$39.99 Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 PS5 Ports: Why Former Treyarch Dev Gavin Goslin Says Original Creators Don't See a Dime
Watching code compiled back in 2010 and 2012 dominate the best-seller charts in 2026 should be a moment of pure pride for any game developer. Yet for Gavin Goslin, a former Treyarch level designer who worked on both Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the massive commercial triumph of the recent PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 ports is a tough pill to swallow.
In a candid statement shared on LinkedIn, the veteran developer whose credits span from Call of Duty 2: Big Red One to Black Ops 6 called out the stark divide between the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by these $39.99 re-releases and the complete lack of retroactive royalties for the developers who survived brutal crunch to build them.
"They Are Printing Money Off of Work Completed Over a Decade Ago"
Ever since the surprise shadow-drop of the native PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions, the two Xbox 360 and PS3-era classics have rocketed to the #1 and #2 spots on the PlayStation Store charts while breaking straight into the Circana U.S. Top 10 for weekly active users. Goslin pointed out what this surge says about the current state of the industry:
"The recent Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 digital drops on PlayStation proved a couple of things. First, today's gaming landscape is starved for the tight, high-quality experiences we used to get. Second, these legacy titles are still massive money-makers for Activision and Microsoft. Despite being basic $40 digital re-releases with zero new features, both titles immediately shot into the Circana U.S. Top 10 for weekly active users. They are printing money off of work completed over a decade ago."
For the former Treyarch level builder, seeing those classic maps and campaigns thrive more than a decade later comes with a sharp sting when looking at who keeps the profits:
"As a developer who actually worked on both Black Ops and Black Ops 2, seeing these charts is bittersweet. I poured my life into those games, spending countless, brutal hours in crunch alongside an incredibly talented team to make sure they were perfect. Seeing our blood, sweat, and tears still dominating the charts in 2026 is amazing, but it's hard to watch the suits rake in giant financial windfalls from our old code while the actual creators don't see a dime of it."
$435 Million in Estimated Revenue for Basic 1080p, 60 FPS Ports
The commercial scale of the PlayStation re-releases is staggering. Because PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 lacked native PS3 backward compatibility for over a decade, pent-up demand sent players rushing to the PlayStation Store as soon as the ports went live.
According to market estimates from Alinea Analytics, the two titles combined have sold roughly 11.2 million copies on PlayStation in under a month (around 8.2 million units for Black Ops II and 3 million for the original Black Ops), pulling in an estimated $435 million in gross revenue.
Outside of introductory PlayStation Plus launch discounts, each port carries a standard price tag of $39.99, and neither package includes the original expansion packs: the legacy Season Pass is still sold separately for an additional $29.99.
From a hardware and engineering standpoint, the overhead required to ship these ports was minimal:
- Capped at 1080p resolution: Neither title features native 4K rendering or upgraded modern anti-aliasing on PS5.
- Locked at 60 FPS: There is no 120Hz performance mode, a feature that has long been standard for modern competitive shooters and players tackling the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Prestige 1,000 grind.
- Missing legacy features: Both ports launched without a field-of-view (FOV) slider, while fan-favorite additions like Theater Mode and Wager Matches were stripped out entirely.
Hollywood Residuals vs. Gaming's Work-for-Hire Reality
Goslin's statement highlights a long-standing structural gap between the video game business and the rest of the American entertainment industry. In film and television, unions such as the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA enforce strict residual payments whenever a movie or TV series from the 2010s is syndicated on cable, re-released on physical media, or licensed to streaming platforms.
In the video game industry, even creators behind some of the best multiplayer modes in Call of Duty history operate almost exclusively under work-for-hire contracts. Publishers retain 100% of the intellectual property and source code in perpetuity. Whether a classic title generates $435 million through a digital store re-release or anchors a multi-billion-dollar subscription catalog like Xbox Game Pass, the engineers, artists, and level designers who built it receive zero royalties,an issue that labor organizations like the United Videogame Workers (CWA) are increasingly bringing into the spotlight.
Goslin argued that if corporate executives receive massive financial bonuses driven by the enduring longevity of decade-old games, publishers should establish retroactive profit-sharing for the developers listed in the original credits.
My Test Bench
Looking at the technical specs of these PS4 and PS5 releases, the profit margin is almost surreal. Charging $39.99 for a binary capped at 1080p and 60 frames per second, with no native 4K output, no 120Hz support, no FOV slider, and no Theater Mode, represents nearly pure profit for Microsoft and Activision. All the heavy lifting,from the sub-16.6ms frame-time optimization on seventh-generation hardware to the timeless three-lane geometry of maps like Nuketown, Standoff, and Raid,was paid for once between 2009 and 2012 during brutal 80-hour crunch weeks at Treyarch. Until game industry contracts introduce Hollywood-style residuals for legacy ports and digital re-releases, bare-bones reissues will remain the easiest cash machine in corporate gaming, built entirely on code whose creators never see a cent of the encore.
PC hardware enthusiast and competitive gamer, Arthur 'Heimdall' splits his time between France and the UK working in enterprise B2B software solutions. A business school graduate passionate about component benchmarking, he has been building, modding, and tuning PCs since childhood, optimizing every thermal degree and millisecond of display latency. An avid gamer across Assassin's Creed and sandbox titles, he forged his alliance with Grimtag and Chaya during late-night World of Warcraft raids before joining Pro-Gamer.
