At The Game Awards, the legendary voice actor for God of War’s Kratos, Christopher Judge, took to the stage and made a joke that was in poor taste. Last year, he was up on the grandest stage in gaming and delivered a speech that lasted a whopping eight minutes. This year, he was prompted to stress that his speech was at least ‘longer than this year’s Call of Duty campaign’.
Almost instantly, Call of Duty’s developers from past and present took to social media to snap back at Judge, and they were joined by much of the COD community, all of them expressing the same sentiment.
Not Our Game, You Don’t!
In one of the most damning statements, former Infinity Ward developer, Ajinkya Limaya, said about Christopher Judge’s awkward joke:
“funny” but yeah the metrics that CoD absolutely destroys all of the God of war games (probably combined tbh) in is also equally laughable (if not more)
It was likely handed to Judge via teleprompter and it may not have even been his idea to utter those ill-fated words, but it doesn’t matter – he became the scapegoat in that moment. On Twitter, WindowsCentral’s Jez Corden also had a lot to say:
Say what you want about Call of Duty MW3 critically, but it’s fucking shitty, bad taste to have approved some dumb teleprompter joke attacking devs. Dev on that game was incredibly hard, and well-documented. Attacking the devs is the wrong call. Celebrate the devs my ass.
Following The Game Awards, many critical reports surfaced – including the one written by our Mike Straw. There was a lot of criticism levelled at how the showcase was handled, and how little attention there was on the thousands of developers laid off this year as a result of tightening economic circumstances.
At a time like this, those who represent the industry should be showing solidarity, not making jokes at the expense of other developers.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out our PSA warning you not to download GTA 6 early
The COD community agrees with him.
Jez Corden would’ve laughed at the joke if Activision wasn’t owned by MS.
This isn’t a joke it’s an attack on hard working non union workers by a privileged union worker who refuses to respect those who fought for the same cause
Kratos should be recasted or just replaced at this point anyway