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Networking Games

No Dedicated Servers For CoD: Modern Warfare 2 313

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."
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No Dedicated Servers For CoD: Modern Warfare 2

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  • Here's the petition (Score:5, Informative)

    by cjfs ( 1253208 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @04:32AM (#29805133) Homepage Journal

    Here's the petition [petitiononline.com].

  • Re:petition (Score:5, Informative)

    by 4D6963 ( 933028 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @04:38AM (#29805161)

    There you go [petitiononline.com]

  • Re:Battlefield (Score:3, Informative)

    by V4L3R4 ( 1526175 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @04:48AM (#29805183)
    "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 [twitter.com] 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
  • by carterhawk001 ( 681941 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @04:51AM (#29805197) Journal
    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.
  • by cjfs ( 1253208 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @05:33AM (#29805383) Homepage Journal

    I would like to know the last time one of those online petitions actually worked.

    Hmm... it appears never [snopes.com].

    On a more upbeat note, slacktivism [snopes.com] is our word of the day!

  • by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @05:59AM (#29805495)
    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.

  • by zipherx ( 1150327 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @06:27AM (#29805601) Homepage
    Seriously, even the former COD World at War, had sucky dedicated support, as they officially only made a windows version, the linux server was community created.., and i never got it to work. I mean, why can they not learn from the most success full games out there (half-life!) that had a half-life on about 10 years be course they made really good linux server support, created a really nice open mod system and generally was some jolly nice lads.

    Somehow I have a feeling the pc gaming industry is trying to screw themself over.. with steam leading the way followed closely by Activision.
    I have a cyber cafe in denmark, we have been in the pc gaming business since '97, and it is getting worse and worse to make new games work properly. Steam is playing a big part here, as we have a cafe license from them, and are locked in.. well fine, it works okay. But new games coming out on steam like "Dawn of War 2", we can not make work with our cafe steam accounts. No we have to make new accounts etc.. it is just so messed up.. arrrrrrrgggg
  • Re:Quake 2/3 anyone (Score:5, Informative)

    by thisnamestoolong ( 1584383 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @08:55AM (#29806483)
    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.
  • by sopssa ( 1498795 ) * <sopssa@email.com> on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @09:20AM (#29806755) Journal

    Nobody likes steam, their DRM is marginally better. You know what'd be the best? No DRM! What an idea!It's just they're the only one with a remotely acceptable solution (and not entirely, at that). Everyone else is even worse dinosaurs of a past era.

    I'm not too sure about that. Steam has always worked great, and I actually prefer buying from it because of the easiness of it. On top of that you get the additional community features of steam with every game. And it's a lot easier to just download your games again if you ever delete them or go to other computer / friends place. I now a days actually prefer Steam version over physical versions (and no you dont need to be connected to internet to play them - just a few days my internet was broken for the whole day I played some of the games just fine)

  • by secretcurse ( 1266724 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @09:36AM (#29806991)
    That's exactly right. Battlefield 2 was a perfect example of this. If you wanted a ranked server that would report your stats back to EA, your server company had to pay licensing to EA. If you wanted a clan server that wouldn't report stats, anyone could download the server software. You could choose to run an older version of the game, or mods, or whatever you wanted. So, people can play BF2 on custom servers forever if they'd like, but if they want to take advantage of the official ranking system they have to give EA some more money. That's about as win/win as it's going to get between a gamers and suits.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @09:54AM (#29807255)

    Just went to voice my opinion on the Infinity Ward Forums. The link to the registration page is dead. Points to "/register" instead of the real registration page..

    Simple mistake or way of avoiding new folks from voicing their concerns??

    Go here to make a new comment in the petition thread.

    http://www.infinityward.com/forum/ucp.php?mode=login

    Click Register.. End up here:

    http://www.infinityward.com/register/

    Anyway, I think this is the right page:

    http://www.infinityward.com/registration/register.php

  • Re:Quake 2/3 anyone (Score:3, Informative)

    by Satanboy ( 253169 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @10:51AM (#29808109)

    dedicated server means - "a server run as a service not as a client"

    if you are talking about company run servers, then specify this

  • Re:Hell hath no fury (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @11:43AM (#29809043)
    Online petitions don't work. Sorry, but it's true.
  • Re:Won't it ... ? (Score:3, Informative)

    by citizenr ( 871508 ) on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @12:23PM (#29809783) Homepage
    thats the problem, they made PC version a copy of Xbox one
  • Re:Quake 2/3 anyone (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @05:21PM (#29814829)

    Simply supplying the software to run in server mode is not a "dedicated server".

    Sorry that people modded you troll, but you are misinformed.

    The term "dedicated server" comes from describing an executable that runs the game without the client code. In the Quake series, so far the only one without a publicly available dedicated server executable is Quake Live.

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