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Comments: 94 +- Games: Modern Warfare 2 Not Recalled In Russia After All on Friday November 20, @03:14AM
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thief21 writes "After claims that console versions Modern Warfare 2 had been recalled in Russia due to complaints from politicians and the gaming public over the infamous airport slaughter scene, it turns out the stories were completely untrue. Activision never released a console version of the game in Russia."
Instead, they simply edited the notorious scene out of the PC version. They did this of their own volition, since Russia doesn't have a formal ratings committee.
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In Post-Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Because Infinity Ward's nuclear bunker under their development studios didn't finish in time, and it would be pretty stupid to piss off a country with tons of nuclear weapons without one.
Duh.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's censorship. But what if a Russian game studio made a kickass game with a scene where the US is pure evil and bad and you take the role of a Russian person to kick the US governments ass?
Well that would be a bit stupid to release it like that in the US. Allthough I do not think a lot of US citizens would mind kicking the ass of their own government. I know I wouldn't mind kicking mine ^^,
But it's still kinda wrong...
Re: (Score:2)
If it was a case of you had to go round planning/executing a terrorist attack i suspect many game companies would not ship in the US for fear of a backlash/boycott (others OTOH would ride the controversy to push their other games, just depends how big your balls are, it turns out activision has little mincey faggot balls)
note for mods [youtube.com][AlmostSFW]
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that they can release the game like that in the US and the game will stay like that. While the developer might cave to pressure (perceived or otherwise) and change it, they will never be forced to change it (unlike many other large industrial nations around the world).
Re:In Post-Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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I might make jokes about hookers and blow when I'm in the pub with my mates, but more than likely not when I'm talking to my parents. I might make jokes regarding the WTC attacks with those same people, but not if I went to visit the memorial site.
Some things are just inappropriate, and that inappropriateness comes with context and situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Does that mean I can't order Japanese when I'm next time in Pearl Harbor? Or has that been long enough ago?
You're kidding?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This is what all the newspapers do. They post stories without actual fact checking, one-sided stories and stories based on rumors. If the story happens to be wrong, they put a small 2x2cm box with a small font size on page 193 stating the story was inaccurate.
Russia is a huge country. How hard it could had been for someone to check the facts before writing about it all over the internet?
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Yes, but it did spark an interesting debate on whether it was Russia beat the Germans or not.
Flowers can grow on manure...
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Yes, but it did spark an interesting debate on whether it was Russia beat the Germans or not.
Wow. Only 13 posts and Godwin's law is already invoked. Perhaps you didn't use the word "Nazi", but you are referring to the time period. Someone was bound to mention it sooner or later. OK, say it was 14 posts (counting mine). Well done.
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No, it's not the same. The focus was on Russia & America, not on Nazi Germany as Goodwin requires.
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My guess is that it was more a reference to Germany's rather stingy censorship board concerning "inappropriate" content. To give you an example, to make C&C "appropriate" the human soldiers had to be robots, they can't bleed and the suicide bombers became self propelled rolling tables with a bomb on top. Oh, and Anthrax became some sort of acid that miraculously only hurts the robots but not the tanks.
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I could tell it was fake from some of the words, and having seen a lot of slashdot submissions in my day.
On the other hand... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course we all shake our heads in wonder that such a fuss would be created in Russia over fiction in a video game. But I wonder how US media would react, say, if a Chinese company released a game featuring US rednecks heading into a first nations reserve and gunning down everyone in sight, including women and children. Just thinkin'...
In Modern Russia... (Score:2)
...there's no censorship.
Manipulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it great? Leak a fake story on the internet and reap the free publicity, then leak a statement denying the original fake story, and get another bout of publicity. TWO slashvertisments for no cost at all! Marketing at its finest.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought the same thing when there was "controversy" over the White House in flames mission. It looked like it was a paid advertisement rather than general concern because, well, I couldn't find anyone who cared.
its not censorship (Score:3, Informative)
Re:its not censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to every other level in the highly scripted linear game where your actions don't affect the outcome at all.
Parent
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If they already knew you were a spy why did they risk having you on this job, why not just kill you, bring your body in the ambulance at the end and drop your body at the scene?
Because airports usually have lots of security cameras in them, and the whole point was to film the guy killing civilians alongside other terrorists, who is later found out to be an American secret agent. It's also why they only kill you at the very end (where there are no cameras), so that it can reasonably be written off to police fire.
Re: (Score:2)
They also have video cameras at the airport, so you can't just pull the person's body from the ambulance...
