Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 Outed Again?

It's looking more and more likely that the next game in the Call of Duty series will be a sequel to 2010's Call of Duty: Black Ops. Two more hints at Call of Duty: Black Ops 2's existence appeared today in unlikely places.

French gaming site GameBlog reports that Amazon France briefly listed Black Ops 2. It's since been pulled.

Meanwhile, an artist at Nerve Software now lists Black Ops 2 on his LinkedIn profile (via Joystiq). Nerve Software has been contracted by Activision to help on past projects, including Quantum of Solace and the original Black Ops. Like the Amazon listing, this resume was soon taken down after the report was published.

These aren't the first indications of a Black Ops sequel. Activision snatched up several domain names related to Black Ops this past summer. Furthermore, in January it appears that someone covertly purchased BlackOps2.com. The theory was that Activision was buying that domain from someone who had snatched it up as soon as the first game in the series was announced.

As of August 2011, Black Ops sold over 25 million copies worldwide. It's actually the best-selling game of all time in the United States - until Modern Warfare 3 knocks it off that pedestal, anyway. After that kind of success, a sequel almost seems mandatory.

In an interesting epilogue to the story, Activision France demanded that GameBlog take down their report about the Amazon France listing. When GameBlog declined to do so, Activision seemingly blacklisted them from events and pulled their advertising from the site. I doubt they'd take such radical steps if the site was reporting on a game that didn't actually exist.