On Sunday, Vince Zampella, executive vice president at EA, head of Respawn, and one of the devs who helped create Call of Duty, was killed in a car crash in Southern California.
On Monday, NBC4 reported that Zampella was killed in a single-car crash involving a 2026 Ferrari 296 GTS that happened on December 21 at 12:45 pm local time on a road north of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Mountains. California Highway Patrol told the outlet that the car veered off the road and collided with a concrete barrier. The car’s passenger was ejected from the vehicle. The driver was reportedly trapped in the ensuing car fire and died at the scene. The passenger reportedly died later at a nearby hospital.
No details have been released as to why the car crashed, nor did NBC specify if Zampella was the one driving. Kotaku has contacted EA.
“It’s hard to process this right now. He was such a force in the industry and for him to be just gone I still can’t believe,” shared Respawn developer Patrick Wren on social media.
“I was fortunate enough to work with Vince a few times, and it was always a pleasure. This sucks,” posted former Xbox operations manager Eric Neustadter.
The 55-year-old game developer was one of the key people behind the creation of Call of Duty. He later left that franchise and helped co-found Respawn in 2010 with fellow CoD developer Jason West. The studio’s first game was the critically acclaimed Xbox-only, EA-published Titanfall. It would later produce a sequel, a popular battle royale spin-off, and two highly successful Star Wars action games, Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor. In 2017, Respawn was acquired by EA and became a key part of the publisher’s roster of studios. In 2021, Zampella was put in charge of Battlefield and helped the series rebound with this year’s massively successful Battlefield 6, which is one of 2025’s biggest games. Meanwhile, the franchise he helped create, Call of Duty, continues to be one of the biggest game franchises in the world.