Modern Warfare 2 PC...What Happened? Where is this Going?

By now, you've probably read our review of Modern Warfare 2, or at least seen the high aggregate score through other gaming websites. There's no denying that the game is damn good, and regardless of what I'm going to say, the game will probably be one of the highest selling games of the year and probably next year given how the first Modern Warfare title did in terms of sales afterwards. In fact, the first Modern Warfare game still sells new for $40 US despite being released two years ago; unheard of in an industry where AAA-titles can fade away in as little as a few months.

However, our review missed a few low-notes concerning the game. Namely, the PC version. There's no doubt that the console version will be the best way to go, but completely missing out on what makes PC gaming so great gives the industry a lot less confidence overall. Infinity Ward botching the features of the PC version could be a terrible thing for PC gamers in the future. Or a good thing, depending on how this all plays out in the long run.

Inifinty Ward has stayed mostly silent in its reasoning, but offered a few rational points for its decision to opt out of the dedicated server treatment: For one, it deters cheaters and hackers from getting an advantage, and for two, it negates the need for individual server admins to police the servers on a routine basis. But at the same time, it took out some of the more "inconvenient" measures to make things "run smoother." Auto matchmaking with the best possible open server, finding and joining friends, consistent gametypes and rules and not having to adjust to every new server that a player would go to.

Sure, it stinks to have to find a server to call home after going through as many as a dozen different servers, but at the same time, having dedicated servers to call home increase competition between gaming groups, offer private gametype settings between friends, allow people to kick or ban cheaters and otherwise annoying people from coming back, and use custom settings. So while it's inconvienient to have to search for a fun server with a low ping, it's just as inconvienient, if not moreso, than to get put into a seemingly-random matchmaking pile over and over until you get lucky enough to play somewhere that you'll enjoy, only to never see it again since you probably won't be able to save that as a favorite place to play.

Oh, and games have a maximum 18 players allowed per game. Thanks, I didn't think my super-powerful computer could handle that.

Another PC game did something similar to this, and was met with nonstop complaints until it was fixed a few months ago, and that was Left 4 Dead. In the beginning, Valve decided to forgo the traditional server search that is seen in its other games and tried to accomplish what Infinity Ward set out to do: figure out the best possible server for all incoming players. While this is great for friends who live in a relatively close area, friends from all over the country, if not the world, would equally face terrible ping thanks to an unkept and distant server that they had no chance to compromise on. With an update that allowed player groups to meet on its own servers easier to do, the complaints stopped, and a similar system will be in place for when Left 4 Dead 2 comes out in about a week.

There's simply no reason to disallow dedicated servers. There are plenty of gamers willing to buy and maintain them in their own homes, gaming groups who love to play with non-standard settings and additions, and a modding community very willing to make extra content in between official updates. It's also technology that PC gamers have enjoyed for almost two decades--it's readily available and costs virtually nothing in development to allow.

Ars had a great article about some of the other differences that the PC version of MW2 has with other PC games. You can't access the game's console. There's nothing about mod tools or creating custom content. You can't kick people out of the game, nor can you tweak the settings any more than you could have if you bought the game for one of your consoles. As one of the Infinity War developers said in the aforementioned article, "We would like you to play the game the way we designed and balanced it." So if you can't do it in the setting menu, you're not going to get it at all. Eat it, mod community!

So what do you get if you buy the PC version of MW2? Mouse/Keyboard controls, text chatting, and better framerates depending on well your rig is set up. Yeah, that's about it.

Perhaps the biggest sting is the fact that the PC version sells for the same price as its console counterparts: $59.99 US, rather than the traditional $49.99. And if you wanted to download the game through a service like Steam or Direct2Drive, you would have to wait three days after its retail release. Something tells me that extra $10 didn't go into making the official servers more reliable, since there are tons of complaints from the PC gaming community about the changes, and that Infinity Ward didn't need that extra three days to make sure everything was right with the PC version.

What really sucks about all this is that the overall reaction will cause Activision to reinforce their point about making PC games: they have to fight piracy. Gamers will get angry about this and pirate the game, and Acitivsion will get angry about it and just not support the PC anymore than they will consoles. And why spend resources fighting the inevitable when you can just exploit games for the console? This could potentially ruin PC gaming as we know it as long as the sales numbers remain consistent, especially if there are enough companies willing to see what's going on with the profits and jump on the bandwagon.

The only real good thing I can predict out of all this is if a company, say, Valve, stepped up and said that they would never allow this sort of thing to happen with any of their games, that dedicated servers would always be allowed, as well as custom settings through servers or the game's console, that a player should decide how they want to enjoy their experience instead of having the developers decide it for them. Valve even mentioned that by treating pirates as their customers, they've actually made more money in the long haul. There's clearly a market to serve for these demands, and they're not asking for much, just what they like. Piracy is always going to be a problem with PC gaming, but shutting it down completely is just begging to be scorned and ran out of business completely. There are always going to be jerks and theives and trolls who are going to mess things up for everybody, but punishing those loyal to you by for the actions of others is just one way to see profits and loyalty go down.

So take note, Activision, or any company that wants to go down the same route. While you've already sold millions of copies of this game on consoles, how long do you expect that to last? Do you think this franchise is going to last forever and get better with each iteration, or will you simply let it get thrown right into the ground the same way the Guitar Hero franchise has done over the past three or four games? You can hype something up all you want, but unless you give your customers what they want and come up with new ideas for games or ways to make your current products better, you're going to fall. Eventually the mainstream will catch on and stop supporting you, and then what's going to happen? The ball's in your court, make the necessary changes and prevent this from happening.

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