Firearms company considered games “a primary means” of reaching “the next generation”

As revealed by the disclosed documents, Remington signed a deal with Activision Blizzard in 2009 to feature the Adaptive Combat Rifle or ACR in Modern Warfare 2. The ACR was one of several military semi-automatics Remington hoped to flog to civilians, according to the WSJ. The deal didn’t involve an exchange of money, but Activision Blizzard and Remington agreed to keep it confidential.

Not everybody at Remington was happy with the arrangement - or at least, that’s what they’re saying in hindsight. “If you saw any part of whatever it is, Modern Warfare 1, it was just shoot them, shoot them, shoot them,” Al Russo, a former Remington marketing executive, said in a Sandy Hook deposition cited by the paper, adding that the game’s representation wasn’t how “our products were meant to be portrayed.”

Trull, meanwhile, told the WSJ that Remington had little understanding ofCall of Duty’s multiplayer scene at the time. “The concept of online lobbies where players engaged each other in ‘team deathmatches’ was unfamiliar,” he said. “I believe that if anyone had known then what we know now about how these games evolved, the decisions would have been different.”

All that notwithstanding, Remington appear to have hadsomesense that featuring their weapons in the wrong kind of videogame might be a Bad Look. According to the WSJ, the Freedom Group’s “Gaming Strategy” memo forbade the use of the company’s brands in games where “non-military bad guys” could be targets, but allowed for the inclusion of digital replicas, noting that this would allow the company to market their products to players without catching any blowback.

“Previous experience tells us people will seek out the brands of the guns,” the memo stated. “A lack of direct branding helps to shield us from implications of a direct endorsement while still receiving benefit from inclusion in the game.”

The ACR proved popular in Modern Warfare 2 - it returns in this year’sCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 remake- but according to Trull, this made little difference to ACR sales on the high street. “The fact that the rifle was so popular in Call of Duty was shocking and… it was essentially the only positive thing anyone had to say about the ACR,” Trull told the paper. “The product was eventually discontinued after years of low sales volume.”