In the wake of the Trump White House posting Call of Duty memes as it celebrates the killing of hundreds in Iran, Call of Duty co-founder Chance Glasco posted on X (thanks VGC) alleging publisher Activision once pressured the development team to create a story based around Iran attacking Israel.
“This doesn’t surprise me,” wrote Glasco while reposting the White House’s grotesque video clip of its real-world bombing of Iran that begins with footage of a multiplayer killstreak from the first-person shooter series. “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.”
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. https://t.co/taTIsQUklI
— Chance Glasco (@ChanceGlasco) March 4, 2026
The time period Glasco is referring to is 2010, when Jason West and Vince Zampella were fired from Infinity Ward by Activision under the allegation of “insubordination,” which the pair’s lawyer described at the time as “false and outrageous,” continuing to claim that the publisher was refusing to pay millions owed to the development team. West and Zampella went on to form Repsawn and Titanfall, taking half of IW with them, with the remaining 40 or so developers starting work on Ghosts. If Glasco’s claims are true, this pressure from Activision would have occurred around then.
It didn’t happen, of course. Glasco continues, “Luckily the vast majority of our devs were disgusted by the idea and it got shot down.” Not perhaps the ideal phrasing, but it speaks to the culture at Activision at the time, under the leadership of alleged friend-of-Epstein Bobby Kotick.
Feeling disgust
There’s another interesting snippet of Call of Duty history hidden in the replies to Glasco’s post, where someone asks about the infamous “No Russian” section in Modern Warfare 2, in which players were able to shoot civilians in an airport. It was, says Glasco, “initially just a plot point/text on a loading screen in-between levels.” One of the designers thought this was glossing over an important element “like it was nothing.”
Glasco goes on to talk about those early days of IW CoD, and how the games would intentionally represent war as something truly horrific. “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.”
No Russian was initially just a plot point/text on a loading screen in-between levels. My roommate and one of our designers thought it was weird that we just brushed over an entirely f’d up major plot point and treated it like it was nothing.
With Early CoDs we wanted to often…
— Chance Glasco (@ChanceGlasco) March 5, 2026
