According to reports from French gaming website GameBlog, a ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 2’ listing popped up (and then pulled) on Amazon France this week.
Meanwhile, Computer game artist Hugo Beyer an art studio employee contracted by Treyarch, listed ‘Black Ops 2’ as his current project in his Linkedin CV (Mr. Beyer (or someone on his behalf) has taken down his LinkedIn page).
According to the resume, the artist has worked on titles in the past such as : Beatles Rock Band, Anno 1404, Doom 4, Aliens: Colonial Marines for various firms such as Terminal Reality and Liquid Development.
The firm he works for currently, has performed contract work for Treyarch in the past on James Bond title Quantum of Solace and the first Black Ops.
Activision had already said that it would have another installment in the Call of Duty series this year, but the game hasn’t officially been confirmed by Activision or Treyarch nor any details about the game’s era or setting, other than stating that this year’s iteration would bring “meaningful innovations” to the series.
When reaching out to Activision France on the matter, Gameblog said it was asked by the firm to remove the story. It refused, and the site claims it has now been blacklisted by the publisher. You can read an interview with the firm’s co-founder regarding the events over on Kotaku.
Efforts to censor the press can often point to a story’s validity. Just last month, Activision registered a domain name for “Black Ops 2″ – even though they denied it had any relevance to development plans.
Black Ops is one of the most popular games of all time and had a record-breaking debut of $650 million in sales during its first week at retail in 2010, which it held for one year until Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 crushed that with $775 million.
It would be the first time that the Treyarch team, previously responsible for World at War and Black Ops, does a direct sequel to its previous game.
What do think Treyarch’s upcoming Call of Duty game will be?
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