Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Dev Responds to ‘Lazy’ Accusations and Battlefield 6: 'Let's All Have Fun'

In caller months, determination has been much than 1 proposition from members of the games manufacture that Call of Duty games are “lazy," and that the menace of EA's rival shooter, Battlefield 6, volition unit a alteration successful attack from Activision. In a caller interrogation with IGN, we enactment some of those suggestions to Black Ops 7 co-developer Treyarch to get its response.

The studio’s words travel a bid of claims from manufacture peers that the annualised shooter bid is successful request of immoderate steadfast competition. At this year’s Summer Game Fest, Splitgate 2 manager Ian Proulx stated that helium was “tired of playing the aforesaid Call of Duty each year." That sentiment is seemingly shared by erstwhile Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who posted past week successful narration to the latest Battlefield 6 unfastened beta:

Battlefield volition footwear stomp CoD this year. But the existent triumph present is CoD won’t beryllium lazy anymore, and we’ll each get amended FPS games for it.

Speaking to IGN up of Black Ops 7's Opening Night Live 2025 reveal, subordinate originative manager Miles Leslie said Treyarch tries to unopen retired the sound and absorption connected delivering the champion crippled possible.

“You conscionable don't interest astir it, right?” Leslie said erstwhile asked astir the "lazy" claims. “When we start, it’s not similar ‘what are they going to think?’ It’s like, we person a vision, we’re going to deed that vision, and there’s ever going to beryllium radical that are going to effort to sound you down and not person affirmative criticism, which we bash look for. So, it’s similar noise, right? You effort to chopped done that and instrumentality to your imaginativeness and plan.”

And from what I’ve seen, it truly would beryllium unfair to telephone this year’s Call of Duty lazy. You tin work each astir it successful my afloat Black Ops 7 preview here.

As for the menace of Battlefield 6, we asked Leslie if DICE's crippled pushes Treyarch connected oregon adjacent if the developer thinks astir the crippled astatine all. Leslie said he'd played DICE's crippled but is focused squarely connected Black Ops 7.

"I got to play this weekend," helium said. "It's a amusive game. We're fans of each games and I deliberation we look for inspiration anywhere. But we're focused connected our ain craft. They're doing their thing. We cognize if we tin deed our goals, we're going to present what the fans privation and that's the key, due to the fact that if we're blessed erstwhile we're play testing, past we cognize fans are going to beryllium blessed play testing.

"We're fans of the FPS genre. We're fans of tons of games. Let's each person fun."

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was revealed astatine gamescom Opening Night Live 2025.

Simon Cardy is simply a Senior Editor astatine IGN who tin chiefly beryllium recovered skulking astir unfastened satellite games, indulging successful Korean cinema, oregon despairing astatine the authorities of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him connected Bluesky astatine @cardy.bsky.social.