Modern Warfare 3 devs reportedly wanted to axe the Gunsmith entirely - but Activision said no

Sledgehammer Games has been championed as the people's developer in the Call of Duty world.

Despite reports emerging that they only had a meagre 18 months to make a fully-fledged CoD title (it's worth considering that Treyarch will be approaching the four-year mark in the development of their next title to release in 2024), Sledgehammer has pioneered making changes to Modern Warfare 3 that came straight out of the public requests book.

But it now appears Sledgehammer wanted to push this one step further and do away with the "overcomplicated" Gunsmith and bring back the highly-requested Pick 10 system.

Sledgehammer Games reportedly wanted Pick 10 system to return over Gunsmith

According to Bloomberg, Sledgehammer Games wanted to remove - or at least severely strip back - the Gunsmith option within the create-a-class feature for Modern Warfare 3.

The developers did do away with some small pieces of the Gunsmith, such as Weapon Tuning, but it still persists as one of the most convoluted weapon-selection systems ever deployed into CoD.

But Sledgehammer actually wanted to revert back to the old Black Ops 2 system of "Pick 10" which essentially gives you ten spots in your class, giving you a limited choice of perks, attachments, weapons, and equipment, making the loadout selection much more seamless.

This news was later corroborated by CharlieIntel who also heard that Sledgehammer wanted to bring back Pick 10.

So why didn't they? Well, it appears Activision put a stop to it.

Reports suggest Activision blocked Sledgehammer Games from removing Gunsmith

According to ModernWarzone, who also corroborated these reports with its own sources, Sledgehammer Games was not allowed to strip it back any further than they did, despite their Pick 10 vision.

The Bloomberg report also suggests it was Infinity Ward who proved to be difficult in the development, stating, "developers also said they were frustrated at having to run their content by executives from Infinity Ward," which led to "making significant and sometimes unwanted changes". 

It's likely that there are many reasons for Pick 10 being left in the past and the Gunsmith remaining strong, such as the Warzone integration and already-released Blueprints bundles which would then become redundant.