Irresponsible doesn’t even begin to describe this. Stupid sounds much better.
Via IGN:
Call of Duty games have never shied away from sensitive and political subject matter, but when Activision’s official Call of Duty account started “live reporting” a fictional terrorist attack, we saw a marketing move exit the realm of entertainment.
2.88 million people follow the @callofduty Twitter account, which recently rebranded its page to reflect its new name: Current Events Aggregate, a faux news outlet whose tagline is “We bring you the real news.” The Call of Duty social media page update was pretty believable: Save for the small grey text that said “callofduty,” it looked like a media outlet on the Twitter timeline.
It tried very hard to not look like Call of Duty.
So when Activision started tweeting about a terrorist attack in Singapore, it could very easily have been misinterpreted. I think this was the purpose. The publicity stunt appears to be deliberately confusing, and to mislead someone into thinking people have been harmed purely for the sake of marketing is dirty.