Call of Duty fans were surprised to learn that Sledgehammer Games is moving to a smaller office space and closing its main office in California. The news was announced during a town hall meeting last week, where it was also revealed that Sledgehammer will be working from home until a new office is found in the same location. This temporary arrangement is expected to last until the end of 2024.
This transition is particularly interesting, as the town hall also revealed that Sledgehammer will be the primary developer for Activision’s Call of Duty game in 2027. The 2026 game, set in the Modern Warfare universe, will be led by Infinity Ward.
However, the work-from-home announcement has caused some internal frustration among employees at Sledgehammer. In December 2023, Activision mandated that all QA employees working on Call of Duty in Minneapolis, Austin, and El Segundo must return to the office five days a week.
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Sources report that some employees view Activision’s decision as a “slap in the face.” Several QA staff were affected by the return-to-office mandate, forcing them to either leave the company or relocate. This move comes on the heels of last December’s exposé of Activision’s toxic behavior.
On the same day that CEO Bobby Kotick completed his last day at Activision Blizzard, a former Call of Duty programmer took to social media to criticize his leadership. “Bobby’s [Kotick] decisions made our games worse,” said Christina Pollock, who spent two years as a programmer at Demonware working on Call of Duty. “Our games suffered as a result of Bobby’s decisions. It came to light during my first month on the job that he had threatened to kill a worker. Nobody wanted to take the lead during the following all-hands meeting. So I publicly demanded that he be fired.”
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In response to the company moving the Sledgehammer team to a temporary remote working environment, a spokesperson for the company told ABK Workers Alliance that the company has the ability to grant remote work to QA employees who have requested it due to disability, distance, or other factors, but Sledgehammer is choosing not to.
Insider Gaming also reported that the Call of Duty game in 2025 will be a follow-up to Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which was released in 2012. This suggests that the Call of Duty franchise will be staying in the Black Ops universe for its next two releases. The game, in Sledgehammer’s development under the code name “Saturn,” includes a single-player plot set in 2030 and a multiplayer mode featuring both new and recreated Black Ops II maps.
What was the last Call of Duty you cared about, or what do you do with newer editions? Let us know with a comment below!
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