Former Call of Duty Developer Demands Royalties for Classic Ports

The commercial success of classic Call of Duty games on modern PlayStation consoles has renewed debate over compensation for video game developers. Gavin Goslin, a former Treyarch level designer who worked on Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, is urging publishers to share revenue from older titles with the teams that created them.

In a LinkedIn post, Goslin criticized Microsoft and Activision for earning substantial revenue from the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 re-releases without providing additional payments to the original developers. He argued that the games' continued popularity demonstrates the lasting value of their work.

Goslin highlighted the commercial performance of the re-releases, which launched as $40 digital editions without new features. Both games entered the Circana U.S. Top 10 for weekly active users, according to his post.

Reflecting on his involvement in both projects, the former Treyarch designer described mixed feelings about their continued success.

"As a developer who actually worked on both Black Ops and Black Ops 2, seeing these charts is bittersweet. I poured my life into those games, spending countless, brutal hours in crunch alongside an incredibly talented team to make sure they were perfect." Goslin said.

He contrasted the games' enduring popularity with the lack of additional financial rewards for the people who developed them. Goslin said the experience of seeing the titles perform well years after their original releases had become difficult to reconcile with the financial gains enjoyed by the companies behind them.

"Seeing our blood, sweat, and tears still dominating the charts in 2026 is amazing, but its (sic) hard to watch the suits rake in giant financial windfalls from our old code while the actual creators don’t see a dime of it." Goslin said.

Goslin proposed a royalty system that would compensate developers when publishers continue generating revenue from older games. He pointed to books, movies, and music as industries where creators can receive payments tied to the continuing commercial use of their work.

"If executives are getting massive bonuses off the longevity of these classics, that wealth needs to be shared retroactively. Legacy revenue should mean legacy rewards for the devs who survived the crunch to build them," Goslin said.

There is no indication that Xbox plans to introduce a royalty system for video game developers. However, Goslin's comments arrive amid growing attention to AI-generated browser ports of classic games, a trend that has also drawn a response from Microsoft through its Xbox Labs project.

Activision is also looking to apply lessons from the successful re-releases to future Call of Duty titles. Chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl recently discussed the publisher's approach with The Game Business, highlighting demand for familiar multiplayer experiences.

"We are definitely leaning into the nostalgia of playing with your friends,” Bahl said. “The Black Ops ports were huge successes. We thought they would do well, we didn’t think they would do that well. But you can see that pent-up demand of being able to get back to the good old days of playing with your friends on a Friday night and having fun. MW4 does that.

"We took a lot of learnings from [those ports] and are starting to apply them to not only this game, but future games." Bahl said.

Modern Warfare 4, which concludes the rebooted Modern Warfare storyline, is scheduled for release on October 23. Activision has not confirmed plans to re-release classic Modern Warfare games next summer.