Call of Duty League sued by pro gamers over esports monopoly

One popular Call of Duty player and the head of OpTic has sued Activision Blizzard, claiming that the company’s Call of Duty League has a monopoly on CoD eSports. Scump and H3CZ are the player and owner respectively, as they filed the lawsuit on February 15 for the company’s “unlawful monopoly” on the eSports scene.

According to the lawsuit (via Bloomberg Law), Scump and H3CZ claim that Activision Blizzard coerced 12 teams to pay $27.5 million for the privilege of partaking in tournaments. Both parties are seeking $680 million in damages, due to the amount of money Activision Blizzard has supposedly taken from both parties.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the lawsuit, especially since Call of Duty has just signed a major deal with PlayStation. This isn’t even bringing up how Microsoft just bought Activision Blizzard, ensuring that the Xbox lineup will be packed to the brim with the company’s IPs.

There has been a lot of drama surrounding Activision Blizzard and Xbox recently, especially when the company announced its Business Update. Many fans had assumed that Xbox would stop making consoles and start making third-party games, but that isn’t the case. It was also thought that Activision Blizzard would be closing down the acclaimed company Toys for Bob, but that ended up being some downsizing.

Even with all of that, these accusations are pretty severe and the lack of statements from Activision Blizzard isn’t a good look right now. Granted, there’s still enough time for the company to make a statement and attempt to defend themselves from these accusations. As usual, it all we can do is wait for the justice system to determine what will happen.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the latest entry in Activision Blizzard’s ongoing franchise, with many saying it’s the weakest entry in this series thus far. Morbidly curious fans or those who don’t mind a mindless FPS can check the game out now on PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.