Just roughly two weeks ago, "Call of Duty: Black Ops III" publisher Activision pulled off a marketing stunt on twitter to, of course, build some talks for their upcoming video game franchise.
Changing the name of their Call of Duty twitter account to "Current Events Aggregate" with the tagline "We Bring you the real news," Activision has started tweeting real updated news. However, what led its followers to confusion is when it tweeted that there are reports of an "explosion in the North Bank of Singapore Marina," suggesting a terrorist attack in the mentioned area.
Nonetheless, the said move backlashed instead of making positive impact on the game, with IGN even reporting that the move was irresponsible using such fictional sensitive news just to boost traffic.
These negative feedbacks from people, however, surprised even the game's developer Treyarch with senior executive producer Jason Blundell saying that they were "shocked" with the story getting out of their control.
"It was done on our channel, and it was to talk about the fiction of the world. I think we were as shocked as everybody else when it started blowing up, because essentially we were teeing up ready for a story beat," Blundell told in a recent interview by IGN.
The producer furthered that the marketing stunt they made has no malicious or ill intentions, stressing that it was meant to give fans of the game a peek of the world in the new "Call of Duty: Black Ops III" and get them ready for the game's "campaign element."
Blundell, on the other hand, apologized to the fans and to the people who was affected by the tweet, mentioning that he understands the sentiments of the people who found the tweet insensitive.
"It was absolutely not done for any kind of attention in any way. It was not done maliciously, or as any kind of scare tactic. I personally am very sorry for anyone who looked at it and got the wrong idea because it genuinely wasn't meant that way," Blundell told IGN.
As of present time, no official statement from Activision has been released addressing what was said as a "tactless marketing scheme."
According to Game Rant, Activision has been really pushing the marketing and promotions of the game especially with the release date scheduled this November 6, 2015. However, the gaming news outlet mentioned that any more bad publicity might greatly affect the game especially with its current situation where fans are questioning the absence of campaign mode in Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well as the timed exclusivity deal with PlayStation 4.