Activision/ TreyarchCall of Duty developers Treyarch have issued an apology to anybody who may have “got the wrong idea” after it live-tweeted a fake terrorist attack in Singapore last month.
Treyarch producer Jason Blundell had to take the bullet for the franchise and issue a personal apology after social media was flooded with people criticising the bold PR stunt.
Speaking to IGN, Blundell said:
Here’s my view – and again, I’m a simple director and not involved in the marketing at all. However, it was absolutely not done for any kind of attention in any way. It was not done maliciously, or as any kind of scare tactic. I personally am very sorry for anyone who looked at it and got the wrong idea because it genuinely wasn’t meant that way.
The official Call of Duty twitter account was modified to look like that of an official news agency before tweeting to its followers of a terrorist attack in the city.
Blundell continued:
It was done on our channel, and it was to talk about the fiction of the world. I think we were as shocked as everybody else when it started blowing up, because essentially we were teeing up ready for a story beat. So again, very sorry for anyone who took it that way. It wasn’t meant that way at all – it was supposed to just be getting ready for a campaign element.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3‘s is set in a world where war has become routine, and the tweeted story was supposed to tee-up the game’s story mode.
Black Ops 3 will release November 6 on PS4, Xbox One and Windows PC. It will also release on Xbox 360 and PS3 without the story mode.
Mark is the Gaming Editor for UNILAD. Having grown up a gaming addict, he’s been deeply entrenched in culture and spends time away from work playing as much as possible. Mark studied music at University and found a love for journalism through going to local gigs and writing about them for local and national publications.