Online petitions are usually not the best way of drawing attention to a cause. But when you get over 80,000 signatures in three days, you have us listening.
The PC gaming community has started an online petition after Infinity Ward, the maker of the highly anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, stated that it won’t allow users to host dedicated servers for multiplayer action.
“We’ve been building up this system on the backend called IWNet to allow matchmaking for our PC users as well, just like you have on the console that’s built in on Xbox Live and PSN, but PC never had it, so we’re building in our own, you know, matchmaking so you can get in there and play with players your same rank,” Infinity Ward’s Creative Strategist, Robert Bowling, said in a BASH podcast on October 18.
“You’re completely reliant on IWNet, and there’s no dedicated server or server list, so you rely on IWNet for your matchmaking on your games, but then you also have the private match, much like the other platforms, where you can go in and customise and, you know, turn off air support, turn off this, turn off that, customise the game rules all via private match, and invite people to the server that way,” Eurogamer quoted him as saying.
Bowling reconfirmed that this meant there would be no dedicated servers and each player’s PC would host other players.
Dedicated servers are used extensively by PC communities, forums, clans, etc. Joystiq astutely pointed out that since IWNet is a private framework of the company, modded game modes and custom maps might not be supported.
The whole issue has seen an online petition coming out of it – titled Dedicated Servers for CoD:MW2 – which has already garnered over 80,000 signatures in less than three days. And considering that the online crowd is the one that matters for this petition, each signature is worth its weight in gold.
Without forcing the issue much, the petition simply states its purpose as: “Get Infinity Ward to review their decision not to allow fully dedicated servers for their forthcoming game release CoD:MW2. Remember that this Call of Duty was made popular by PC Gamers who have supported the series throughout.”
We would love to know what you think of Infinity Ward’s decision in the comments section below…