Tag: Infinity Ward

The Week's Biggest Gaming News, From The Fallout TV Show To The Game Awards

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Amouranth bought an orchard for a cool $17 mill, Bethesda’s attempting to win the hearts and minds of disaffected Starfield players on Steam, and Dan Houser is back! In podcast form!

Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.

Bethesda Confirms Fallout TV Show Is Canon In First Official Preview

Screenshot: Amazon / Vanity Fair / Bethesda

In a newly released preview of Amazon Prime’s upcoming Fallout TV show, we learned a lot of new details about the world, characters, and story of the highly anticipated live-action adaptation of Bethesda’s popular post-apocalyptic RPG franchise. For example, the show is considered canon with the games. And Walter Goggins still looks good, even as an undead ghoul. Read More

TGA’s Geoff Keighley Weighs In On Dave The Diver Nomination Controversy

Image: Mintrocket

An intense debate ignited November 13, when The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley announced the nominees for this year’s trophy ceremony. While some folks were surprised Pikachu face by Starfield’s absence, most people were shook by one particular title offered up for the “Best Independent Game” category. Now, after a couple weeks of silence, Keighley has tossed his two cents into the discourse. Read More

Sonic 3 Movie Teaser Sparks Fan Freak-Out About Shadow’s Shoes

Image: Paramount / Sonic Wiki

Reader, if you don’t mind a quick look into my personal neurosis, let me tell you that when I’m really looking forward to something, I get a great deal of anxiety about possibly dying before I get to experience it. I’ve felt this about video games, movies, albums, concerts, and pretty much anything else worth being excited about. Right now, the third live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie is near the top of my list of Things I Must Survive Long Enough To Experience. This isn’t because I think the movie will be great, or even good, it’s because Shadow the Hedgehog, the best character in the franchise, is set to appear as a main character. All those feelings of excitement and existential dread have been roused today, as Paramount has released a picture of the angsty, broody, gun-toting king on set…well, his feet, at least. Read More

Amouranth Spends $17 Million On Fruit Field To ‘Overtake’ Bill Gates

Screenshot: Amouranth / Kotaku

Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa, one of livestreaming’s most recognizable women, is something of a tour de force. She’s building an empire, after all, having bought a gas station, purchased an inflatable pool company, sold water straight from her hot tub, and slung beer made with her vaginal bacteria. Love her or hate her, Amouranth is a savvy businesswoman making millions upon millions of dollars every year. Now, she’s using some of those millions—17 of them, to be precise—to add another expensive purchase to the pile: a 2,213-acre fruit orchard in and around Florida. Read More

Starfield Isn’t Boring Actually, Bethesda Tells Steam Reviewers

Image: Bethesda

The meta-narrative around Starfield just took a very weird turn. Steam reviews for the sprawling sci-fi RPG recently fell to “mixed” on Valve’s storefront, and now Bethesda employees are arguing with players in the comments about why the game isn’t as boring and soulless as some of them claim. Read More

Destiny 2 Players Are Roasting Its New ‘Starter Pack’ [Update: Bungie Deletes It For ‘Not Bringing Joy’]

Image: Bungie

The hardest thing about Destiny 2 is getting any of your friends to play it. Fans of Bungie’s ambitious and imaginative sci-fi shooter have long hoped for a simple on-ramp that would make it easier to get lapsed players and newcomers back into its universe. Destiny 2’s new “Starter Pack” might sound like exactly that. Instead, it’s a pricey bundle of random items that fans can’t stop dunking on. Read More

Overwatch 2 Is Stripping Away What Made Mythic Skins Worth The Grind

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

When Overwatch 2 shifted the hero shooter’s economy away from loot boxes and into a seasonal battle pass, the customizable Mythic Skins unlocked at the end of that pass were framed as the light at the end of the grindy tunnel. Unlike any other Overwatch skin, these would be somewhat customizable, offering a few style and color options for players to make them their own. In the game’s first year, seven of its iconic heroes have gotten one of these Mythic skins, which mostly been well-received. But after Blizzard revealed season eight’s skin for tank character Orisa, players are noticing a downward trend in Mythic Skin quality. Read More

