Burrows, who worked at Treyarch as a Call of Duty level designer for almost five years, talked about the heavily-debated planned acquisition during a Kiwi Talkz podcast (thanks Comicbook). When asked about the megadeal, the former Call of Duty dev said that he and some of the team would sometimes “daydream” about the merger, and how it might affect day-to-day work. According to Burrows, he wondered if some things might change when it comes to development and whether the team would get more freedom under Microsoft. “Yeah, we would daydream about how it would affect the day-to-day. We would think about it, and we would talk about it being like I wonder if this will change or if you know if like this process won’t be like that anymore, or if we’ll get more freedom to do whatever here and there.” Burrows added that, in short, the proposed merger didn’t affect day-to-day work, and the involvement of Microsoft would likely not change that much due to the Call of Duty series making huge money. “I imagine had it gone through all the way that Microsoft still probably would have respected what Call of Duty’s doing for the most part. “Because, I mean, Call of Duty prints money right” We’ve included the timestamped interview with Jack Burrows down below:
Much has been said and written about the planned $69 billion Microsoft Activision-Blizzard transaction. As covered earlier this month, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) suit Microsoft to block the planned deal, and after the FTC filed its suit, a group of gamers also sued Microsoft. “Microsoft already controls one of the industry’s most popular and largest video game ecosystems,” the suit of the group of ten gamers reads. “The proposed acquisition would give Microsoft an unrivaled position in the gaming industry, leaving it with the greatest number of must-have games and iconic franchises.” We’ll update you as soon as more information about the Microsoft Activision-Blizzard deal comes in.