MW2 and Steam (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole MW2 release on PC has been notoriously shitty. First the removal of dedicated servers and leaning (that still pisses me off so much in multiplayer). The matchmaking system works nicely, but they could had still added.. eh, enabled the support for dedicated servers, since it's already build-in to the engine. Now it also seems that pirates and hackers are running rampant [youtube.com] on the legit servers, and they also hacked support for dedicated servers. If you do this with a legit version, you'll probably get banned for cheating.
And yesterday they removed MW2 from everyones Steam account that had bought the game from different region or sites like g2play.net that sell it cheaper. This happened for me too, so now I'm unable to play my legitly bought game. This is a response from Steam support:
Your Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 CD Key has been purchased from an unauthorized re-seller of Steam CD Keys. Your CD Key has been revoked. Please do not complete any purchases with this vendor.
Only CD Keys included with retail copies or purchased from authorized retailers will be allowed.
Still it's a legit version of the game, just that it comes from a reseller instead of Walmart or Steam. And all Activision, IW and Steam made money on the purchase - only one that lost was me and I cant even play it anymore. It's great when legit, paying customers are treated that way while pirates get more off the game for free and don't risk losing their money and game.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity: how do you know it's a legit copy if you paid a discount price from an unauthorized reseller? Sounds kinda shady to me.
Re:MW2 and Steam (Score:5, Insightful)
Read what he posted, the resellers are able to sell it cheaper because they buy keys from a different region of the world where the game is actually priced cheaper than it is in his native country. This is not illegal, as long as you abide by the tax laws in your country importing is perfectly legitimate.
What Valve don't like is the fact he has bought it cheaper because he worked around their price fixing mechanism that aims to squeeze as much money out of people in different parts of the world as possible.
Note that this would effect you identically if you for example bought a copy cheaper whilst in Asia on holiday and took it home to play in say the UK or US where it's more expensive.
They are basically creating their own additional import laws outside of those already imposed by the country into which he is importing goods. It is similar in a way to DVD region encoding, which was used to try and block people in Europe getting films early because they were released 6 months earlier in the US, and also getting them cheaper because the US prices were lower than European prices for example.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Valve did this exact same thing a few years ago with the release of The Orange Box. They banned all the keys sold by resellers such as Zest (a Thai online store). I'm sure they've done the same thing countless other times with other games since then as well.
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That'll teach you for believing in the system! Next time, you'll think twice about being a decent human being!
Re:MW2 and Steam (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been pointing out for a while that Steam is bad, in fact, as was pointed out here by someone else the other day they're arguably worse than EA now that EA is a little looser on DRM than it used to be, effectively making Valve the worst proponents of DRM in the industry.
What annoys me most about Steam is that you haven't done anything illegal yet they block access, and similarly those who receive games early who have done nothing illegal (and neither have the suppliers because there's no actual legal duty not to release early, just industry agreement) but get blocked access from using a product they've paid for until release day. Then there's the blocking of second hand sales, again, yes, nothing illegal, in fact in some countries it is a legal right, and yet again, Valve block it, even making sale of full accounts with games attached in itself against their EULA so that such accounts will be shut down if they change owner.
Yet there's still so much support for Steam, they've built an Apple style fanbase that will rabidly defend them no matter how wrong they do, even if to do so means being hypocritical in going against previous stance in other discussions about how bad DRM is.
It's part of a bigger problem, people will whine, and moan, and bitch, but when it comes to if it means not getting that shiny new toy or having to order that game online and wait a whole day for it to arrive by post, or even, god forbid, get off their arse and go to a shop for it then morals be damned, they'll go right against them and keep feeding the machine that is screwing the consumer and reducing consumer rights drastically. They miss the fact that over time this means things are getting a whole lot more expensive for them if it isn't already due to not being able to buy second hand copies of games, or due to not being able to sale games that they've finished with and never intend to play again on, or most prominently by increased cost of games, which anyone whose paid attention to Steam's prices over the years will notice have gone up for new AAA titles- that doesn't matter as long as they can have their game right this minute. You know what? I actually have more respect for pirates than I do people who whine and buy anyway because at least the pirates aren't feeding companies that don't deserve cash for the way they treat their customers. Sending a message by just pirating the game rather than buying still sends a message, and these companies aren't stupid, they know DRM has no effect on piracy and is just designed to try and slowly increase costs for the honest consumer so it's not like any further restrictions will arise as a result of increase piracy, only as an attempt to squeeze the honest consumer more. I suppose in the context of your distaste of the lack of dedicated servers, this sums up my point precisely:
http://kotaku.com/5403286/what-modern-warfare-2-boycotters-are-playing [kotaku.com]
Personally, I just play XBox 360 games, which unlike on Steam, have decreasing prices, and which despite being on a closed platform are less restrictive in that you can still at least sell second hand and such if you wish to. For what it's worth, I do put my money where my mouth is, I wont buy Left 4 Dead 2 after the way Valve pushes DRM, and the way Left 4 Dead had less content than most free mods with the free content that was meant to make up for this eventually being charged for.
