Call of Duty live Tweet fake terrorist attack in controversial campaign

By Jack McIlroy Reid on Thursday, October 29, 2015

The general public reaction to Call of Duty’s fake terrorist attack on Singapore PR stunt was that it was tasteless and that the game creators and their Marketers have taken it too far.

On September 29th the games Twitter page @CallofDuty sent the following Tweets, which have now been deleted, live reporting on an apparent attack on the Singapore Marina.

BREAKING NEWS: Unconfirmed reports are coming in of an explosion on the North bank of the Singapore Marina.

The cause of the explosion is unknown, but large plumes of dark smoke have been seen rising from the site.

City Authorities urge the public not to panic, and to not hinder the emergency teams that are converging on the area.

UPDATE: Sources confirm explosion took place at Singapore Research Laboratories belonging to Coalescence Corporation

UPDATE: Singapore Authorities have officially announced a state of emergency and declared martial law.

UPDATE: Military drones have been seen flocking around, and in some cases shooting down civilian drones violating the no-fly order.

Shots have been fired at the newly established blockades as citizens attempt to flee the new “Quarantine Zone.”

After sending some of their followers into a state of panic they finally came clean,

This was a glimpse into the future fiction of#BlackOps3.

A Tweet the following day stated menacingly that ‘Not even your mind is safe’

Although the Tweets were deleted with no explanation and the game never issued an apology to their offended fans, Game Director Jason Blundell did say the following in an interview:

“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.”

“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.”

Although arguably out of taste, and with many fans on Twitter claiming the stunt had dissuaded them from buying the latest edition of the game Call of Duty was all over the national Press for the following days which they will no doubt consider it a success.