COD Black Ops 1 and 2 dev says it’s ‘hard to watch’ the new ports selling well while ‘the actual creators don’t see a dime’
Activision and Microsoft are “printing money off of work completed over a decade ago”, he says
The success of this year’s surprise ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 has been “hard to watch” for one developer who says the original creators should receive royalties.
Activision released PS4 and PS5 ports of Black Ops (2010) and Black Ops 2 (2012) games without warning on July 9, and both were a notable success, with the sequel in particular topping Circana’s chart as the best-selling game in the US for July 2026.
According to a report from Alinea Analytics both games sold an estimated 11.2 million copies combined in July, earing around $435 million in one month.
While this was good news for Activision and its parent company Microsoft, it’s been less well received by Gavin Goslin, a Treyarch veteran who worked as a level designer on both games.
This week Goslin posted a message on LinkedIn stating that because the new ports of Black Ops and Black Ops 2 don’t really add many new features and are essentially the same as the original games, the original development team should see some royalties from the new sales.
“The recent Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 digital drops on PlayStation proved a couple of things,” Goslin wrote. “First, today’s gaming landscape is starved for the tight, high-quality experiences we used to get. Second, these legacy titles are still massive money-makers for Activision and Microsoft.
“Despite being basic $40 digital re-releases with zero new features, both titles immediately shot into the Circana US Top 10 for weekly active users. They are printing money off of work completed over a decade ago.
“As a developer who actually worked on both Black Ops and Black Ops 2, seeing these charts is bittersweet. I poured my life into those games, spending countless, brutal hours in crunch alongside an incredibly talented team to make sure they were perfect.
“Seeing our blood, sweat, and tears still dominating the charts in 2026 is amazing, but its hard to watch the suits rake in giant financial windfalls from our old code while the actual creators don’t see a dime of it.
“If executives are getting massive bonuses off the longevity of these classics, that wealth needs to be shared retroactively. Legacy revenue should mean legacy rewards for the devs who survived the crunch to build them.”
In a recent interview with The Game Business, Activision chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl said the success of the new re-releases of Black Ops and Black Ops 2 took the company by surprise, but hoped it would encourage players to move on to this week’s new release, Modern Warfare 4.
“We are definitely leaning into the nostalgia of playing with your friends,” Bahl said. “The Black Ops ports were huge successes. We thought they would do well, we didn’t think they would do that well.
“But you can see that pent-up demand of being able to get back to the good old days of playing with your friends on a Friday night and having fun. Modern Warfare 4 does that.”
