Report: Jason Blundell is no longer at Treyarch – UPDATE: False
UPDATE: Activision has stated that this report is fake and that Jason Blundell is still actively working at Treyarch and Activision.
Original Story:
According to a new report and rumors floating around the internet, Jason Blundell is no longer at Treyarch.
This info was reported by GamingINTELcom and @TheGamingRevoYT today. Both also claim that 9 other Treyarch senior members were let go by the studio as part of a restructuring of the studio. We have heard rumors of Blundell not being at Treyarch, but have not been able to get confirmation to report on this.
Jason Blundell has been absent in many of the promotions for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Zombies DLC Season. He last appeared as part of Treyarch Stream back in March. Since then, Craig Houston, Lead Writer of Zombies, has been solo on all streams talking about the Zombies mode for the game.
Further, in a new QA interview with Zombies on the Activision Blog, the company only lists “Craig Houston and the Zombies Team,” with no mentions of Jason Blundell anymore.
Jason Blundell has been with the Treyarch studio for years as one of the main leads of the studios initiatives in the Zombies mode. Leading into Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 in 2015, Blundell was tasked with being a Campaign Director and Zombies Director and worked as the lead of both of the modes for that the 2015 Black Ops 3 title.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 was one of the best selling games on current generation consoles, but the game’s campaign was heavily criticized for lack of narrative story telling that previous Call of Duty: Black Ops games had.
Moving past 2015, as the team entered development for 2018’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Treyarch promoted Jason Blundell to Co-Studio Head to serve alongside Mark Gordon and Dan Bunting to lead the studio. Mark Lamia was the Studio Head but was then promoted to Chairman of the Studio.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 launched as the most ambitious Call of Duty title in terms of Zombies content with four new maps available on Day 1. The game, however, had a messy launch for Zombies mode with many blue screens and constant crashing on PlayStation 4 for at least a month before the studio was able to fix a lot of the issues. The MP and Blackout modes were not as effected by the crashes compared to the Zombies mode.
Activision has not issued a statement regarding this and did not respond to a request for comments.
We will update if we get more information.