Call Of Duty: 9 Biggest Mistakes Activision Want You To Forget

4. Mishandling Infinity Ward And Losing Half Its Members

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Soap
Activision

There's a reason why there was such a huge drop off in quality for Infinity Ward-developed Call of Duty games following Modern Warfare 2, and that's because the studio essentially haemorrhaged employees following the firing of studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella.

The details today are still murky, but it was reported that the directors went into a meeting with Activision in 2010 and then didn't return to the studio, leading to a messy lawsuit.

In the following weeks, about half of IW's employees also jumped ship, leaving the dev team a shell of its former self. As a result, Activision were forced to bring Sledgehammer Games in to help develop Modern Warfare 3, which was caught in the middle of it all.

At the time, losing the two figureheads of the entire franchise was a huge deal, and a major reason why Treyarch eventually became the lead Call of Duty studio, with Infinity Ward taking years to properly recover and restructure.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.