Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Message Board

#grandtheftauto Would you shoot someone responsible for America's horrible housing market? Would you like to? What if you met his wife and kid first? More »

#crime A 22-year-old California man pled guilty today to child pornography charges for getting a 10-year-old boy to send nude pictures of himself in exchange for Call of Duty "cheat codes," according to U.S. Attorney court records. More »

Look, I don’t want this to be another groundhog day. I don’t want the comments thread to fill up with people going ‘Call of Duty is boring’ and then some other people saying “that’s just, like, your opinion man.” I just want you to only bother watching this video of Modern Warfare 3′s ‘Spec Ops’ co-op mode if you honestly have a real interest in Modern Warfare 3. If you don’t, stop reading. Why are you still reading? You don’t even care! STOP READING. And don’t you dare comment.(more…)

#gearsofwar Gears of War 3 was the second most popular game on Xbox Live on the week it launched, topping Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 but failing to unseat the 10-month-old Call of Duty: Black Ops. More »

Former Infinity Ward bossmen Jason West and Vincent Zampella have an official court date of May 7, 2012 to settle their dispute with Activision. West and Zampella seek $125 million in unpaid royalties from Modern Warfare 2 sales and wish to reclaim their contractual rights to the Modern Warfare brand. Activision fired both developers in March 2010 for illegally consorting with EA, and has counter-sued West, Zampella and EA for $400 million, claiming EA hijacked its employees.

Since The Firings, West and Zampella founded Respawn Entertainment and now have 40 former Infinity Ward employees working at the studio, which is creating an unannounced, blurry IP. Activision's suit is clear to proceed, but doesn't yet have a date -- considering how long this first case could drag on, we guess it'll go to court around January 2068.

#callofduty One of the highlight's of the Call of Duty XP convention was its paintball field recreation of "Scrapyard," one of the multiplayer maps featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I took a few stinging paintballs to the thigh and bicep for your enjoyment, if you couldn't make it to Los Angeles this past weekend. More »

#callofduty One of the many activities on hand at this weekend's Call of Duty XP event—activities that earn attendees badges of honor—is Juggernaut Sumo. The game? Put on a bulky fat suit gussied up to look vaguely like a Juggernaut from Modern Warfare 2's Spec Ops mode and... fight! More »

#callofduty Call of Duty XP is an official COD gaming event that promises to do more than let players play Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer. They'll also get a shot at running a real version of The Pit time course and experiencing the Scrapyard in-game map. More »

If you're one of the many, many PC players of Modern Warfare 2 that was, shall we say, less-than-enthused about Activision and Infinity Ward's decision not to include support for dedicated servers, you may now put down your pitchforks and delete your online petitions: Modern Warfare 3 is getting dedicated servers.

You're going to have to find something else in Modern Warfare 3 to make the subject of your Hitler freakout video.

This news of Activision's sudden 180 on the subject comes via IGN, who confirmed from Activision reps at Gamescom that Modern Warfare 3 will fully support dedicated servers on the PC. IGN says that this is part of a larger effort to show PC players that Activision is still very much dedicated to the PC platform.

While this news is no doubt exciting to potential Modern Warfare 3 players, the publisher evidently still has some concerns about opening up the servers in such fashion. Specifically, the inclusion of dedicated servers does mean that it would, in theory at least, be easier to cheat in online multiplayer matches. This is especially an issue given the upcoming debut of Call of Duty Elite, which Activision plans to use to hold a number of multiplayer-oriented contests with "millions and millions of dollars" worth of prizes.

With that in mind, Activision has apparently said that they will not ship Modern Warfare 3 until developers are sure they can keep the play environment fair and balanced. Given the unlikelihood of Activision missing its planned November 8 release date, we can presume then that the game will be as secure and cheater-proof as it possibly can be by that date, and that any suggestions otherwise will be treated as the maniacal ravings of the lunatic fringe that they most assuredly are.

In his 'manifesto', Anders Behring Breivik, the suspect in the brutal slaughter of 93 people in Norway last week, wrote about his enthusiasm for videogames, and how he used them as part of his "training"...

