The unexpected summer re-releases of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 have proven to be massive financial successes for publisher Activision and parent company Microsoft, but the commercial triumph has left a bitter taste for some of the original creators.
Activision dropped PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 ports of the two classic titles without warning on July 9. Both games immediately achieved remarkable commercial traction. Black Ops 2 claimed the top spot on Circana’s chart as the best-selling game in the United States for July 2026. According to market data from Alinea Analytics, the combined sales for both titles reached an estimated 11.2 million copies in July alone, pulling in approximately $435 million within a single month.
While the figures highlight enduring consumer demand for the franchise’s older entries, the windfall has drawn sharp criticism from industry veterans. Gavin Goslin, who worked as a level designer at Treyarch on both Black Ops and Black Ops 2, voiced his frustrations in a public message on LinkedIn. Goslin pointed out that because the new digital drops included virtually no new features and relied entirely on code built more than a decade ago, the original development teams should receive retroactive compensation.
“The recent Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 digital drops on PlayStation proved a couple of things,” Goslin wrote. “First, today’s gaming landscape is starved for the tight, high-quality experiences we used to get. Second, these legacy titles are still massive money-makers for Activision and Microsoft.”
Goslin detailed the arduous working conditions endured by the development staff during the original production cycles, noting the countless hours spent in intense crunch periods to ensure the titles met high standards of quality. Watching executives secure substantial financial windfalls and bonuses from decades-old labor without any financial return for the rank-and-file creators, he added, was difficult to accept.
“If executives are getting massive bonuses off the longevity of these classics, that wealth needs to be shared retroactively,” Goslin stated. “Legacy revenue should mean legacy rewards for the devs who survived the crunch to build them.”
Activision executives have acknowledged the surprising scale of the re-releases’ popularity. In an interview with industry publication The Game Business, Activision chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl admitted that the publisher underestimated how well the classic ports would perform.
“We are definitely leaning into the nostalgia of playing with your friends,” Bahl said. “The Black Ops ports were huge successes. We thought they would do well, we didn’t think they would do that well. But you can see that pent-up demand of being able to get back to the good old days of playing with your friends on a Friday night and having fun.”
Bahl also expressed hope that the wave of nostalgia generated by the legacy titles would encourage players to transition toward newer releases in the franchise, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.
