Sledgehammer Games will be closing its main office in California to relocate to a smaller office space, Insider Gaming has learned.
The news was announced during a company-wide town hall meeting last week, which announced that Sledgehammer would be temporarily working from home until a new office is found near its current location. It’s expected that employees will be working from home until the end of 2024.
It’s a move that comes at an interesting time for Sledgehammer Games, as it it was also announced during the Town Hall that the studio would be the main developer for Activision’s 2027 Call of Duty title. Infinity Ward will be heading Call of Duty 2026, understood to be in the Modern Warfare universe. Call of Duty 2025 is currently planned to be a semi-futuristic Black Ops 2 sequel under the codename Saturn.
The Work From Home announcement has caused some internal frustration in the company though. In December 2023, Activision announced that all of its QA workers in Minneapolis, Austin, and El Segundo working on Call of Duty would have to return to the office five days a week. Speaking with sources, Activision’s recent announcement on Sledgehammer Games going remote has been called a “slap in the face” by some employees.
The return-to-office mandate impacted an undisclosed number of QA employees, who have had to either relocate to facilitate the change or leave the company.
Speaking with ABK Workers Alliance on the announcement, a spokesperson said, “The company moving the Sledgehammer team to a temporary remote working environment is an indication that they have the ability to grant remote work to the QA employees who have requested it due to disability, distance, or other factors, but are choosing not to.”
Over the last 12 months, return-to-office mandates have been enforced across the industry and as 2024 kicks off, it appears like the trend is set to continue.
Update – Following on from today’s news that Microsoft has laid off 1900 employees from Activision Blizzard, Insider Gaming understands that 30% of Sledgehammer Games employees have been laid off.
For more from Insider Gaming, check out our coverage of the next Call of Duty title currently dubbed “Call of Duty: Black Ops Gulf War”.
