About Call of Duty: Vanguard

Call of Duty: Vanguard is a first person shooter set during World War II. Call of Duty: Vanguard, developed by Sledgehammer Games, was originally released in 2021 for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.

Iron Galaxy worked on the ports to Microsoft Store and other unannounced platforms, along with the April 2026 title update to integrate the new platforms and remove clans and leaderboards.

Technical Details

  • Worked on this update for 1 year

  • 10+ Developers

  • Proprietary C++ Engine with Lua UI frontend and Python build/tool scripting


Postmortem

My Responsibilities

  • Rearchitect Call of Duty: Vanguard to port the game to the Microsoft Store, maintain feature parity with the Steam implementation

  • Implement various platform level systems for the Microsoft Store implementation, including GDK API Initialization/Shutdown, Friends, Demonware Authentication, Rich Presence, Privileges, Blocklist, Multiplayer Activities, Invites

  • Debug and resolve various certification failures, package errors, bugs, and crashes across all platforms and many areas of the codebase

  • Assist other developers to onboard onto unfamiliar areas of a legacy codebaseDeploy Call of Duty: Vanguard onto a PlayStation 5 devkit to tackle cross-platform bugs and certification issues

  • Partner with senior project leadership to translate high-level sprint goals into detailed Jira tasks to improve team clarity

Lessons Learned

  • Use previous Perforce changelists and Perforce Timelapse view to figure out how to implement features efficiently

  • Architect features such that there is minimal disruption to the existing codebase

  • Explicitly write out testing plans to improve team clarity and reduce the risk of regression bugs

  • Prioritize bugs fixes based on their overall severity, and use standup meetings to determine priority

  • Utilize teammates for multiplayer testing and talking through potential solutions