Mark Gordon, the studio head at Call of Duty maker Treyarch, has retired from his role after a 22 year tenure.
The studio shared the news yesterday via social media. In the statement, Treyarch highlights Gordon’s contributions to the franchise, which involved the likes of Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, Call of Duty 3, World at War, and the entirety of the Black Ops series.
As for the studio’s leadership, Treyarch’s Kevin Hendrickson and Yale Miller will step up as co-studio heads.
“Kevin and Yale are veterans of the franchise with decades of development and leadership experience, both bringing a wealth of deep game knowledge and a shared commitment to Treyarch’s culture and creative ambition,” reads the statement.
Treyarch has been under Activision for over two decades. In 2023, Activision Blizzard was purchased by Microsoft for approximately $69 billion. During the last couple of years, the studio has been at the center of reports about crunch and culture issues, with the QA department reportedly bearing the brunt of it all. In late 2021, QA employees at the studio joined Raven Software and other devs in a walkout over the sudden firings at Raven.
Treyarch has also seen some drama with studio leadership. In 2020, co-studio head Jason Blundell parted ways with the studio after 13 years. Then, five years later, co-founder Peter T. Akemann pled guilty and took a deal after piloting a drone during the Los Angeles fires in January, which damaged a firefighting aircraft.
All the while, Activision continues to pour ridiculous amounts of money in the Call of Duty franchise. In 2025, court filings unveiled that the company spent almost $1.8 billion developing three titles of the series. Yet, by the end of 2025, shortly after Activision announced a partnership with Paramount to develop a live action Call of Duty film, staff acknowledged the franchise has not met people’s expectations fully, ditching back-to-back releases of Modern Warfare and Black Ops games. Now, the plan is to drive “innovation that is meaningful, not incremental.”
2026 has been similarly tumultuous. Activision shut down Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, while just last week, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wasn’t able to provide an affirmative answer regarding whether the $68.7 billion merger between Microsoft and Activision represented good value for money.
“I don’t know anybody in entertainment who wouldn’t want Call of Duty, which is now grossing in more revenue than [the] Marvel Cinematic Universe; who wouldn’t want one of the top three apps in the world in Candy Crush; who wouldn’t want World of Warcraft; who wouldn’t want a team that for 20 years has been able to create predictable hits every single year,” said Sharma.
Now, just a few days after, multiple Xbox game studio heads are reportedly negotiating with Xbox to avoid closure, including Double Fine, Ninja Theory, and Compulsion Games.