Rockstar Co-Founder & GTA Lead Writer Finally Reveals What He’s Been Working On

Photo: Absurd Ventures / Kotaku / Patrick McMullan (Getty Images)

Dan Houser, who co-founded Rockstar Games and was the lead writer on multiple Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption games, has finally revealed what his new studio is working on. If you were expecting a video game…well, you’ll have to keep waiting. Read More

Dragon’s Dogma 2 Joins A Divisive Gaming Trend

Image: Capcom

Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks awesome, right? The much anticipated action role-playing game about dragons and pawns came out swinging with a hefty new gameplay showcase on November 28, showing off the impressive character creator and some spectacular combat and officially revealing a March 24, 2024 release date. One thing that isn’t so awesome, however, is the game’s relatively high price tag of $70, which marks the first game from Capcom at this price. Read More

Call Of Duty Breaks Silence On Skill-Based Matchmaking

Image: Activision

The November 10 launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III reignited the seemingly endless debate about multiplayer matchmaking, with players demanding Activision and Infinity Ward provide details, or even abolish it entirely. This conversation has perpetuated across multiple Call of Duty releases, but the team behind the popular first-person shooter has yet to properly acknowledge it—until now. On November 30, an official statement was shared by popular CoD website CharlieIntel on X (formerly Twitter). Read More

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December 2, 2023
Report: Devs Worked Nights And Weekends To Rush Modern Warfare III Out

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Image: Activision

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III’s single-player campaign was panned by critics when it released early on November 2. Reviewers hit it with low scores and said it felt short, rushed, and incomplete. Now Bloomberg reports that the game was rushed out in half the time of a normal Call of Duty sequel, with devs working nights and weekends to meet Activision’s annualized sales goals.

Why The Hot New Redfall Gameplay Trailer Left Us Feeling Cold

According to Bloomberg, the game was originally pitched to Sledgehammer developers as an expansion to Modern Warfare II that would focus on missions based in Mexico instead of the series’ normal globetrotting set-pieces. In the summer of 2022, however, Activision executives apparently rebooted the project as a full-fledged sequel about the Modern Warfare II villain Vladimir Makarov. The company needed to fill the gap left by an apparent delay of Treyarch’s next Call of Duty game, and reportedly decided against simply taking a year off from the blockbuster’s annual release schedule.

Read More: Modern Warfare III’s Campaign Mostly Sucks

A spokesperson for Activision denied this, however. Sledgehammer Games studio head Aaron Halon told Bloomberg in an interview that the developers who thought Modern Warfare III had originally been planned as an expansion were simply confused because it was a “new type of direct sequel,” despite the PlayStation 5 version of the game appearing as DLC on the trophies menu and asking some players to insert the Modern Warfare II disc.

But more than a dozen current and former Call of Duty developers told Bloomberg that Halon’s take “conflicted” with what they were initially told. Some of them also seemingly worked nights and weekends to try and get Modern Warfare III out on time, despite the game only having half the development time of a normal Call of Duty sequel. “They felt betrayed by the company because they were promised they wouldn’t have to go through another shortened timeline after the release of their previous game, Call of Duty: Vanguard, which was made under a similarly constrained development cycle,” Bloomberg reports.

Call of Duty has made billions for Activision, but the series has a long and increasingly-well-documented track record of burning out its developers. One of the big questions facing the franchise now that Microsoft owns it (after recently closing its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard) is whether it will continue the seemingly unsustainable development cycles or let the blockbuster take a year off for the first time in decades.

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Ethan Gach

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November 9, 2023
18-Year Call of Duty Veteran Announces He’s Leaving Activision

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Image: Activision

After 18 years, David Vonderhaar, the studio design director at Treyarch, announced he’s leaving Activision after shipping eight Call of Duty games since 2004.

