No Dedicated Servers For CoD: Modern Warfare 2

An anonymous reader writes "Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling (aka fourzerotwo), in an interview with BashandSlash.com on October 17th, announced that one of the mainstays of PC multiplayer gaming, dedicated servers, won't be in IW's upcoming sequel to Call of Duty 4. Instead, players will use the unknown 'IW Net' for matchmaking purposes. No dedicated servers means no player mods, no player maps, no organized competitive play, no clan servers, etc., and strips away what makes PC gaming different from console gaming. Many vocal gamers have canceled their pre-orders, and a petition to reverse this decision is already past 86,000 signatures."

Comments

Here's the petition

[cjfs]

Here's the petition.

Re:petition

[4D6963]

There you go

Re:Battlefield

[V4L3R4]

"To answer a lot of questions; Will BFBC2 PC have dedicated servers the user will control? YES!" "And console (PS3, Xbox360) also has access to host Dedicated servers through BFBC2 Private Matches, eliminating "host with the most" issues." http://twitter.com/OfficialBFBC2 DICE seem to have timed these perfectly, was already a first day buy for me, might pre-order now. Suck it Infinity Ward, you just failed, hard

Over 88,000 Already...

[carterhawk001]

If everyone who signed the petition canceled their pre-order and/or boycotts the game, that's already over $5mil in lost sales. I'm guessing that through word of mouth that number will certainly go up.

Re:Doubt the petition will have much effect.

[DrXym]

If the sales of the PC version tanked it would also give them a good reason to drop the PC platform all together which is understandable from a business point of view.

It's not understandable if it tanked through their own hamfisted restrictions. PC gamers like dedicated servers. It means clans have somewhere fixed to play, they can make mods, they can moderate who gets on, they can run game matching front ends etc. More importantly, it means the players can run servers beyond a game's commercial life.

It doesn't stop Infinity Ward running their own official servers, or offering some form of single sign-on, or medals / points / rewards, or even selling DLC, or even preventing piracy. They could provide their own server as a value add, and I'm sure the service would be popular. But I see no technical reason for taking away a feature that many people want, especially since the code already exists.

Re:Quake 2/3 anyone

[thisnamestoolong]

How did this get modded up? Both Quake 2 and 3 had dedicated servers. This is the REASON that we were able to set up clan servers and the REASON that online play got so fierce and competitive! We were able to set up our own servers, with whatever rules we so desired.

I am sure that there will eventually be support for private servers, but this will almost certainly require the DRM to be cracked, which, as we all know, is a violation of the DMCA. This leaves you open to prosecution from the bastards at IW, which is hardly a reasonable solution. Not only that, but making these options illegitimate ensures that there will be no unified community like we saw with Quake 2, nor will we see that richness of user generated maps and mods. I was planning on buying this game on the release date, but this omission has led me to decide that I don't need to play MW2 that badly -- I will simply take my gaming dollars elsewhere.