Call of Duty: Activision praise 'great' Modern Warfare 3 response, confusing everyone

It’s not often a whole fandom gets gaslit by publishers, but it seems Activision likes to surprise us. Hold on to your hats, folks, because the claim here is that the response to Modern Warfare III has been “great”... Yeah, it’s a head-scratcher for us too.

Not that anyone needs reminding, but just in case, since the launch of MWIII, players have been extremely vocal about their displeasure. Not only is it one of Metacritic’s worst-rated games of 2023, but the game has reportedly made Warzone “unplayable” for multiple gamers. Needless to say, nothing about the coverage so far suggests that the game has been well-received.

Check out more from the devs with the Modern Warfare III interview!

Yet, as far as Activision and Sledgehammer Games are concerned, it’s been a glorious launch. “We’re incredibly inspired from the reactions so far. The positivity makes the effort worth it,” said Sledgehammer Games’ Zach Hodson, before adding, “And we use the negatives as motivation to get solid fixes and improvements out as fast as we can. Keep the feedback coming!”

Also said in the same Xbox post, is that the reaction to the game has made Sledgehammer Games “proud”, which again feels like a lie given everything else we know. Interestingly, a lot of the positivity Hodson speaks of comes from the Beta of the game, “The Beta gave us so much data to trust our instincts and deliver to the players what we wanted to see as fans of Call of Duty.” They continued, “In the Beta, it became clear that we didn’t need to dial back our instincts and we could let the natural, physically based materials shine in their full glory while maintaining the realism the franchise is known for.”

Odd how the Beta is the template for this apparent success when the game is out of Beta now; perhaps this is why Activision and co believe the feedback to be “great”, while the rest of us are confused at such a statement.

Another area that the devs and publishers believe is a hit is the multiplayer aspect of MWIII, with them saying, “In between Beta and launch our QA, Analysts, Designers, and Engineers worked together on all aspects of spawns to improve on the issues players were seeing. We think the work really paid off, but there are still more improvements coming.” This isn’t to say that spawns haven’t improved, just that what’s being said here doesn’t match what current players are saying.

It’s all very confusing. If you want to potentially be confused, you can try MWIII for yourselves on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.