Long-Lost Halo Demo Comes To Life

Vonderhaar made the announcement on his personal LinkedIn account, where he confirmed he’s moved on to a new project at a different studio but didn’t go into specifics in his post. He also thanked his former coworkers at Treyarch and the Call of Duty fans that have played the studio’s games over the years.

Today I am sharing that I have left Activision and Treyarch after an incredible 18 years and 8 Call of Duty games.

To my co-workers at Treyarch, I am immensely grateful for the time we invested working to improve our craft, never sitting on successes, and always wondering how to improve what we design and how we produce it.

Thank you to the Call of Duty community for your passion and enthusiasm. That energy has often fueled our determination as a studio and individuals. I will always be grateful for the opportunity to interact with so many of you directly online and in person. This energy will always be a massive part of me.

I am staying in the games industry, working on an undisclosed project I can’t discuss yet, but I am excited about a rare and unique opportunity. I’ll update you as soon as possible.

Vonderhaar’s Call of Duty portfolio is synonymous with the Black Ops series, which has been part of the military shooter’s rotating stable of sub-franchises since the first one launched in 2010. The most recent entry was 2020’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

Earlier this week, Activision and Sledgehammer Games unveiled that the next Call of Duty game will be called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, not to be confused with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, as the new game is part of the rebooted Modern Warfare sub-series that began in 2019.

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Kenneth Shepard

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August 18, 2023
Microsoft President Is Carrying That Giant Sony Call of Duty Deal In Pocket, Weirdly

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Microsoft President Brad Smith
Photo: Valeria Mongelli / Bloomberg (Getty Images)

Earlier today, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked briefly to the media about its ongoing attempt to consume Activision Blizzard King, continuing once again to act like the larger spat is mostly about Call of Duty. At one point, Smith said he was carrying a contract with him that would keep Call of Duty on PlayStation after the sale goes through, claiming that it all came down to Sony actually signing the thing. Conveniently, he was ignoring that the hold-up on the contract was happening because, y’know, the deal itself–which could potentially have an industry-wide impact that far outstrips Call of Duty.

For those of you just tuning in, Microsoft has spent the last 12 months trying to buy Activision Blizzard for the astoundingly large amount of $69 billion. However, almost since the moment the deal was announced, regulators and governments around the world, as well as rival companies like Sony, have voiced opposition to the deal. These entities don’t want the deal to go through because it could give Xbox too much power over the industry by owning many of the biggest brands in gaming, such as Starfield and Minecraft (among other issues). And Microsoft has spent the last year jumping from courtroom to courtroom and country to country, trying to convince everyone that one massive corporation buying up another massive corporation is totally good for the industry and not horrible at all. It also keeps trying to get Sony to sign a deal on Call of Duty as a part of these efforts.

So today—as part of this ongoing worldwide tour of courtrooms and regulatory councils—Microsoft execs were in Brussels, Belgium as part of a behind-closed-doors hearing with the European Commission, which (like many other groups) has concerns about the Activision deal. After that hearing, Smith and Spencer held a brief media…briefing (heh) and mostly went over the same things they’ve said before about how Sony is already dominating the game industry and how Microsoft needs Activision Blizzard to compete. All of these arguments were trotted out while also pointing out that Nintendo had just signed a 10-year deal with the company to bring Call of Duty to Switch, a deal that’s come across as Microsoft trying to prove it won’t keep some of its biggest franchises to itself should the deal go through. And if it’s willing to put forth a decade-long deal on Call of Duty, the thinking goes, Microsoft is clearly not trying to build a monopoly through this deal.

Read More: Everything That’s Happened In The Activision Blizzard Lawsuit

It was during this part of the briefing, as reported by GameIndustry.biz, that Smith revealed that he was actually carrying the contract for a similar deal that would keep Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles. It was in an envelope in his pocket.

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“We haven’t agreed on a deal with Sony, but I hope we will,” Smith said, “I hope today is a day that will advance our industry and regulation in a responsible way. Sony can spend all its energy trying to block this deal, which will reduce competition and slow the evolution of the market. Or they can sit down with us, and hammer out a deal.”

