The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

[Shawn Zipay]

Mere moments after the news that Modern Warfare 2 would not feature dedicated server support (along with removing a host of other FPS "standards" commonly found in PC titles) came word of a number of petitions and boycott groups already starting up.

• The IW forums petition has ballooned in size since it began earlier today to its current form of 109 pages. With over 1000 signatures in that petition (at last count), this petition is a plea to Infinity Ward to rethink their stance on no dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2 and to provide mod authors with mod tools.

• A petition started on Petition Online has 1,882 signatures as of this posting and hopes to make Infinity Ward "review their decision not to allow fully dedicated servers" for Modern Warfare 2.

• A Steam Community group, Modern Warfare 2 BOYCOTT, is also voicing their concern about IW's decision to not allow dedicated servers. They feel as though the lack of dedicated servers will destroy the modding community by disallowing custom maps to be played, mods will not work, and thusly competitive gaming for MW2 is dead before it could even take off.

• A second serious Steam Community group, Boycott Modern Warfare 2 (WE WANT DEDICATED SERVERS) has also just started up. This group wants Mod Tools, dedicated servers, and more.

• And if you're looking for a satirical boycott group there is always the other Steam Community boycott group (Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 boycott) that imitates the goals and hopes of the now dead Left 4 Dead 2 boycott group.

We all know by now how effective boycotts and petitions are online. However, if you are a little hopeful that Infinity Ward might re-examine their stance on Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer plans, you may as well join a group or sign your name to one or all of the above.

[K-16]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

Hmm... Release date is right around the corner, which means the software is essentially finished... Roughly ~4,000 signatures from the combined effort of several sites created by the community, versus well over a million of guaranteed customers. Oh yeah, PC Gamers are definitely going to be heard. We're saved. Without a doubt...

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

The IW forum petition is now up to 127 pages.

The Petition Online signatures now number 3,332.

It's only been about 2.5 hours since I put this news up. That's nuts.

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

Hmm... Release date is right around the corner, which means the software is essentially finished... Roughly ~4,000 signatures from the combined effort of several sites created by the community, versus well over a million of guaranteed customers. Oh yeah, PC Gamers are definitely going to be heard. We're saved. Without a doubt...

Keep in mind this too... This news only broke today. For there to be so many signatures in such a short amount of time is still very impressive. It hasn't even been a full 24 hours since this news came out. Heck, it's close to about 12 hours since this news was dropped that all of this came together.

It'll grow.

[FLeK0]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

The forum thread from the iw site is gone..

[AlecJ32]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

The forum thread from the iw site is gone..

They deleted it? How disappointing. With their fan base so upset, you would think they could find the time to properly discuss the issue, rather than simply flushing it down the toilet.

[dvereb]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

Within 30 seconds of signing the petition there have been about 100 more names. I was number 13117! I really want to sell my xbox 360 as I have yet to have fun playing anything besides guitar hero 3 and a very small amount of halo and cod4. If this comes out screwed up for the PC I might have to keep it .

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

The forum thread from the iw site is gone..

See, now this is interesting. 1. It's telling me that I'm banned from the IW forums. Now, this is amazing for the simple fact that I never once registered on the IW forums.

2. It's pretty sad that they'd wait until the petition thread hit 400 pages before they deleted it? The hell is the point of that?

3. The online petition has over 14K signatures now.

[AlecJ32]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

2. It's pretty sad that they'd wait until the petition thread hit 400 pages before they deleted it? The hell is the point of that?

I guess they're hoping that if they ignore the train, it won't hit their car that's stalled on the tracks....

[bob3rt]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

Apparently they deleted a 2nd PC complaint Thread (200+ pages this time). My last check of the petition showed over 18000 signatures. Someone really opened a can of worms with this one.

I myself, was shocked at this news, and I don't think I will be getting this game now.

[Ev!L ErN!E]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

Well I won't be picking this game up on release day now, thats for sure.... not until all this B.S. is sorted out.

[ZanderArch]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

Well, the good thing about PC is that they are fairly easy to update. If they ever decided to stop screwing us for money, then they could easily fix this.

But the $60 price tag on a $50 dollar PC game is obviously an anti-piracy thing.
Everything else is them just being lazy.

[Linux]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

I cancled my 360 and PC orders after I heard this news. A bunch of my friends stormed Gamestop the other day also and canceled due to this news. We were only buying the game to be able to host a dedicated server, work on some mod stuff with it and other items we wanted to do. Now that IW just pissed and shit on all of us; we are not going to waste our time or money on their game...

And IW are bunch of childish loser for delete a petition form at 400 pages, that just makes people even more mad... I think they are going to have to change their way of things, or they will lose a lot of money.

[K-16]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

Keep in mind this too... This news only broke today... Heck, it's close to about 12 hours since this news was dropped that all of this came together.

It'll grow.

You had me thinking about those two words. So I took another glance. Looks like you were right to recommend that I reconsider my opinion and put some more faith into the community. It doubled from your last check of ~14K to over ~30K. And it looks like nobody is opposing the petition within the petition (as I have seen from various petitions regarding other things) through the random checks I've done (somebody posted a youtube link, but I didn't check to see what it was). Hmm... I'm beginning to agree with you in that I was being naive initially. Now I'm not so sure what might happen post-release day. If ~500,000 legitimate signatures (meaning no one opposes within the petition, or mysteriously cheats the system somehow in some magical way) can be achieved before the game is released, then it would be a significant chunk out of the overall customer base. Even if Infinity Ward is relying on console sales to come out as a profit (since they would still have over a million guaranteed customers, and they've always wanted to be a console developer anyways), I'm sure Activision would be royally pissed off at Infinity Ward for ignoring potential sales as significant as this (the 500K I mean). I'm starting to wonder if we're telling Infinity Ward to do something, or unintentionally indirectly telling Activision to tell Infinity Ward to do something.

As for why the forum topics got deleted, I am under the assumption Infinity Ward wanted to do two things. One is that I am guessing a simulated/pseudo DDOS attack was happening due to the number of pissed off players posting simulataneously, which insanely flooded the forums and drained the bandwidth, even though the DDOS effect was never intended; again, this is a guess. I also imagine Infinity Ward wanted us to wait until we actually see the results of their uh... Creative/technical choice before we criticize it. So apparently rather than complaining about the potential loss we have, we should give it a chance, and then complain afterwards. So deleting the thread was a message to say, "Give it a chance. We know what we're doing."

As for Zips being banned before even registering... Uh... I'm guessing somebody else named Zips registered and was being a jerk on the forums. It really seems unlikely for Infinity Ward to go to CS-Nation/Total Gaming Network, and assume the source of the trouble was coming from there (and we know it isn't), so they banned you in retaliation, despite the fact that you are the LAST person to form a riot. Your profession being the very proof of that unlikeliness.

[Linux]

Re: The Modern Warfare 2 Boycotts and Petitions Are in Full Swing

I logged in today and my account was banned... Had to resign up... I posted twice saying, I'm annoyed that they won't give us dedicated server support and another post saying I canceled my preorder... Stupid IW..