Beachhead: Security Number One in Call of Duty Elite

Beachhead, the newly formed Activision studio in charge of the Call of Duty Elite subscription services, claims that security is a very important piece of the puzzle for Activision. The service, which adds free and paid features to several Call of Duty games (it launches in November with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3), will help the company deal with cheaters and hackers that have attempted to breach the game's various security systems.

"From a developer standpoint we put an extremely high premium on security," Chako Sonny, studio head at Beachhead tells Eurogamer.net. "We have dedicated staff focusing on that from an architectural standpoint, making sure nothing we design is exposed, and we're also making sure that we're securing the events and competitions that will eventually become part of the service."

"A lot of the team on the Beachhead side come from worlds that have nothing to do with traditional video game design: coming from people dealing with mobile apps, user interface and other entertainment and interactive services," adds Jamie Berger, vice president of digital for the Call of Duty series.

"You can argue about what's invaluable and what's not invaluable all day long," he continued. "Our philosophy is that what we need to be able to do is say, if we're doing something that's premium, it needs to earn it. It needs to be something that when the player sees what we're up to, sees the work that's involved and the reinvestment going back into the service, or the content – they look at it and say, I understand why that's valuable."

Elite will launch in November alongside Modern Warfare 3, but the service will get an open and very public beta test sometime this Summer.

Source: GameIndustry.biz