The “Call of Duty” company Activision Blizzard is currently taking action against fan projects that keep old CoD games alive. This is causing a lot of upset in the community.
Call of Duty is one of the largest and most successful gaming franchises in the world. Since 2005, a new title has been released every year. The current Modern Warfare 2 once again broke sales records on its opening weekend.
However, this is not about the current state of CoD games. There are also other issues currently burdening the community.
Activision Blizzard is currently taking drastic action against server operators who keep the servers of old CoD games alive within the framework of fan projects. However, the reactions to this are severe and in the end, the franchise might even hurt itself.
If you are currently looking for shooter alternatives to CoD, check out the trailer for Starship Troopers: Extermination:
Fan servers suddenly shut down after years
Which fan projects are involved? It began last week. On May 17, the operators of the “sm²” project announced on Twitter that they would abandon the project (via twitter.com).
For several years, they had built a CoD shooter that used the engine of CoD MW2 2009 and was fed with many maps and weapons from the entire CoD series. Just in April, they switched to the engine of the remaster of CoD MW 2009.
Now “X Labs” has also been affected. This project hosted different servers for old CoD games, such as Advanced Warfare from 2014 or CoD Ghosts from 2013.
Translation of tweet: “Today we received a cease and desist letter on behalf of Activision Publishing regarding the ‘X Labs’ project. We are complying with this order and are permanently ceasing all operations. Thank you to everyone for the years of support.”
These projects use copyrighted content, thus property of Activision Blizzard, for their own purposes. The projects are aware of this and usually give in immediately. Activision is protecting its rights here.
However, players are less understanding.
How are players reacting? The atmosphere is charged, rarely have the reactions been so clear. There is always a lot of complaining about Call of Duty, which is part of the community feeling of the shooter. However,
on Twitter, today it was the biggest topic in the community, the hashtag “#FuckActivision” was shared hundreds of times and many users are currently tweeting about the topic. It often concerns another project that could now be facing its end – Plutonium Project.
In the Call of Duty sub-Reddit, users also vent their anger. A thread with nearly 1,000 upvotes and over 350 comments discusses the shutdown and many do not hold back (via reddit.com).
However, this discussion is not only about how poor many users find the decision to now attack the servers. But it also concerns how this development could harm the franchise and many players.
Why could this harm CoD? The problem lies with the servers of the old games, which can be accessed via Steam, for instance. Many are infested with cheaters and barely playable.
Example CoD: Advanced Warfare. There has been no update since 2015. There are reports that players endanger the security of their systems when starting matches in multiplayer. You can catch malware; there are dozens of reports about this on Reddit (Example via reddit.com).
Fans therefore say: The aging CoD shooters are now finally dying. The server projects were the last safe ways to experience the old CoDs like in the past – sometimes even better.
However, copyright is also an important part of gaming. A sensitive handling of it is also necessary: Leading YouTuber on Zelda says Nintendo is ruining him – has blocked 28 videos with 55 million views
