A Call of Duty era is quietly closing. Treyarch confirmed on June 15, 2026 that Studio Head Mark Gordon is stepping down after 22 years at the developer behind the entire Black Ops series. The announcement landed on the studio’s official X account with a short tribute and no drama — just a veteran calling it.
From CTO to Studio Head
Gordon joined Treyarch in May 2005 as Chief Technology Officer, the same year the studio shipped its first Call of Duty title, Call of Duty 2: Big Red One. He took over as Studio Head in November 2016 alongside Dan Bunting and Jason Blundell. Blundell left in 2020 to found Deviation Games, a studio that has since shut down. Bunting exited in 2021. From that point on, Gordon ran Treyarch solo through Call of Duty: Vanguard, Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops 6, and Black Ops 7, either as a lead studio or as a support team on the wider Call of Duty pipeline.
New Leadership at Treyarch
Treyarch’s COO Kevin Hendrickson and Director of Production Yale Miller will replace Gordon as co-studio heads. Both have been at the company for around a decade, and Treyarch described them as bringing “decades of development and leadership experience” to the role. The dual-leadership setup mirrors the structure Gordon himself worked in for the first half of his tenure, so it isn’t entirely new territory for the studio. Treyarch did not announce any immediate change to its current Call of Duty roadmap.
Why the Timing Matters
Gordon’s exit lands in the middle of a difficult month for Xbox. Activision is now owned by Microsoft, and a Bloomberg report on June 15, 2026 confirmed that Microsoft is in active negotiations to close or spin off multiple Xbox-owned studios, including Ninja Theory, Double Fine, and Compulsion Games. Head of Xbox Game Studios Craig Duncan also resigned a day earlier, on June 14. A major wave of layoffs is widely expected once Microsoft’s fiscal year closes on June 30. Treyarch’s status as a core Call of Duty studio almost certainly protects it from closure, but veteran departures at this scale rarely happen in a vacuum.
