Michael Condrey says he wouldn’t release a $30 melee weapon ‘on his watch’

In the latest update in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Activision and Treyarch added in a new Special Order in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 which features a melee weapon (plus other bonus tier items) for an incredible $30, almost half the price of the game.

Treyarch’s Call of Duty games seem to have the most expensive and risky microtransaction models out of the three development studios, and it remains to be clarified if Activision or the studios make the decisions on what to include in MTX or what not to. But one thing that’s clear over the years is that Activision adds in more MTX models in Treyarch’s games thanks to the game’s overall popularity in terms of sales.

Michael Condrey, former co-founder of Sledgehammer who left in 2018, said in a new tweet that he would not release a “$30 melee weapon” on his watch.

This is one of the first times, really, that Condrey has commented on MTX in Call of Duty in a tweet — even when he was at Activision, there was really no explanations behind some of the decisions. Advanced Warfare was one of the first games in Call of Duty to bring MTX with Supply Drops, but Call of Duty: WWII did have a fair system with collections, rewards, and more.