Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 dev doesn't care about former Blizzard president calling the series "lazy" or saying it'll get "boot stomped" by Battlefield 6: "You just don't worry about it, right?"

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"Let's all have fun"

A robot standing in a green room during the trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.
(Image credit: Activision)

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was revealed yesterday at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025, and the developers aren't concerned with people who think the series has gotten stale and "lazy." They also say they're not worried about Battlefield 6 being a top competitor this year.

Earlier this month, former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra took a shot at his old colleagues and tweeted, "Battlefield will boot stomp CoD this year. But the real win here is CoD won’t be lazy anymore, and we’ll all get better FPS games for it."

"You just don't worry about it, right?" Treyarch associate creative director Miles Leslie says to IGN. "When we start, it's not like 'what are they going to think?' It's like, we have a vision, we're going to hit that vision, and there's always going to be people that are going to try to knock you down and not have positive criticism, which we do look for. So, it's like noise, right? You try to cut through that and stick to your vision and plan."

This latest offering in the FPS series is bringing back the co-op campaign feature from Call of Duty: World at War and Black Ops 3, and adding an endgame mode that looks like some sort of zombie-like horde defense. Dead Ops Arcade and zombies are also making a return, so I don't think it's fair to say this will be a lazy game by any means.

As for Ybarra's Battlefield comparison, "I got to play this weekend," Leslie confirms. "It's a fun game. We're fans of all games and I think we look for inspiration anywhere. But we're focused on our own craft. They're doing their thing. We know if we can hit our goals, we're going to deliver what the fans want and that's the key, because if we're happy when we're play testing, then we know fans are going to be happy play testing."

He's putting on a brave face, but the Battlefield 6 beta absolutely crushed Call of Duty's Steam record the other weekend. That doesn't necessarily mean it will do better than CoD come October, but it seems likely.

"We're fans of the FPS genre," Leslie concludes. "We're fans of lots of games. Let's all have fun." We can certainly all have fun, but with live-service games demanding more and more of our time, we can't enjoy all of them, unfortunately.

While you're here, check out the Gamescom 2025 schedule and our Gamescom 2025 Day 1 live coverage so you don't miss any of the updates and announcements.

Issy van der Velde
Issy van der Velde
Contributor

I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.

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