Tweets promoting new ‘Call of Duty’ game draw scorn

Netizens reacted on Activision‘s “Call of Duty” marketing campaign on Twitter.

Earlier this week, the name of the “Call of Duty” Twitter account was changed to Current Events Aggregate.

The “War of the Worlds”-style tweets sent Tuesday were created to look like those of a news organization”.

After four and a half hours of updates, the account clarified what it was doing.

This was then followed by another tweet stating that the Singapore government has declared martial law and placed the country in a state of emergency. Shots have been fired at the newly established blockades as citizens attempt to flee the new “Quarantine Zone.” pic.twitter.com/7kvZLGDtwB- Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) September 29, 2015Hours later – just after 5:30 p.m. ET – the account tweeted, “This was a glimpse into the future fiction of #BlackOps3”, confirming it was nothing more than a PR stunt.

However, the publisher’s move seemed to result to numerous complaints from the netizens, saying the publicity stunt was “tacky”, “poorly planned” and “irresponsible”. Below are a few sample tweets, but you can find the up-to-date tweets live from the Call of Duty Twitter account. However, the posts have not been deleted.

The social media campaign was met with widespread criticism, as a few users pointed out it could have incited unwarranted panic.

While most people probably would not expect to get real, hard-hitting live news coverage from @CallofDuty on Twitter, most people would also probably be able to realize that this was a really bad idea on the developer’s part. – Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) September 29, 2015James Chung, commander of the Singapore Armed Forces, has issued a statement about the situation on the ground.

Earleir this month, Activision released a 10-minute video detailing the Black Ops timeline.

The video game will be available on Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 3, PS4 and Xbox One.