Call of Duty QA Tester Blames Management for Poor State of Franchise

The Call of Duty franchise is in a terrible way. In recent months, players have been reporting a nonstop stream of bugs and glitches blended with an influx of hackers and cheaters despite attempts at new anti-cheat software. Activision is now addressing this wave of complaints in a Twitter message that sounds more like filler than an actionable promise.

“We wanted to take a minute to talk about fixing the game,” the post reads. “We hear you, and we feel your frustrations. Our teams are hard at work addressing the issues that are being experienced across Vanguard, Warzone, and Modern Warfare. Updates are being deployed as quickly as possible. We want everyone to have a seamless experience, no matter which game, game mode, or platform you play on. Your feedback is a critical part of our development process to make our games the best they can be.”

It should be noted that packet burst issues in Call of Duty: Vanguard have persisted for some time, with many pointing out that the problem has been listed on the company’s Trello board since launch with no significant steps taken towards a resolution.

In response to this, Kate Anderson, a QA tester at Activision, responded with a tweet of their own. “Striking employees have received countless similar emails also saying “we hear you, and we feel your frustrations” yet leadership refuses to communicate directly with us. The state of COD games right now is a direct result of their inability to lead responsibly,” they said.

Last month, the entirety of Raven Software’s QA team walked off the job after several people were let go from the department, which was already understaffed. This came after the many newsworthy issues with Activision and the fact that Raven’s QA staff were promised full-time positions in a new Wisconsin office. Whether the many bugs and glitches will be fixed remains to be seen. Even if they can be, will the playerbase ever trust the dev team again?

Call of Duty: Vanguard is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and a post-launch update introduced a free-to-play battle royale mode, Warzone, larger released as a standalone title for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. A PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S launch is expected to be announced sometime in the near future.

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