So the rumour's been SMASHED. Activision Underground, who were supposedly working on a third-person Call of Duty game, weren't closed down because of a non-existent "exclusivity" deal Infinity Ward signed with Activision. And yet, closed down they were. Why? Maybe for reasons a little less eye-catching. Somebody "close" to Activision Underground has got in touch with us, and let us know that the studio was indeed at work on a third-person action-adventure CoD, which would have been based on special ops forces and would feature "very different kinds of gameplay". Only problem was, the game turned out to be, well, a big ol' pile of crap.

Our source says that its mechanics "were a mess", the story was "terrible" and that "it took every cliché you hated from every other squad-based military shooter and stuffed it into COD". Ouch. Apparently the game was cancelled - and the studio closed down - soon after it was first shown to Infinity Ward & Activision, who "had a fit" at what they'd seen. For what it's worth, fingers are being pointed at the game's creative director, who "hired a team of utter beginners and tossed the project to them without any metrics or direction".