Video game shooter franchise Call of Duty has just drawn the ire of many news outlets due to a careless twitter stunt used to promote the next game in the series, Black Ops 3.

The controversy began when the official Call of Duty twitter (@callofduty) underwent a quick makeover to make the page look like that of news website. Sporting a new name (Current Events Aggregate), profile picture, and banner photo, the people behind the page proceeded to tweet some fictional entertainment related news to its 2M+ followers.

Then this tweet appeared.

Followed by a series of tweets making it seem like such an event was actually occurring.

You get the idea. The little marketing blitz continued for a little while longer, with other tweets referencing things like Martial Law, quarantine zones, and riots. It finally ended with this message:

The whole debacle has rightfully been skewered. With many slamming the insensitive nature of the tweets, given the many real life conflicts engulfing the world at the moment. IGN's Mitch Dyer called it 'poorly concieved and executed' writing:

This sort of marketing is bad for video games, bad for the community, and bad for anyone who mistakenly misunderstood something Activision intentionally misrepresented.