream shooter could be, then did it again just as the industry caught up. From Medal of Honor: Allied Assault to the founding of Infinity Ward, he helped push military FPS design away from static, corridor-bound shooting and toward something faster, louder, and more cinematic. Call of Duty — and especially Modern Warfare — didn’t just become a hit; it reset expectations. Set-piece campaigns, snappy controls, progression-driven multiplayer and a strong sense of spectacle became the norm, not the exception. Entire studios spent the next decade chasing a formula he helped establish.
When he left Activision and co-founded Respawn, Zampella proved that lightning could strike twice. Titanfall injected mobility and mechanical confidence back into shooters, Apex Legends showed how character-driven design could coexist with competitive purity, and the Star Wars Jedi games reminded publishers that polished single-player experiences still mattered. Even in his later role overseeing Battlefield, his influence was about course-correction rather than reinvention — putting players back at the centre after years of trend-chasing. More than any single franchise, Zampella’s legacy is range: blockbuster military shooters, live-service hits, movement-heavy experiments and story-driven revivals. Few people shaped as many corners of modern FPS design, and fewer still did it repeatedly, across studios, generations, and business models.
Zampella is survived by 3 children.
Rest in peace, you legend.
