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00:00Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're looking at the most controversial moments from Call
00:09of Duty's history.
00:21Before we get started, we post new videos all week long, so be sure to subscribe to
00:25Mojo Plays and ring that bell to be notified about our latest videos.
00:29The Acquisition In the end, it took over a year and a half
00:36and cost Microsoft a grand total of $75.4 billion, but Activision Blizzard King is now
00:43a first-party Xbox company.
00:45From the beginning though, people were against this.
00:48Not just Sony, which had a lot to lose if it went ahead, but ordinary players who didn't
00:52think a deal like this would actually be good for the games industry.
00:56We don't yet know if that's going to prove true, or if the addition of Call of Duty to
01:00Game Pass Day 1 will actually move Xbox consoles when Starfield didn't.
01:05Call of Duty itself made up most of Sony's attempts to block the acquisition, with the
01:09argument that the franchise was so big that Microsoft making it an exclusive would be
01:13terrible for competition, though it luckily hasn't done that.
01:29No Prestige In the golden days of Call of Duty, the multiplayer
01:38progression was centered around the prestige system.
01:41After reaching the level cap, players could choose to prestige and go back to the beginning,
01:46but with shiny new emblems and cosmetics to show off their accomplishment.
01:49To everybody's disdain, Activision got rid of this with the Modern Warfare reboot in
01:542019.
01:55Instead, seasons were revamped so that each season your levels reset, putting everyone
02:00back to zero every few months.
02:02Thankfully, this has changed with Black Ops 6, but for five years we had COD games with
02:06no prestige, and it was always unpopular.
02:12Apolitical Call of Duty gets criticism from across the
02:21political spectrum for the ideas people think it promotes.
02:24On the one hand, there are the individuals who think that any kind of diversity ruins
02:29their fun.
02:30And on the other are the people who think that COD promotes the US military and glamorizes
02:34warfare.
02:35According to Infinity Ward, everybody's wrong because Call of Duty doesn't contain
02:40any politics whatsoever.
02:41That's what the studio said when Modern Warfare came out to avoid getting too many
02:45difficult questions about its campaign.
02:48But it's absurd to suggest that games about any kind of global conflict are apolitical.
02:53Even trying to take a politically neutral stance is taking a stance.
03:01No campaign in Black Ops 4
03:08Perhaps the best way to avoid people debating the merits of your AAA games campaign is to
03:13get rid of it completely.
03:15That's what Treyarch did with Black Ops 4, putting out a full-priced Call of Duty
03:19title with no single-player story mode.
03:21The main reason for this is apparently that the higher-ups in Activision didn't like
03:25the story Treyarch had put together and wanted the studio to focus on Blackout instead.
03:30And that there was, in the end, no time for a campaign.
03:33In fairness, Black Ops 3 had an infamously bad story mode, but getting rid of single-player
03:38entirely wasn't a solution.
03:40Thankfully, no subsequent games have forgone the campaign.
03:49Humvee Lawsuit
03:56This one's a little strange, but AM General once tried to take Activision to court over
04:01the use of Humvees in modern warfare.
04:04AM General's suit, filed in 2017, said that the company had been harmed because Activision
04:09used its vehicles and their designs without a license, and that this is trademark infringement.
04:14The ruling actually went in Activision's favor, though, deciding in a court of law
04:18that games are art.
04:20After all, movies don't need to license the images of every single car they show on
04:24screen, so it doesn't make sense that video games would.
04:27It was determined that the Humvees benefit Call of Duty by enhancing its realism.
04:41Infinite Warfare
04:52Has there ever been a more contentious Call of Duty game than Infinite Warfare?
04:56Well, maybe, and we'll get to that soon.
04:58But Infinite Warfare was certainly the most maligned COD game ever made when it released.
05:03From its very first trailer, people hated the sci-fi elements as COD went to outer space.
05:08When the game came out, it was nowhere near as bad as people feared, but that first trailer
05:12racked up millions of dislikes, breaking YouTube records.
05:16It's also an often-forgotten Call of Duty game now, and definitely isn't as beloved
05:21as some Black Ops or Modern Warfare entries.
05:29Modern Warfare 3
05:37Worse than Infinite Warfare was 2023's Modern Warfare 3.
05:42The bombastic third entry in the Modern Warfare reboot, this game appeared despite Activision
05:47repeatedly promising that Call of Duty was going to skip a year.
05:51The higher-ups couldn't say no to all that free money.
05:54And free money it was, because Modern Warfare 3 was almost completely worthless.
05:58Featuring a forgettable campaign and no new multiplayer maps at launch, the game served
06:03no purpose other than to line Bobby Kotick's pockets and went down in history as one of
06:08gaming's all-time most shameless cash grabs.
06:11It was the first Modern Warfare game led by Sledgehammer and not Infinity Ward, and definitely
06:16wasn't a return to form for them after the previous failure of Vanguard.
06:26Infinity Ward
06:33Despite creating the Call of Duty franchise, Infinity Ward hasn't been treated too kindly
06:38by its overlords at Activision over the years.
06:41In 2007, caught off the success of Modern Warfare, which remains one of the series'
06:46best games, Activision decided to get rid of studio leads Jason West and Vin Zambella.
06:51They wanted creative control and had it written into their contracts, with the catch that
06:55this would be lost if they were fired.
06:57And so, Activision made the workplace so unbearable that the duo was forced out and fired for
07:03insubordination.
07:04Thankfully, they continued to have success through Respawn, but this was an early taste
07:08of Activision's mistreatment of its employees.
07:19Frat House
07:24In 2021, Activision Blizzard was sued by the state of California over workplace harassment
07:30and unequal pay, with female employees found being treated worse and paid less than the
07:35men in a quote, Frat House culture.
07:37This affected a lot of studios, but the makers of Call of Duty were some of them, with none
07:42escaping California's scrutiny.
07:44This dragged on for years, until it was finally settled in 2023 for over $100 million in total
07:50when the fund for the victims is taken into account.
07:53This is a drop in the ocean compared to how much money Activision got through Microsoft's
07:58acquisition, but it was still a huge scandal.
08:00Subsequent years haven't been kind to employees either, because Microsoft has laid off hundreds
08:05of Activision Blizzard staff.
08:14No Russian
08:17The gaming controversy to end all gaming controversies.
08:20In 2009, Infinity Ward made the choice to depict an attack on an airport in Modern Warfare
08:252.
08:26The mission No Russian was widely talked about ahead of release for its no-holds-barred approach
08:31to this part of modern life.
08:33But it was also criticized for a wide array of reasons.
08:36There were people who thought it was inappropriate for a video game to portray something like
08:40this at all.
08:41There were people who thought it was done badly.
08:42And there were people who loved the bold choice, but who thought that Infinity Ward neutered
08:46its effect by making it skippable.
08:48But whatever your take, it was a watershed moment for video games being taken seriously,
08:53and its legacy continues to this day.