Call of Duty developers deny claims that production of MW3 was rushed

With only hours to go before the global release of Modern Warfare 3, Sledgehammer Games is already rushing to defend the game after a major report suggested rushed development led to poor review scores.

In a report from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Schreier said MW3 was made in “half the time” of previous major Call of Duty installments, according to “people familiar with the development process.” Where most major Call of Duty games are supposedly made in three years, Schreier’s sources claim MW3 was rushed out the door in less than a year and a half thanks to a production schedule that “proved stressful for the development team.”

In response to the report, Sledgehammer studio head Aaron Halon put out his own statement, saying the team is “incredibly proud” of MW3 and that the team has been “laser focused” on the release for years. “We have worked hard to deliver on this vision which has been years in the making,” Halon said. “Anything said to the contrary is simply not true.”

In his report, Schreier cites the current MetaCritic page for MW3, which at time of writing on Nov. 9 doesn’t list any scores but features a number of reviews from other gaming outlets expressing disappointment in the game’s “lackluster” campaign. Employees reportedly told Schreier the campaign was originally “conceived as a smaller-scale Modern Warfare spinoff set in Mexico” before Activision executives came in during the summer of 2022 and told Sledgehammer to reboot the story and make a new campaign, which the studio reportedly completed in just 16 months.

An Activision spokesperson told Schreier the game was always conceived from the start as a “premium game” and not an expansion, but multiple employees reportedly said that was not the case. Schreier reported a few of the employees were explicitly told MW3 was going to be an expansion. After releasing Vanguard, Schreier says Sledgehammer originally pitched a project that would be set in the Advanced Warfare universe, but it was reportedly shelved quickly when the developers were told they were working on another Modern Warfare.