Call of Duty co-founder alleges Activision pressured Infinity Ward to make game about Iran invading Israel

One of the founding members of the Call of Duty franchise has alleged that publisher Activision once pressured the game’s developer to build a campaign around Iran attacking Israel.

Chance Glasco was one of the original 22 developers who left Medal of Honor studio 2015 to found Infinity Ward in the early 2000s, and lead animator on multiple Call of Duty games.

On Wednesday, the US government’s official White House X account posted footage of its ongoing strikes on Iran, overlayed with Call of Duty UI items, such as a minimap and XP notifications.

The United States and Israel began coordinated joint attacks on Iran last weekend, in an operation that is estimated to have killed at least 1,230 people. In response, Iran has launched missiles and drones across the Middle East, including at civilian airports.

Responding to the White House’s Call of Duty parody video, developer Glasco wrote: “This doesn’t surprise me. I remember after Activision took over post-Respawn formation there was a very awkward pressure from Activision for us to make the next CoD about Iran attacking Israel. Luckily, the vast majority of our devs were disgusted by the idea, and it got shot down.”

In 2010, Infinity Ward’s founders were famously fired by Activision for alleged “insubordination,” prompting the publisher to take greater control of its prize FPS franchise. Jason West and the late Vince Zampella later formed Respawn, and many former Infinity Ward developers joined.

Challenged by a social media user over Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s ‘No More Russian’ scene, which sees players massacre innocent civilians, Glasco said with early Call of Duty games, “we wanted to often remind people that war is hell and not just a video game”.

He wrote: “If you play the earlier IW CoDs you’ll definitely see that throughout the series. We wanted players to feel disgust and we purposefully sought to make them actually feel bad for war.

“We focus tested the level before release and an extremely high percentage of players just froze when they realized what they thought they were supposed to do. Some of them put the controller down and said they didn’t want to play it. This to me is a much better reaction than 100% of players just going Leroy Jenkins on the level with no emotion at all.”

He continued: “As a result of the reactions, we added an option for the level to be skipped because it was so disturbing. A lot of people didn’t realize this, but you could get through the entire level without shooting a single civilian. You had to shoot near the civilians so the Russian separatists thought you were shooting them.”