Call of Duty

• 1. A Franchise Is Born

  ›

  Call of Duty launched on the 29th of October 2003, built on the id Tech 3 engine by a studio called Infinity Ward and published by Activision. It placed players in the boots of American and British paratroopers and Red Army soldiers fighting through World War II. Within two years, Infinity Ward had released a sequel, and a third entry followed in 2006 from Treyarch, who until then had not led a mainline Call of Duty game. That third installment marked a quiet shift: Treyarch and Infinity Ward signed a contract to alternate as lead developer on each upcoming title. The series had found its industrial rhythm. What it had not yet found was its cultural ceiling. That would come in 2007, with a single entry that changed the trajectory of everything.

• 2. Modern Warfare Breaks Through

  ›

  Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, released on the 7th of November 2007, was the first game in the series to abandon World War II entirely. Infinity Ward moved the action to a contemporary setting, and the response was unlike anything the franchise had seen before. By May 2009, the game had sold over 13 million copies. The shift unlocked a new creative strand: Infinity Ward followed with Modern Warfare 2 in 2009 and Modern Warfare 3 in 2011, though the third entry was complicated by a legal dispute between Activision and Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella. The two were forced out of the studio. Several colleagues left alongside them to join a new studio, Respawn Entertainment, inside Electronic Arts. Lawsuits over unpaid royalties and bonuses followed. Sledgehammer Games, originally brought in to assist, ultimately co-developed Modern Warfare 3 with a goal of Metacritic scores above 95 percent. The fracture at Infinity Ward did not stop the series. It accelerated the rise of a second studio.

• 3. Treyarch and the Black Ops World

  ›

  Treyarch's Call of Duty: World at War, released in November 2008, returned briefly to World War II while quietly introducing something that would outlast any setting: the cooperative Zombies mode. The game sold over 11 million copies by June 2009, and it acted as a direct prologue to what came next. Black Ops, released the 9th of November 2010, moved the timeline to the Cold War and the Vietnam War, becoming the seventh mainline installment. It was the first Call of Duty game set during that era. Black Ops II, released on the 13th of November 2012, went further still, introducing branching storylines driven by player choice and multiple possible endings. Treyarch's sub-series grew to eight entries by 2025, with Black Ops 7 arriving on November 14 of that year, developed alongside Raven Software.

• 4. The Studio Rotation System

  ›

  Sledgehammer Games entered the picture as a co-developer on Modern Warfare 3, then confirmed as lead on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare in 2014, the eleventh mainline entry. That game introduced mechanics the franchise had never attempted before: double jump and boost slide. From 2014, three studios began operating on a structured three-year rotation. Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games each took a turn as lead, producing one major release per cycle. The arrangement was not without friction. When Sledgehammer was developing a 2020 entry alongside Raven Software, internal conflicts between the two studios forced Treyarch to take over and accelerate the project. The result was Black Ops Cold War, set during the 1980s and released on the 13th of November 2020. By that point, a fourth developer, Raven Software, had become a permanent co-developer on Treyarch titles.

• 5. Warzone and the Free-to-Play Expansion

  ›

  Call of Duty: Warzone launched on the 10th of March 2020, developed by Infinity Ward and Raven Software. It was released as part of the 2019 Modern Warfare game but required no purchase of that title to download and play. Within its first month, Warzone exceeded 50 million players. Call of Duty: Mobile had already demonstrated the franchise's reach on phones: announced at the Game Developers Conference on the 18th of March 2019, and launched globally on the 1st of October 2019, it surpassed 35 million downloads within the first few days of release. A successor to Warzone, initially titled Warzone 2.0, arrived in November 2022 and later dropped the numbered suffix. Call of Duty Online, an earlier free-to-play title, had operated exclusively in mainland China through Tencent, after Activision lost publishing rights in that market due to a separate legal dispute.

• 6. Scale and Merchandise

  ›

  The Guinness World Records has verified Call of Duty as the best-selling first-person shooter franchise in history. The series has sold over 500 million copies, maintains 100 million monthly active players across all platforms, and generated $30 billion in revenue by 2022. It ranks as the most successful video game franchise created in the United States and the fourth best-selling video game franchise of all time. The commercial reach extended well beyond the games themselves. In 2004, Activision partnered with Plan-B Toys to release a line of action figures based on the World War II games. McFarlane Toys announced a partnership with Activision in 2008, with its first series of figures released in October that year. A card game came from Upper Deck Company. Mega Bloks sets appeared from Mega Brands. WildStorm Productions published a comic book miniseries. A Dark Horse Comics series tied to the Zombies mode ran across six issues in 2016 and 2017, co-written by Treyarch's Jason Blundell.

• 7. Controversy and a Film in Development

  ›

  Critics and journalists have described Call of Duty as carrying a "western-centric worldview, clumsy stereotyping and fetishisation of military power", language used by The Guardian's Keith Stuart. The level "No Russian" in Modern Warfare 2, in which the player participates in a civilian massacre at a Russian airport, drew significant attention. AM General, the manufacturer of the Humvee, sued Activision in 2017 for featuring the vehicle across multiple games; a federal district judge dismissed the case in April 2020, ruling that the military-realism purpose of the vehicle in a game was distinct from its commercial trademark purpose. Separately, a planned Call of Duty film had been in development for years before stalling. In September 2025, Paramount Pictures and Microsoft-owned Activision signed a deal for a live-action film, with Peter Berg attached to direct and Taylor Sheridan co-writing the screenplay. On the 15th of April 2026, it was announced the film would release on the 30th of June 2028.