Activision Blizzard is currently facing serious ongoing allegations of harassment and mistreatment of marginalized workers. To learn more, please visit our timeline as well as our in-depth report on the subject.
The rumoured Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – expected to be the franchise’s 2022 release – has reportedly entered an early alpha stage, with the game apparently being developed by 11 different studios.
Activison Blizzard has yet to confirm that a sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare will be released this year but several reports from September indicate this will be the case.
According to industry insider Tom Henderson, who first reported on Modern Warfare 2’s existence, three Infinity Ward studios are working on the game alongside Treyarch, Activision, Raven, Sledgehammer, Demonware, High Moon Studios, Toys for Bob, and Beenox.
In a YouTube video (spotted by Dualshockers), Henderson said: “[The large number of studios involved] shouldn’t be a massive cause for concern as the majority of these studios have had some involvement in the past couple of years for every single Call of Duty title. From everything that I’ve heard in regards to Modern Warfare 2 everything is running smoothly.
“A few developers even referred to the Modern Warfare ‘s current build as being in alpha. By all of my own accounts I think this is the earliest I have heard a Call of Duty title being in its alpha stage.”
Henderson also said he’s seen Modern Warfare 2 footage and “the game did look really well [into] its development stage.”
The game will reportedly include a campaign featuring U.S. special forces fighting Colombian drug cartels and is internally codenamed Project Cortez.
IGN called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare “great”, saying its “varied gameplay modes and excellent gunplay suggest the series is headed in a promising direction.” The game also did well commercially, breaking multiple sales records when it released.
The upcoming release, if official, is not to be confused with the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that released in 2009 and was remastered in 2020. Infinity Ward’s 2019 Call of Duty rebooted the Modern Warfare franchise and the studio is at the helm again as per the franchise’s three-year development cycle.
After news that Xbox plans to acquire Activision Blizzard, Call of Duty’s 2022 entry would presumably bew one of the reported three entries in the series to be released as multiplatform games, after which Xbox could make the series a first-party exclusive. The timescale for that could be longer than expected, with reports that Activision may ditch annual releases of the series.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale
