It seems a media version of pong is in motion between Activision France and French gaming website GameBlog. The fracas is in light of the supposed leak of Black Ops 2 on Amazon France, which saw the gaming website get blacklisted by Activision for not removing it from their website. This apparently isn’t the case, with Activision denying they ever blacklisted the gaming blog.

Other websites who were contacted to remove the content, obliged out of fear of their ties with Activision being cut. This is exactly what happened to GameBlog for not removing the news, according to a statement they released on their website. The excerpt stated:

Unfortunately, this decision brings consequences: Activision chose to cut all ties with GameBlog . Specifically, the publisher asked us not to introduce ourselves to an event Transformers: The Fall of Cybertron , which we were invited next week, we cannot cover it as planned. We will not receive more, now, Activision games, which will likely cause delays in the publication of their tests. It also meant that Activision would end its purchases of advertising space to our district and cancel campaigns already planned.

Activision in return contacted Kotaku to clear the air and stated that:

Activision doesn’t blacklist journalists. We believe this was a misunderstanding and are working towards a resolution.

Even in this whole fiasco, like the many others that grace the Internet every calendar year, Call of Duty still gets more and more exposure from it. Will people stop buying it if they know it exists? I doubt it. Maybe this will have an effect in the future how people run stories before a game’s release, asking themselves is the apparent backlash from it worth the chance? GameBlog might be asking themselves that right now.