"It seemed like a drop off in quality" - Internet reacts after Activision reveals budget details to make major Call of Duty titles

By Rishabh Kalita

Modified Jan 07, 2025 18:06 GMT

Captain Price looking at the camera in Call of Duty Warzone — The internet has reacted to the budget allocated for major Call of Duty games (Image via Activision)

Activision recently disclosed the budget details of its major Call of Duty titles. A court filing by Patrick Kelly, Head of Creative of the Call of Duty franchise, revealed the budgets of three of its games launched between 2015 and 2020. It was found that there was an assigned budget of $450 million to $700 million to build them, which only increased with each subsequent entry.

As budgets increase, so should the quality of the games in most cases. However, many fans believe that this isn't the case for the franchise and if anything, the standard of the popular series has only dropped.

On a Reddit post discussing the budget of the Call of Duty titles mentioned above, user u/greedilyDisgusting shared their opinion about the games and their drop in quality over time. They posted:

"That's crazy because it seemed like a drop off in quality from Modern Warfare imo.... I heard the campaign is good tho I want to play it."

Comment byu/BenHDR from discussion ingaming

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According to them, although the budgets of these titles increased over time, their quality has only dropped since Modern Warfare (2019).

Similar sentiments were shared by others in the post. u/Domesthenes-Locke mentioned the following regarding budgets of triple-A titles and the value they provide:

"That is insane. I've had 10x the enjoyment from some indie game that cost less than 100K".

They implied the budgets are insanely high and compared triple-A games like those from Call of Duty with other indie titles, which are built on a comparatively minuscule budget of $100,000, yet provide more bang for the buck. To drive their point home, they added that they had 10 times more fun with games designed by small teams on a limited budget.

Another frustrated user joined the conversation and said that despite big budgets, the games didn't improve their standard. u/rubbarz stated the following:

"What in the absolute f**k did they spend $700M on? That's at most a $100M game to make. One of the most mid CoDs ever. Microsoft should probably investigate why it takes almost a billion to make a game the studio has been making for over 2 decades. You know Black Ops 6 has to be at that billion mark."

They were surprised that Black Ops Cold War had a $700 million budget and questioned where the money was spent. According to them, it should have cost $100 million at most as it was a "mid" Call of Duty game. They called for Microsoft to look into what was going on behind the scenes at Activision.

It was baffling to them that these studios were spending nearly a billion dollars to make similar games over the last 20 years.

Another user, u/Incredible_Mandible, shared similar thoughts and wondered where so much money was being spent. They said:

"I'll never understand how they spend so much money copy/pasting the same game. I mean, sure, advertising. But still..."

They, too, thought that it was not possible to spend so much money to build games where the core mechanics remained mostly the same throughout the years. While mentioning that advertising has its costs, they were not completely convinced.

Reddit comments discuss the technical state of modern Call of Duty games (Images via Reddit)

Other users pointed out that despite the large budgets, the titles released over the years have been riddled with technical issues. Several fans complained about the game's online servers' quality and the bugs that render them unplayable.

Regardless of the budgets touching nearly $1 billion, most users pointed out that the games remained the same.

Also read: Black Ops 6 playerbase continues to decrease and it has reached a concerning number

Budgets for the development of major Call of Duty games were revealed

As mentioned, in a court filing, Patrick Kelly, Head of Creative of the Call of Duty franchise revealed the budgets of some of their major titles. The news was first picked up by Game File who reviewed these documents. It was revealed that more money was being allocated for each consecutive game in the franchise.

For instance, Black Ops 3 (2015), had a budget of $450 million. In 2019's Modern Warfare, there was a steep increase, as the amount reached a whopping $640 million. This trend continued in the coming year. In 2020, Black Ops Cold War had spent a total of $700 million throughout the game's life cycle.

The report also revealed how many copies each game sold. Black Ops 3 sold 43 million copies globally. Modern Warfare (2019) managed 41 million copies, while Black Ops Cold War managed to sell 30 million copies. That said, although the budgets increased over time, the number of copies sold didn't.

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Edited by Dinesh Renthlei