MW3 Devs Rage at Kratos Voice Actor Christopher Judge After COD Joke at The Game Awards

The Game Awards 2023 was quite the event to unpack, with the show acting as a celebration of gaming, handing out awards to well-deserved voice actors and game studios. Just like last year, there were numerous celebrities and influencers present at the ceremony, and one among them was Christopher Judge, who has achieved mass popularity by being the voice actor for the iconic God of War Kratos. He came on stage to present an award and jokingly made a statement that seems to have triggered numerous Call of Duty developers, with many calling him out through posts on X (formerly known as Twitter). 

Christopher Judge Slammed by COD Developers After His Joke at The Game Awards

As mentioned above, many COD devs expressed their frustration on X, about the joke made by Christopher Judge about his speech after he won 2022’s Best Performance award for his role as Kratos in God of War Ragnarok.

Judge said “I’m not going to stand up here, making long speeches. I’m going to stick to the script. No eight-minute speech like last year. But fun fact, my speech was actually longer than this year’s Call of Duty campaign” 

Although this statement was initially met with laughter by the audience, it soon turned into shock with many sitting there in utter disbelief while others covered their mouths unable to control their laughter, while some just maintained a straight face.

Following this event, a series of developers took it to X to severely criticize Judge. One among them was Ajinkya Limaye, a former COD dev who now works as a systems designer at Bungie. He had this to say:

 "funny" but yeah the metrics that CoD absolutely destroys all of the God of War games (probably combined tbh) in is also equally laughable (if not more) 

This post has since been deleted but we can be sure that it gained notoriety before it was taken down. Regardless of that, the criticism continued to rain down on Judge with the associate art director at Treyarch Nelson Plumey also chiming in by saying “Imagine having short user engagement once your game is consumed. Can't relate”

While comparing user engagement metrics of a single-player game like the titles in the God of War series against multiplayer titles like Call of Duty games is questionable at best, some took Judge’s remark personally.

Darcy Sandall, another expert engineer who works at the Sledgehammer Games division also added to the negative remarks saying that they have heard worse insults as COD developers. “But we don't expect it from a peer, at an event that supposed to be celebrating this years achievements in gaming. Especially with all the information that was leaked about it's development."  She added.