Much like last year, the annual Call of Duty was revealed later than usual, but we got our first look at Vanguard not long ago. While it’s generally an exciting time for games, and it will no doubt be the biggest game of the year as per usual for the franchise, its parent company has been in the midst of a firestorm of PR as of late. While the large part of that has been around the Blizzard part of Activision-Blizzard, the Activision side of things has not escaped as allegations of sexual assault, hostile workplaces, gender discrimination, and more currently dog the company. It also seems like maybe Activision wants you to kind of forget about them, at least for their key series.
As seen below, and also confirmed by VGC, it seems the Activision logo will not appear on the boot up screen to the game’s upcoming alpha. This seems to be in a similar vein to the logo being totally absent from the game’s reveal trailer, instead opting for the phrasing, “Call of Duty Presents.” Considering how basically every Activision studio is working on Call of Duty in some capacity, maybe the plan is just to rebrand themselves as the literal Call of Duty publisher.
Call of Duty: Vanguard will release on November 5th for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC. The Alpha is expected to go live on August 27th for PS5 and PS4.
Here's the Call of Duty: Vanguard Alpha start up screen.
Very interesting to note…Activision logo does not appear. Only shows Activision at the end for copyright. Every other CoD game starts up with Activision's logo. pic.twitter.com/VN8vGrpSHH
— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) August 23, 2021
