Key Takeaways
- Former Treyarch level designer Gavin Goslin — who worked at the studio for over 15 years — has publicly called out Activision executives on LinkedIn for profiting from Black Ops 1 and 2 re-releases while developers receive nothing.
- The Black Ops 1 & 2 PlayStation ports, released in July 2026, sold over 11 million copies and generated approximately $450 million in just one month — without being remasters.
- Circana ranked the re-releases as the highest-earning game in July and the fifth highest-earning game of 2026 so far.
- Goslin argues that if legacy games are going to “print money” in 2026, the developers who survived crunch to build them deserve legacy rewards and protections.
- Modern Warfare 4 launches this Friday, October 23, developed by Infinity Ward — further highlighting the contrast between new releases and old code still making massive returns.
There’s a really uncomfortable truth sitting at the heart of the gaming industry right now, and a former Call of Duty developer has decided to say it out loud. Gavin Goslin, who spent over 15 years at Treyarch as a level artist and level designer — the studio behind Call of Duty’s legendary Black Ops series — has gone public on LinkedIn with a sharp criticism of Activision executives he says are banking massive profits off decade-old code while the people who actually built those games walk away with nothing.
The timing is impossible to ignore. Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 received straightforward PlayStation ports in July 2026 — not remasters, just the original games running on modern hardware — and they absolutely exploded. The gaming community bought in harder than almost anyone expected, and the money that followed went straight to the top.
What Gavin Goslin Actually Said
In his LinkedIn post, Goslin didn’t mince words. Seeing the sales charts for games he personally helped build was described as “bittersweet.” He acknowledged that watching work he poured years of his life into still dominate in 2026 is “amazing” — but that feeling immediately collides with the reality of watching executives collect huge financial windfalls from that same old code while the people who built it don’t see a cent.
“I poured my life into those games, spending countless, brutal hours in crunch alongside an incredibly talented team to make sure they were perfect,” Goslin wrote. The post gained rapid traction across gaming media, and in a follow-up post, Goslin acknowledged that he was glad the conversation was getting wider attention.
In that second post, he pushed the argument further. He pointed to developers facing unemployment while executives profit from legacy titles, and called for systemic change: “If legacy games are going to print money for publishers in 2026, legacy rewards and protections need to exist for the developers who survived the crunch to build them.”
It’s a pointed and hard-to-argue-with position. These aren’t speculative profits from a risky new release — this is pure upside from existing assets, sold back to an audience that already loved them once. The development cost was paid off over a decade ago. What’s happening now is essentially pure margin, and none of it flows back to the people responsible for the value being monetized.
The Numbers That Make This Sting Even More
The scale of what Activision pulled off with these ports is genuinely staggering. The Black Ops 1 and 2 PlayStation re-releases — ported by Iron Galaxy, not rebuilt or remastered in any meaningful way — combined to sell over 11 million copies in a single month and generated nearly $450 million in revenue, according to analyst estimates. Black Ops 2 alone accounted for roughly 8.2 million of those copies, with 93% of sales on PS5.
To put that in perspective: a 14-year-old game that originally shipped on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 outsold brand-new 2026 releases in July. According to Circana’s US data, the Black Ops 1 & 2 bundle was not only the highest-earning game of July but ranked as the fifth highest-earning game of 2026 overall. The combined player count across both titles hit over 7 million in the first week alone.
There was a time when Activision reportedly avoided re-releasing older Call of Duty titles out of concern that nostalgia products would cannibalize newer entries. These numbers prove that fear was unfounded — and that the appetite for classic Call of Duty on PlayStation is enormous. Activision now has the data to justify many more of these low-cost, high-margin re-releases going forward.
This Is a Systemic Problem, Not Just One Company
What Goslin is pointing at isn’t unique to Activision. The games industry has long operated without residual structures that exist in film, television, or music — industries where creators can receive ongoing compensation tied to the continued commercial performance of their work. In gaming, once a developer’s employment ends, their connection to the financial life of whatever they built ends with it.
That model made a certain kind of sense when games had a finite commercial lifespan. It makes considerably less sense in 2026, when publishers can re-release games with minimal investment and generate hundreds of millions overnight. The gap between “the code still works” and “the people who wrote it are unemployed and receiving nothing” has never been more visible than it is right now.
This is also happening in a climate where the gaming industry has been shedding jobs at a brutal pace. Studios are closing and developers are being laid off even at companies posting strong commercial results — Ubisoft’s situation being a prime example. Goslin’s call for “legacy rewards and protections” lands against that broader backdrop, making the contrast between developer job insecurity and executive windfalls feel even sharper.
Activision Has Not Responded
At the time of writing, Activision has not issued any response to Goslin’s posts or to media requests for comment on the claims. That silence, in the current climate, speaks for itself.
Meanwhile, the franchise keeps printing money. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches this Friday, October 23, developed by Infinity Ward and releasing on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 in what will be one of the biggest game launches of the year. The campaign has drawn a very positive early reaction from players with pre-order access. It’s shaping up to be the kind of tentpole release that keeps the industry moving forward — while conversations like Goslin’s push the industry to reckon with who actually benefits when it does.
A Question That Isn’t Going Away
Goslin’s posts have sparked a broader debate that the games industry has largely avoided having at scale. When a publisher can take games built over a decade ago, port them to modern hardware with minimal effort, and watch them immediately become some of the year’s top earners — the question of who deserves a share of that value is a legitimate one.
The developers who worked brutal crunch hours to ship Black Ops and Black Ops 2 weren’t building for a legacy revenue stream. They were hired to build a game. But the commercial relationship between publishers and their back catalogs has fundamentally changed in the era of digital storefronts, and the compensation models haven’t kept pace with that shift.
Whether Activision — or any major publisher — will actually respond to that pressure with structural change is a different question entirely. But the conversation is happening now in a way it wasn’t before, and that’s largely because developers like Goslin are willing to say publicly what many others are only saying in private.
