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"The vast majority of our devs were disgusted by the idea"
Chance Glasco, an ex-lead animator on the Call of Duty series, has claimed that Activision once pressured Infinity Ward to make an entry in which Iran attacked Israel. He did so in response to a video montage posted on the official White House Xitter account, which combines the USA's real life military strikes against Iran with killstreak animations and Call of Duty interface elements.
"This doesn't surprise me," Glasco, who worked at Infinity Ward from 2002 to 2014 after moving over from Medal of Honor studio 2015, wrote. "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."
Activision took control of Infinity Ward after infamously firing studio co-founders Vince Zampella and Jason West in 2010, with the pair going on to form Titanfall and Apex Legends studio Respawn under EA's banner. So, Glasco's post would suggest this alleged pressure was heaped on at some point between then and his departure in 2014.
I've reached out to Activision for comment.
Israel and the Trump-led US have been jointly bombarding Iran with strikes since February 28th, 2026. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, over 1,100 Iranian civilians have been killed since the strikes began, with 181 of them children.
Pressed as to why Infinity Ward developers would specifically draw the line at basing a game on Iran attacking Israel, when the series has more recently depicted the likes of terror attacks on London, Glasco added: "My point is that the government would happily use entertainment, including video games, as a way to sway public opinion on major issues. There have been decades of pressure for a war with Iran across multiple administrations. The scenarios you mentioned, not so much."
In another reply, he also offered thoughts on how the Iran scenario differs from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's No Russian mission, which puts players in the shoes of an undercover agent during a Russian ultranationalist mass shooting at a Moscow airport.
"With Early CoDs we wanted to often remind people that war is hell and not just a video game," Glasco 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." He added that options to shoot near civilians without harming them or skip the sequence entirely were added following focus tests in which "an extremely high percentage of players just froze when they realized what they thought they were supposed to do".
English (US) ·