Right as rainy

My last rant, already quite a while back, was about Blizzard and their approach to Starcraft 2. If anyone had thought it would end there, they were dead wrong. Infinity Ward/Activision are turning their upcoming blockbuster-to-be Modern Warfare 2 into a massive slap in the face of the PC gaming community.Ars Technica has it all in painful detail: first the lack of dedicated servers – a staple for multiplayer FPS on the PC, then some additional details surfaced which make it even more obvious. Activision are not interested in the PC, instead focus their attention on the more easy-to-please console crowd, which is already used to the restrictions the PC version of MW2 is about to receive.

This isn’t so much about the finer details. 9vs9 in multiplayer is a ridiculous limitation, given that years ago already PC FPS were able to sustain up to 64 players on one server. Of course, that requires a dedicated server infrastructure which Activision are unwilling to help along. Most of the dedicated servers are supplied and hosted by local providers, leaving only the software support to the manufacturer. Allowing for dedicated servers also creates a certain diversity and variety in the community, being able to focus on different game modes, custom maps, modifications, and versions of the rulebook.

All this is being taken away, and it seems that the underlying reason is again the need to control what people play and how they play it. Forcing the multiplayer component into a dedicated matchmaking service leaves the existence of modifications and community content up to Activision and no one else. In return, the paying customer gets less of a game than he is used to, for the same price, or in the case of South Africa, a higher price than the much-lauded predecessor. Which, ironically, was such a huge success not just because of its immersing and well-made single player campaign, but also because of versatile, customizable multiplayer.

Looking at the bigger picture, it seems like another attempt to find an excuse for a withdrawal from the PC market and the support of the PC as a gaming platform. Besides the above-mentioned facts, the blatant lack of Special Editions for the PC, as opposed to both X360 and PS3 which each get not only one, but two special edition formats, speaks volumes. What it is saying is “We don’t want to support the PC community with its refined demands anymore. We want you to buy our game regardless of what’s in it or not, and give us our money so we can get richer. We are cutting corners in the production and removing features because it costs us too much money to implement them, and that money is lost to our shareholders. We know what you want, and what you want is what we give you. If you don’t like it, go to hell.”

In the meantime, an online petition with (at the time of writing this post) close to 190000 signatures has prompted Activision CEO Mike Griffiths to publicly state that his company is “not overly concerned about it“. If this cake needed an icing, that’s pretty much it. The publisher is here adopting a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude which, with a community as old as the PC gaming community, can be a tricky thing to pull off. Can Activision really afford to ignore the ire of almost 200000 upset customers? They should not forget which platform made the Call Of Duty series what it is today.