Fifteen years after launch, an old shooter is printing money again. The Black Ops royalty fight is back in the spotlight, and it comes down to one blunt question: when a 15-year-old game cashes in a second time, who gets paid? The people who built it say the answer is not them.
The Black Ops royalty fight in one paragraph
Gavin Goslin, a former Treyarch level designer, posted on LinkedIn about the new PlayStation ports. He says the original Black Ops and Black Ops 2 teams are getting no royalties from Activision, according to Video Games Chronicle. Outlets across the industry have repeated his line: "It’s hard to watch the suits rake in giant financial windfalls from our old code while the actual creators don’t see a dime of it."
Those are his words, as quoted by outlets, and I’m treating them as his view.
The two sides of the Black Ops developer pay debate
Here’s the matchup. In one corner: Activision, owned by Microsoft. The ports are for PS4 and PS5, and Activision’s chief marketing officer, Tyler Bahl, told The Game Business that the results beat internal expectations. By his own account, the company thought the ports would do well. It did not think they would do that well.
In the other corner: the people who made the games. Goslin says he spent countless, brutal hours in crunch to make sure they were perfect. Kotaku reports he put in 15 years at Treyarch as a level designer and artist. Seeing that work dominate the charts in 2026 is "amazing," he wrote, and also hard to watch.
So who comes out ahead? On the numbers, the company, and it isn’t close.
How big are the numbers behind the royalties dispute?
Keep this part straight, because the figures are estimates. Analyst firm Alinea Analytics puts July sales at roughly 11.2 million units and about $435 million in revenue, LevelUp reports. Activision has not published its own unit or revenue totals that we could find. Treat the $435 million as an outside estimate, not a company number.
That gap matters to the royalties dispute, since nobody outside the company can check what was really earned.
For scale, Black Ops 2 reportedly made $500 million in its first day when it launched, per TweakTown. The old games were already huge. The ports just cashed them in a second time.
Why these ports fuel the Black Ops creators unpaid complaint
This is the detail that stings. These are ports, not remakes. GameSpot reports they carry no new features or significant updates. LevelUp calls them near-exact copies of the PS3 versions. Iron Galaxy handled the porting. Its big addition is dedicated servers that deal with hackers, plus the campaign, multiplayer and Zombies.
That is Goslin’s whole point, and the reason the Black Ops creators unpaid argument has legs. When the product is essentially the original work, the people who made it feel they should see some of the money.
Similar fights over who shares in the payout are playing out elsewhere, including the college sports bill debate over athlete pay.
What we don’t know about the Call of Duty royalty complaint
There is a lot we can’t confirm. Nobody has published the terms of what Treyarch staff were owed. So whether Activision "owes" anyone royalties is an open question. Goslin’s call to share the wealth retroactively is his opinion.
We found no response from Activision or Microsoft to his post. We also did not see the LinkedIn post itself, so the quotes come from outlets that match each other.
As for the bigger claim that this is a growing pattern across studios, one outlet says most creators see no money from games they worked on. That is a general view, not a documented trend, so take it that way. Microsoft’s gaming arm is also under strain elsewhere, as Xbox’s massive layoffs show.
Why it’s lighting up searches now
I couldn’t find a brand-new trigger. Most coverage landed around October 19 to 21, and this looks like lingering interest in the royalty story. The ports themselves launched in July.
What keeps people talking is the nostalgia play. LevelUp reports Activision plans to apply what it learned from the ports to future release plans. GameGrin notes the company used to avoid re-releasing old Call of Duty games for fear of splitting the player base. Whether more classics come back is still a question, not an announcement.
Meanwhile, legal fights over who gets paid are heating up in other industries too, like the Ford diesel owners’ class action.
Here’s the thing: if you’re buying a 15-year-old game again, you’re part of this story. Every nostalgia release is a vote for how the industry treats the people who built the original.
So watch two things. First, will Activision or Microsoft ever answer Goslin? Second, will the next nostalgia release show up with a full price tag?
Because right now, the people who crunched to build it are the only ones not on the winners’ list.