I don't ask people to agree with my points, I know many loved Left 4 Dead for example, what I do ask is that people grow some will power and learn to start putting their money where their mouth is on what matters to them- don't bitch about DRM on an open platform like the PC if you're going to buy from Steam for example. If you don't, then don't come crying when you realise things are costing you more and more, and when as it has with the parent, it comes round to bite you.
Parent
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Personally, I just play XBox 360 games
What do you do when someone recommends a hot indie PC game to you, but the game isn't ported to Xbox 360 because Microsoft rejected it?
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Not play it.
I know, it's a tough concept for some.
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Well, I don't have a shortage of games in the first place, that's really key. I really already have access to more games on the 360 that I want to play than I have time to play.
Importantly though DRM on the 360 is very different to DRM on the PC so it's not a sensible comparison. The 360 is a closed platform and the DRM exists to keep it that way, you can't prevent cheating on an open platform like the PC, but you can on a closed platform. As such I'm happy to play on the 360 and accept it's DRM as part of
Indie games (Score:2)
you can't prevent cheating on an open platform like the PC, but you can on a closed platform.
To me, it's not that consoles are closed against cheaters as much as that they're closed against legitimate developers that happen to be small businesses.[1] What would you suggest that an indie studio working on a PC game do to reach a market of people like you?
DRM on the PC inherently means interfering with the operating system or regularly phoning home with arbitrary data about my system under the assumption it wont change
Games from smaller developers tend to have fewer if any digital restrictions management hassles. They rarely if ever have SecuROM bullcrap, for one. Would you consider buying an PC game with no DRM, or would you reject it just because it's for the P
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"To me, it's not that consoles are closed against cheaters as much as that they're closed against legitimate developers that happen to be small businesses.[1] What would you suggest that an indie studio working on a PC game do to reach a market of people like you?"
This problem has long been solved by XNA. Alternatively, publishing deals are also an option, plenty of XBox live arcade games are by small developers. You do lose the second hand sales option with Live Arcade much like DRM'd Steam games and such,
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This problem has long been solved by XNA.
Microsoft doesn't allow any text in an XNA game unless it's in one of the languages for which the Xbox 360 system menu has been localized. So if one makes a fantasy themed game for XNA, and it includes text in an elvish language, FAILED.
You mention audio synthesized at run time being a problem, but I'm not sure how many titles this would really effect
Without synthesis support, dialogue in a game must be pre-recorded, not marked-up-text-to-speech.
If matchmaking servers go down for a game with single player and multiplayer then no activation means you can at very least still play the single player game.
One question: Why do PC games (with few exceptions) require a separate PC and monitor per player, while console multiplayer games are more likely to either A. support split scree
Re: (Score:2)
"Why are you console people so poorly informed? Many developers actually care about the PC, and are very successful in preventing hacks, through such revolutionary ideas as using dedicated servers and not trusting the client."
It's ironic that you should a) call me a console person and b) call me poorly informed. I have far more experience gaming on the PC, and in fact, far more experience developing on the PC. The fact is, apart from these new generations of systems like OnLive that act as thin clients you
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You know what? I actually have more respect for pirates than I do people who whine and buy anyway because at least the pirates aren't feeding companies that don't deserve cash for the way they treat their customers. Sending a message by just pirating the game rather than buying still sends a message, and these companies aren't stupid, they know DRM has no effect on piracy and is just designed to try and slowly increase costs for the honest consumer so it's not like any further restrictions will arise as a result of increase piracy, only as an attempt to squeeze the honest consumer more.
How certain are you that these companies aren't stupid? How come I have this feeling that Activision doesn't see the pirates as people who would buy the game if it didn't have draconian measures to prevent it. I'll bet the piracy numbers of the first MW are the reason for the lack of dedicated servers and increased copy protection.
I fail to see how this is any less an issue of entitlement (at least the people who said they wouldn't buy and did anyway probably weren't that serious in the first place, whil
Re: (Score:2)
"How certain are you that these companies aren't stupid?"
Pretty certain. You see it's as simple as this, if they have a developer capable of implementing DRM (even if just a pre-packaged toolkit), then he must also be technical enough to know that it can be worked around with ease, it's certainly possible they're ignoring their developers, but every company that implements DRM, for the last 4 years? It seems unlikely.
