Black Ops 2 domain registered by Activision proxy, sparking Call of Duty speculation

You don’t need to look very far back to understand how Call of Duty: Black Ops was one of the most popular games of 2010. The Treyarch-developed FPS was the most popular Xbox Live game of 2011, managing to keep a top three place in the charts even AFTER Modern Warfare 3 was released. Treyarch is due to take the Duty reins once again in 2012, but will the game be Black Ops 2?

That’s what some are speculating thanks to a domain registration for BlackOps2.com discovered by Fusible. The domain is owned by MarkMonitor, a company that handles such matters for Call of Duty publisher Activision along with many other big-ticket companies. It’s thin, sure, but it jives with the news from last year that MarkMonitor, again presumably acting on Activision’s behalf, bought up a bunch of Black Ops-related domain names. BlackOps2.com was not among those registrations.

That domain had in fact been registered in May 2010, not long after Black Ops was announced, for the owner Domains by Proxy, according to Fusible. The news now then is that ownership of BlackOps2.com has transferred from DbP to MarkMonitor.

None of this in any way points to confirmation that the next Call of Duty game will be called Black Ops 2, or if there will even be one bearing that title. Assuming that MarkMonitor actually did purchase those domains on Activision’s behalf, the most we can really say right now is that it’s probably the publisher trying to protect its brand. Domain registrations happen. The only confirmed fact that we really have to work with is that there will be another Call of Duty game in 2012. Anything else at this point is pure speculation.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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