Former CoD developer says we would have received a pure zombie game 10 years ago, but one studio did not want to

A former developer of Call of Duty says that we could have had a standalone zombie game in the COD franchise 10 years ago, but it was canceled.

Who is it about?

Michael Gummelt is a former developer and employee of Raven Software, who completed contract work for Call of Duty during that time.
At Raven Software, Gummelt worked on single-player, multiplayer, and zombie content, including CoD: Black Ops, CoD: Ghosts, and CoD: MW3 (2011).
Today, Gummelt works for ZeniMax Online Studios as an “Experience Director”.

Gummelt noted on his LinkedIn profile¹ that he also worked on an unpublished “Call of Duty” game during his time at Raven Software. This game was supposed to revolve around zombies, and Gummelt was the lead designer.

What kind of game would it have been? Not much is known about the canceled game. However, Gummelt describes it on his LinkedIn profile as “Unreleased Call of Duty: Zombies Live-Service Game”.

Gummelt worked on this game for a total of eight months between November 2011 and June 2012, but the game was canceled before completion.

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Why was the game canceled? Gummelt indicates on LinkedIn that another studio was responsible for the cancellation of the zombie game and writes: “Canceled when the Activision studio that ‘owned’ this part of the Call of Duty IP wanted it back.”

Gummelt does not provide more detailed information about which studio wanted to cancel the game and for what reasons.

The zombie mode made its entry into the Call of Duty franchise with World at War (2008), which, like Black Ops 1, 2, and 3, was developed by Treyarch. Treyarch was acquired by Activision in 2001.

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To this day, we have never received a standalone zombie game in the “Call of Duty” franchise, but there are a few games trying to do something similar. With Hellbreach: Vegas, another shooter with a similar game concept is set to release in 2024:

New co-op shooter on Steam does what CoD never dared: Bringing the zombie mode as a standalone game