Of course, bringing the actual contract with you on your trip to Europe is clearly just a way to dramatically remind people that Sony isn’t playing ball and is pushing back against the proposed Activision deal over concerns that it could lose access to Call of Duty, a series Sony in the past has called “essential.” And to be clear: Even after signing that deal, Sony could still lose Call of Duty after the initial decade if Xbox doesn’t offer up another, similar contract in 2033. ( It’s also just weird to bring it with you, beyond using it as a prop, unless Smith thought Sony was going to rush the stage at that moment and sign…) And it’s also another example of Microsoft acting like everyone is concerned about Call of Duty just because Sony seems to be focused mostly on that part of the deal.

In fact, at one point during the briefing, Smith literally said that the “number one concern that people have expressed about this acquisition is that Call of Duty will be less available to people.”

That’s a wild thing to say! And it just ignores all the other valid issues people and governments have with this deal, like how it could make the industry smaller and more susceptible to collapse, how it could position Game Pass as a more powerful force that could begin to hurt studios that don’t make deals with Xbox, or just the basic reality that—historically speaking— corporate mergers are awful for consumers.

In other news involving this seemingly-never ending saga, Microsoft also confirmed it had signed a 10-year deal with NVIDIA to allow GeForce NOW players to stream Xbox PC games and Activision PC games, including the all-important CoD, if the deal is approved and happens. This, along with the Nintendo deal, is clearly being promoted heavily by Microsoft, right before today’s hearing, as evidence that the company is not going to lockdown Call of Duty or other Activision Blizzard games to one platform or service.

Spencer even tweeted about the deal, adding that the company is “committed to bringing more games to more people – however they chose to play.” Well, unless you want to play Bethesda’s next big RPG, Starfield, on a PS5. Then uh…tough luck!

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Zack Zwiezen

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February 21, 2023
New Modern Warfare II Movement Trick Is Turning People Into Speedy Lil Goblins

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A group of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II players have been breaking the game’s movement system and their latest creation is something they’re calling the “G Walk.” The trick looks very frustrating to play against, leading to some controversy among the game’s community over the new exploit.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II was released last month across nearly all platforms and quickly became one of the biggest games of the year. And just this month, the game’s highly anticipated Warzone 2.0 spin-off mode launched to similar praise and player hype. Sure, the campaign seems bad and filled with some terrible moments—like a section where players point their rifle at an unarmed person to “deescalate” the situation—but the online portion of this year’s edition of the annual Activision shooter seems to be a hit with fans. And one group of players is using Modern Warfare II’s movement controls to create impressive, scary, and very fast techniques to up the competitive ante.

As spotted by Jake Lucky on Twitter, Modern Warfare II clan “Euphoria” are breaking the game right now. Their latest creation, which they’re calling “G Walking,” turns the normally human soldiers in Call of Duty into wild, speedy goblins that hop and crawl around maps like kids who have had way too much sugar on Halloween night. As you might expect, moving around this fast at such a weird posture makes it challenging for other players to land a shot on these out-of-control monsters. (As of now, the group has yet to share publicly how to pull off this new move.)

And just as quickly as the goblins themselves, players have begun responding to the videos of Euphoria members G Walking. Some find it funny, others find it scary. But many are annoyed by what Euphoria is doing, claiming that it ruins matches and makes it harder for casual players to just hop on for a few hours and play. Members of Euphoria have mostly laughed at the complaints–and in their defense, they are just using controls and mechanics that exist in the game to do this wild shit. If anything, developers Infinity Ward need to patch these exploits out of the game if the studio doesn’t want this to become the new meta.

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Breaking Call of Duty games isn’t a new thing for players. Some Modern Warfare (2019) vets might remember the popular slide cancel exploit that was discovered in that game and used in the original Warzone. That move has also returned in Warzone 2.0 and is already being used by many players online.

