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

4. Mishandling Infinity Ward And Losing Half Its Members

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.