Infinity Ward's latest war is on PC Gamers

posted 10:48:57 AM on 11/5/2009

Anyone who is into PC gaming chooses that platform over a console for several reasons. Better graphics, deeper games, cheaper prices, and the ability to customize are some of the biggest of these reasons, among others.

With next week's release of Modern Warfare 2, developer Infinity Ward and their corporate overlords at Activision will launch the first salvo in an all-out war against PC gamers -without which the Call of Duty series never would have lifted off the ground. They have chosen to go the quick-and-easy route in making the PC version of their game nothing more than a console port. In fact, they've even left out features which could have practically been copy-and-pasted from 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

The first issue that arose was Activision's decision to arbitrarily raise the price of the PC version to $59.99 in order to match the console versions pricing. A console gamer may look at this and dismiss it because they don't see a reason for the PC version to be less expensive. They would be wrong, of course, since publishers don't have to pay licensing fees to release their games on the PC. In addition to this pricing change, they nixed any and all special versions of the game which include extravagant pack-ins such as a pair of night-vision goggles. Fans wanting to own these items will have to purchase a copy of the game on Xbox-360 or PS3.

The price increase would prove to be just the first point of contention between Infinity Ward and their fans. News soon came from IW's Robert Bowling that dedicated servers would not be supported in the PC version. That's right.. a CORE component of online PC gaming would be replaced with an inferior "matchmaking" system which will surely provide unfair pings to host players and cause countless dropped games and generally disappointing gameplay. Leading up to the release of the original Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward bragged that their PC version would support "as many players as your server can handle".. flash forward two years and we're relegated to a maximum of 18 player matches. Utter crap. The reasoning here is fighting piracy and cheaters. That's bullshit and here's why: MW1 did a great, if not perfect, job of checking CD keys during online play and PunkBuster kept the cheaters away just fine. In fact, the excellent multiplayer modes of the first title were the reason many pirates later decided to buy an actual copy of the game. The bottom line here is that someone, be it IW or Activision, wants to control which maps you play on- which means they get to sell them to you later on.

But Wait! There's more! Now Infinity Ward has revealed that there will be no in game console, either. This means no debug modes to play around in, no values to tweak. No changing field of vision, or all the other little tricks that PC gamers are so acustomed to. This one is attributed to the developers desire for people to play the game as they "intended".

Now the game is a week away from launch and IW has downplayed the significance of a huge online petition. It's clear they are unphased by our reactions to this, and some irresponsible members of the media such as Destructoid's Jim Sterling have even suggested our complaints are nothing more than collective whining. You're right Jim, we should be on our knees for Infinity Ward and we should happily pay MORE money for LESS content so they can charge us even more later. As consumers, we're certainly not entitled to our own opinion on a product.

In closing, I want to say that Infinity Ward is making a grave mistake, but sadly I can't. The 360 and PS3 versions of the game have already been dubbed as the "most preordered game ever" and they will have the #1 and #2 SKUS on the sales charts even if they don't sell a single copy of the PC game. Ultimately what we'll likely see is low sales for only the PC version, which Activision will blame on piracy as opposed to the fact that they doomed this game on their own.

The only thing we can do as a community then, is to boycott this game. As previously mentioned, this will make little difference in the perceived success of this title- but at least we can save our hard earned money to reward a developer who gives a shit.

Bottom line: I never thought I would live in a world where EA wasn't the most evil publisher on the planet, but Activision has taken this art to a whole new level with the greed that they are exhibiting across their entire lineup. They are moving their games backwards feature-wise, releasing clones of games just weeks apart, packing in crappy plastic controllers to bump up prices, and just generally acting like remorseless dicks just to make a few extra bucks.

Eventually the public will wise up and stop eating the crap they're feeding us. Sluggish initial sales of "DJ Hero" may be the first indication that this will happen sooner rather than later. We can only hope.