I personally remember playing the original MW2 back in 2009 and running around doing the annoying Javelin suicide glitch that would kill everyone around you when you died. It was very annoying and was quickly patched out of the game. And before all that nonsense, I remember getting into weird spots on Crash in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 using janky-level geometry and tricky jumps. If anything, stuff like G Walking and the groups’ other movement exploit— Superman Hopping— is just tradition at this point.

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Zack Zwiezen

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November 21, 2022
‘Modern Warfare 2’ Launch Patch Notes: All The Changes From The Beta
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Modern Warfare 2

Credit: Infinity Ward

The Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II beta gave gamers on PlayStation, Xbox and PC a chance to check out the game’s multiplayer weeks before launch.

It was a fun introduction to the game—but also a way to weed out bugs and other issues, of which the CoD community found many. Some of the biggest problems gamers had with the beta (myself included) were:
- Poor visibility making it hard to spot enemy players especially in areas with low light or lots of busy colors.
- Footstep audio problems that made it difficult to identify enemies.
- Weird issues like extremely loud Dead Silence field upgrade volume when you’d activate—which is odd given it’s designed to make you dead silent.
- Some players were unhappy with the mini-map which doesn’t reveal quite as much intel about enemy player locations as it has in the past.
- Bugs and glitches galore, naturally.
- Extremely awful menus that were confusing to navigate and poorly designed, making it hard to figure out how to view lobbies, invite friends to play or access menu options.
MORE FROM FORBESHere’s Every ‘Modern Warfare 2’ Multiplayer Map And Mode Available At LaunchBy Erik Kain

Of these, the poor visibility and UI were my biggest issues. I was less bothered by the footsteps and don’t have an issue with the way the mini-map works. Fortunately, it sounds like Infinity Ward has made changes to many—though not all—of player complaints. In the below patch notes, there’s nothing about the mini-map which sounds like it will remain the same.

One of the biggest changes is the addition of diamond icons above enemy heads to help with visibility. I’ll need to play and see how these work in practice. I was actually getting used to no enemy nameplates by the time the beta was over, but I can see how many players would find this frustrating.

Changes to audio, UI, movement, matchmaking and more have been made, all of which will hopefully make the game a smoother experience to play at launch than during the beta. We’ll know soon enough—Multiplayer goes live soon!

MORE FROM FORBESHere’s The Exact Time ‘Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’ Multiplayer Goes On PlayStation, Xbox And PCBy Erik Kain

Check out the patch notes below to see all the changes from the beta:

Enemy Visibility
- We have added diamond icons above the heads of enemies. This should make it easier for players to clearly identify opponents in the game.
- Additionally, we’ve continued to tweak lighting and contrast for improved enemy visibility.
Audio
- We’ve shortened the overall range of footstep audio which will allow enemy players to get closer to targets before they are able to detect footsteps. We have also continued to tweak teammate footstep audio, which will now be quieter following feedback from the Beta.
- The in-world activation sound effect volume range for the Dead Silence field upgrade has been drastically decreased.
Third Person
- Following feedback from Beta, aiming down sights will now stay in third person POV for low-zoom optics. Only high-zoom optics (beginning with the ACOG and higher) and special optics such as Hybrids and Thermals will revert to first person POV. We believe this will enhance the third person experience while keeping the gameplay balanced. The feedback on this mode has been very positive, and we will continue to explore its use as a modifier.
Weapons
- We have continued to tweak weapons across the game following both feedback from Beta players and game data. Players can expect more specifics on weapon tuning as we continue to support post-launch.
UI
- We have been working hard on numerous updates to our UI that make accessing and customizing your loadout more seamless. We’ve made improvements to navigation of menus and will continue to optimize our UX.
Movement
- Slide, ledge hang, and dive have been further refined. We’ve also addressed some movement exploits following Beta.
Matchmaking
- We have implemented some changes that aim to reduce lobby disbandment between matches. We look forward to testing this at a large scale and getting feedback.
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Erik Kain, Senior Contributor

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October 27, 2022