Developers raise safety concerns as disgruntled ‘Modern Warfare 2’ player visits Activision studio

3 November, 2022

Modern Warfare 2 Warzone 2.0

Developoers across the games industry have criticised a Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 player that turned up to an Activision studio to dispute a “wrongful” ban.

On Monday (October 31), a since-deleted Reddit post (PC Gamer, via Eurogamer) claimed that the author had visited Activision’s Texas studio to speak with an employee after they were “wrongfully banned” from Modern Warfare 2. 

While the user was denied entry by the studio’s security staff – who suggested he shouldn’t “get mad about a video game” – developers and games industry workers have highlighted that disgruntled players turning up to studios poses a safety risk to employees.

“These employees are getting like $15/hr and still can’t afford the rent they split with three other people,” wrote Jacob Garcia, an associate producer at Aspyr. “Please don’t visit gamedevs in their offices. It doesn’t help and we fear for our safety.”

“We had threats all the time,” shared Jessica Gonzalez, former Activision Blizzard and founder of ABK Workers Alliance. “Blizzard campus had a guy at our gate threatening to kill employees.”

Jess Hyland, a character artist at Maxis, recalls having “pissed off RuneScape players turning up so often there was a whole protocol for it” while she worked at Jagex. “One time someone actually tailgated into the office (before the fingerprint readers) and we got an all-staff email like ‘Stay at your desks and wait for security.'”

Angelo Alcid, principal corporate counsel at Microsoft, shared a similar experience: “I’ll never really forget being at Bandai Namco and having to lock our doors because someone’s DLC code for Dragon Ball Xenoverse didn’t work, so he emailed customer service and said he was going to come to the office and shoot everyone.”

Back in September, Respawn Entertainment called out “increased harassment” against the studio’s Apex Legends developers.

In other gaming news, Treyarch has announced that ranked play will be added to Modern Warfare 2 in 2023.

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