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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."
As much as I agree with the petition and the sentiment behind it. I doubt it will sway Infinity Ward or Activision to do anything about this. While 86k signatures is alot, and this will surely cost them some sales I doubt it will have any effect on the profits made from the console versions.
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.
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.
Assuming people have the balls to actually cancel their pre-order and not buy the game. There are a lot of people who bitch and moan about game companies decision's concerning their games, but very rarely do these people seem to do the most effective thing to tell the game company that they don't like it, which is to NOT BUY THE GAME. Its like the people who complain about securROM yet who still buy the game and just send a letter(or so they claim) to the company. They don't give a shit about any of that letter crap, once they have your money they could care less, and if you continue to buy their games you're just perpetuating the problem. Vote with your wallets people.
My comment on this on Kotaku about sums it up.
YAY! Now I can't escape horrible lag and the unwashed masses by playing on a reliable, closely-moderated server full of people who aren't mentally-defective monkeys! Fucking awesome.
Seriously, what the hell? I've always loved clan servers. You find a good one with the gametype and map(s) you want, get in there, play well, and you start developing rivalries and camaraderie with the regulars and even gang up on the occasional asshat griefer/defective who joins. They even tend to have several servers running different maps/gametypes that the same subset of people play on. For the uninitiated, this is called A COMMUNITY. Look it up.
I don't want to be thrown into an endless stream of random assclowns with the exceptions of the 2-3 people on my buddy list, and I don't want to 'friend' every goddamn person I wouldn't mind playing with again. Not to mention the fact that this kind of hosting setup is going to mean the game plays like shit 80% of the time, with no guarantee of stability or performance.
I knew MW2 was too good to be true. I worried they'd find some way to completely fuck it up. Oh well, at least we'll have the singleplayer... Unless they suddenly require us to play with a fucking 360 controller.
Infinity Ward: If I wanted a game console, I'd buy a fucking game console. kthx
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
... I'll save $60. I'll have more MMO time. I'll be able to examine other FPS options, hopefully from IW competitors. Bad news: The dedicated servers (2xDell 2950s) I was prepping to serve this game + mods + maps in our data center just got flushed. Infinity Ward (like SOE) gets a big ban stamp from the gaming community. And apparently they've disabled forum registration on their site just to keep the mad folks off of it. But maybe I'm a singular case. If I was the IW CEO, everybody between me and the person that came up with this idea would be fired. Business should have zero tolerance for stupidity, and apparently they've got it in spades.
Why do game companies follow software companies and do stupid stuff like this?
It all seems to follow one general timeline of events:
1) Make top-selling product.
2) Reap millions.
3) Follow up top-selling game with sequel, with plenty of fanfare.
4) Reap more millions.
5) Follow up sequel with yet another sequel.
6) Make horrible, blatant mistake that customers tell you NOT to do.
7) Defy customers and release product anyways.
8) Lose millions.
9) Keep product franchise on life support with mediocre sequels.
10) Franchise dies.
11) Lose millions more.
12) Blame customers, second-hand sales, piracy.
13) Be replaced by other company's products.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
On-line "petitions" probably carry 1/100th (if not 1/1000th) the effect of a hand-typed, printed, and signed letter. This applied doubly so to letters to politicians. If you really give a damn, put in the effort. It will make a difference to your cause.
Errr, IW aren't providing a network to play on. The network is just a matchmaking service.
There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it shouldn't be the only option for a game like CoD.
Instead of the server admins, you're at the mercy of whichever user happens to click the 'host' button instead of the 'join' button. If they disconnect in a hissy fit because you fragged them, game over. If they've got a shit connection, or their roommate fires up bittorrent, expect big pings as 32 players flood this poor sap's connection past breaking point. Oh, and say goodbye to mods too, and by extension, the next TF2 or Counterstrike.
In short, the convenience you think you're getting in exchange for your freedom and the existence of a gaming community just isn't there at all.
It's actually worse than that. A lot of people will end up pirating the game and make it clear on forums or whatever that they pirated the game as their way of "protesting". But all that does is two things:
* It shows that those complaining can't really be that serious as they aren't prepared to do without, which makes one's position much less credible, and
* It gives publishers another data point when talking about game piracy numbers.
If you really truly have an issue with a particular software company, and you feel that the only way to make an impact is to not give them any money, then you also have to accept the fact that making a credible stance HAS to also include not using their software, even for free. Otherwise, you're part of the problem.
Having said all that, sticking to these principles can be rather difficult. Particularly when one is young and was brought up on having tons of pirated content on their hard drives. :)
How do you plan to financially support Open Source games? Coding, arts, music, running servers and so on cost *a lot*. Add to that the fact that even open source applications usually lack in GUI design and it doesn't really sound like a good plan.
Linux, open source apps and standards get financing for development because they help companies in other aspects. Nokia opened up Qt because they are a hardware developer and having a community developing Qt too helps their bottom line. I just can't see that happening with games, it barely helps other companies revenue who could support it (except maybe NVIDIA and ATI, but they're not going to throw millions of development money in to random, uncoordinated projects, especially when game industry is already working good)
And even any indie developer (we have many here on slashdot) can tell that developing even indie games cost in range of $100,000+
There's a reason why all the open source games you see are still something like TuxRacer and LinCity. You are not going to develop something like Modern Warfare 2 that way.