With 'Call of Duty: Black Ops III' due to release on Nov. 6, it was inevitable that a promotional campaign around the game would be forthcoming. However, on Sept. 29, Activision, the company that publishes the game, started live tweeting a fake terrorist attack as it unfolded in Singapore and even renamed its twitter account so that it could pass a "current events aggregator".

Gamespot reports that as soon as the tweets about the terrorist attack started flowing, the 'Call of Duty' Twitter account changed its profile name to "Current events Aggregate", in addition to changing its profile picture. Then it went on to place the tag line "we bring you the real news" on its profile picture trying to further the impression that it was a "real" news outlet that was reporting an actual terrorist attack.

Understandably, the series of the tweets about the fake terrorist attack in Singapore did not go down well with the millions who follow the 'Call of Duty' twitter account, which thankfully retained it "@callofduty" handle. While it was clear that the story about the fake terrorist attack was something that was derived from the game and even mentioned characters from it, it could have just as easily resulted in widespread confusion on the Internet.

However, IGN reports that going by the attempt to pass off the Twitter account as a genuine news aggregator, it appears that the marketing stunt was engineered to create confusion and nothing else. Also, given that Activision choose Twitter to launch the fake terrorist attack marketing campaign, it is clear that the company wanted the news to spread quickly and had not taken into account whether people would be upset or not when they first saw the tweets.

After the marketing campaign drew a lot of criticism from people who were following the 'Call of Duty' Twitter account the profile image and the description was changed to display the correct information. However, the tweets and the images related to the terrorist attack still remain in the Twitter timeline.