Activision pressured Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward to make a game about Iran invading Israel, claims former developer

"The immense bulk of our devs were disgusted by the idea"

Chance Glasco, an ex-lead animator connected the Call of Duty series, has claimed that Activision erstwhile pressured Infinity Ward to marque an introduction successful which Iran attacked Israel. He did truthful successful effect to a video montage posted connected the authoritative White House Xitter account, which combines the USA's existent beingness subject strikes against Iran with killstreak animations and Call of Duty interface elements.

"This doesn't astonishment me," Glasco, who worked astatine Infinity Ward from 2002 to 2014 aft moving implicit from Medal of Honor workplace 2015, wrote. "I retrieve aft Activision took implicit post-Respawn enactment determination was a precise awkward unit from Activision for america to marque the adjacent CoD astir Iran attacking Israel. Luckily the immense bulk of our devs were disgusted by the thought and it got changeable down."

Activision took power of Infinity Ward aft infamously firing workplace co-founders Vince Zampella and Jason West successful 2010, with the brace going connected to signifier Titanfall and Apex Legends workplace Respawn nether EA's banner. So, Glasco's station would suggest this alleged unit was heaped connected astatine immoderate constituent betwixt past and his departure successful 2014.

I've reached retired to Activision for comment.

Israel and the Trump-led US person been jointly bombarding Iran with strikes since February 28th, 2026. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, implicit 1,100 Iranian civilians person been killed since the strikes began, with 181 of them children.

Pressed arsenic to wherefore Infinity Ward developers would specifically gully the enactment astatine basing a crippled connected Iran attacking Israel, erstwhile the bid has much precocious depicted the likes of panic attacks connected London, Glasco added: "My constituent is that the authorities would happily usage entertainment, including video games, arsenic a mode to sway nationalist sentiment connected large issues. There person been decades of unit for a warfare with Iran crossed aggregate administrations. The scenarios you mentioned, not truthful much."

In different reply, helium besides offered thoughts connected however the Iran script differs from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's No Russian mission, which puts players successful the shoes of an undercover cause during a Russian ultranationalist wide shooting astatine a Moscow airport.

"With Early CoDs we wanted to often punctual radical that warfare is hellhole and not conscionable a video game," Glasco wrote. "If you play the earlier IW CoDs you'll decidedly spot that passim the series. We wanted players to consciousness disgust and we purposefully sought to marque them really consciousness atrocious for war." He added that options to sprout adjacent civilians without harming them oregon skip the series wholly were added pursuing absorption tests successful which "an highly precocious percent of players conscionable froze erstwhile they realized what they thought they were expected to do".