"I'll bet the piracy numbers of the first MW are the reason for the lack of dedicated serve
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similarly those who receive games early who have done nothing illegal (and neither have the suppliers because there's no actual legal duty not to release early, just industry agreement) but get blocked access from using a product they've paid for until release day.
So? blocking authentication servers until release day isn't illegal either, as far as I'm aware. If there's no actual legal duty for them to let you play the game before its release, you have no reason to complain, right?
Personally, I just play XBox 360 games
Fuck, just go read your own second paragraph in its entirety. Console games have risen in price dramatically over the years, and if Xbox Live isn't a shoddy excuse for milking their own customers up to their last penny, I don't know what is. But who cares, right? you're still playing MW2, a
Re: (Score:2)
"So? blocking authentication servers until release day isn't illegal either, as far as I'm aware."
The jury is out in the UK at least, I put in a complaint to trading standards and they certainly see it as enough of an issue to be investigating currently.
"Console games have risen in price dramatically over the years"
Wrong. Console games were higher with the release of next gen. systems as they always are because the customer base is smaller, but the average price of an XBox 360 game on release now has droppe
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Wrong. Console games were higher with the release of next gen. systems as they always are because the customer base is smaller, but the average price of an XBox 360 game on release now has dropped from around the £37 mark down to the £32 mark. Many are only £29.99 now where previously they were £34.99, the rest are £34.99 where they were £39.99. CoD MW2 could be picked up for only £26.99 on release night from some supermarkets here in the UK. Console game prices have most certainly not increased in price and are certainly only decreasing.
In the UK, perhaps. Here in South America, however, console games used to be around US$60 at release and drop to US$30-40 afterwards but now they go for US$70-80 and only drop to US$55-60 after time has passed.
PC games on the other hand used to be priced around the same as console games, but modern ones cost now US$50 at release, getting as low as $25-30 after a few months.
Wrong again. You're confusing piracy (and potentially cheating) which Microsoft bans for and importing (importing is not gaming the system), the two things are different. Some Xbox games are region free such as CoD MW2, many people in the UK imported this from the US as it was cheaper and there is no problem using an imported title on a UK system whatsoever. Some games are region locked and wont work, but sites like PlayAsia (http://www.play-asia.com/) have a business around imports.
It's not just "piracy" or "cheating" but also using it as a media box. You could argue that breaking the protections against it inherent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Banning my key
Thank you for your concern. I will take your advice to the heart and not purchase anything anymore with you. BTW, I'm still playing the game. Take a wild guess how I did accomplish this feat. At least it convinced me that I can take a step out of my usual routine
1) find a game I like
2) buy the game
3) download it
4) play it.
Again, you may take a wild guess which one I decided to leave out.
Yours, ...
Re:MW2 and Steam (Score:4, Informative)
Many games now, presumably including CoD MW2 on the PC force you to register with and attach the game to Steam to play them. They use Steam for activation to check your CD key is legit, and now it seems, to ban you from using the game. They can also for example use Steam to prevent you from playing a game you've purchased outside of Steam before the release date if it arrives early.
Parent
Re:MW2 and Steam (Score:5, Insightful)
Little by little, without our even realizing it, we're in the nightmare DRM world. Imagine waking up today after last being conscious in 1995. What, you need to be connected to the network to play games you purchased? What, the operating system limits the number of hardware changes you can make? What, you TV and speakers have DRM built-in? What, operating systems won't load kernel-mode code unless it's been approved by the OS vendor? Our books can be deleted out from under us? That's preposterous. That's fiction. [gnu.org]
No, this was the stuff of dystopian fiction 15 years ago. Now it's daily life. Who knows what restrictions we'll see in the next 15 years? Will you finally stop thinking those of us who decry DRM are just crying wolf?
Parent
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Your philosophy is that corporations can do no wrong to consumers. Whenever something bad happens to a customer, it's that customer's fault for being stupid, right?
And women who get raped are asking for it by wearing skirts, right?
Blaming the victim is a disgusting and vile barbarism. I reject it.
Re: (Score:2)
Self-censorship is still censorship
Self-censorship is a basic skill of being civilised. Civilised people don't go around gratuitously insulting others and encouraging hostility without good reason. To equate self-control with government prohibitions on what people are allowed to say or write is, shall we say, ingenuous.
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It depends on the degree. Self-censonring over political matters for fear of retaliation is not being civilized (it happens here in Italy).
In this particular case, it looks strange that the game is different in Russia. Either the content belongs to it or not, but this way is hypocritical.