Earlier, British TV star Billy Murray, who voices Captain Price in Modern Warfare, was charged with assaulting his wife and 27-year-old daughter. Charges were dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service, reports the Mirror, ceasing any further actions. [Mirror Thanks, Tom!] More »

#modernwarfaremom [Updated] Last night, the fury took over. The first time in three weeks he fired up the Xbox 360, and some little shit was griefing him in Modern Warfare 2. Hell, he normally plays Battlefield. As the two yelled at each other across Xbox Live, Cody, 17, heard the voice of his antagonist's mother coming over the mike. More »

#modernwarfaremom Earlier today, a 90-second clip of yelling by people who totally deserve each other was removed from YouTube on grounds it was a "depiction of harmful activities." That would be a 17-year-old getting into it with an irate mom, evidently after he had a dispute with her minor son during a match in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. More »

#watchthis There must be a reason why I don't talk to random people on Xbox Live. Oh, right. This is it. More »

After languishing in the legal system for over a year, the lawsuit filed against Activision by Infinity Ward founders Vincent Zampella and Jason West appears to be moving forward, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The publication reports that a Los Angeles judge has ruled that Zampella and West's claims against Activision have merit -- complaints of unpaid royalties among others -- meaning the suit should finally be going to court.

The news comes months after a judge allowed Activision's countersuit to move forward as well. Both sides of the suit are seeking significant damages. Appropriately enough, with both sides cleared to proceed, it looks like it's finally time for Activision and the former Call of Duty developers to go to war.

After languishing in the legal system for over a year, the lawsuit filed against Activision by Infinity Ward founders Vincent Zampella and Jason West appears to be moving forward, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The publication reports that a Los Angeles judge has ruled that Zampella and West's claims against Activision have merit -- complaints of unpaid royalties among others -- meaning the suit should finally be going to court.

The news comes months after a judge allowed Activision's countersuit to move forward as well. Both sides of the suit are seeking significant damages. Appropriately enough, with both sides cleared to proceed, it looks like it's finally time for Activision and the former Call of Duty developers to go to war.

After languishing in the legal system for over a year, the lawsuit filed against Activision by Infinity Ward founders Vincent Zampella and Jason West appears to be moving forward, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The publication reports that a Los Angeles judge has ruled that Zampella and West's claims against Activision have merit -- complaints of unpaid royalties among others -- meaning the suit should finally be going to court.

The news comes months after a judge allowed Activision's countersuit to move forward as well. Both sides of the suit are seeking significant damages. Appropriately enough, with both sides cleared to proceed, it looks like it's finally time for Activision and the former Call of Duty developers to go to war.

#rraawwrr When Activision stuck its head in the hornets nest to find out what the online community at 4chan thought about Modern Warfare 2 on the PC, it got what anyone else would have told them they'd get: stupid answers. More »

It was always going to happen, and now it has. The nature of a corporation is never to sit still and be content with its lot – it’s to forever look to ways to make more money from what it has. (If RPS had a scrap of sense, we’d have launched a couple of spin-offs by now, but a corporation we are not). Activision was never going to let the world’s biggest gaming franchise stay the same size – its duty to its shareholders, and to a far less extent to its employees, is to make its IP as profitable as possible. With several of its divisions and titles recently axed and even WoW subscriptions in decline (by an apparently tiny 5%, but the difference between revenues increasing and revenues decreasing is a fundamental one for shareholder confidence), the publisher is almost required to milk a little more out of its remaining cashcows. On the one hand, you can’t blame them for introducing Call of Duty: Elite, a premium subscription service (though its basic features are free) which adds various community and content goodies to its shooter series’ frighteningly popular multiplayer mode.

On the other hand, it’s hard to not to feel a little dirty about Elite, isn’t it?(more…)

The day has come: Activision has finally introduced Plan B. Plan B is much like Plan A, in that it also involves making an absolute crapton of money out of Call of Duty. This time, it’s called Call of Duty Elite, and it’s a social networking, clan-arranging, video-sharing, stat-analysing online service for COD multiplayer. Some aspects for it will be free; others will involve a paid subscription. The gaming world had a sharp intake of breath this morning, and you probably will too.

There’s a leaked YouTube trailer of Elite below, but as I believe the publications who Activision chose to show the service to are under some sort of embargo, you’d better hurry and watch it before it inevitably gets pulled…(more…)

Soon after Sony's aggressive pursuit of hacker George Hotz -- and potentially in an act of retaliation -- other hackers shut the whole PlayStation Network down and made off with millions of users' data.

Microsoft seems to have learned a valuable lesson from that ("don't incite hackers"). During a keynote presentation at the Bank of Ireland Business Week, MS's Ireland General Manager Paul Rellis revealed that the company is dealing with a 14-year-old who hacked Modern Warfare 2 not by suing him, but by working with him. According to the Herald, Rellis said that Microsoft was helping the youngster "use his skills for legitimate purposes."

It's a happy ending in this case, but we doubt this will work every time. If you get all up in big companies' systems, you're still a lot more likely to end up with police confiscating your computer than with a cool internship.

Someone’s getting a) bollocked b) fired c) executed tonight, I’m sure. If Kotaku’s sources are right, basically everything about this year’s Call of Duty has just been blown wide open and revealed to John Q. Public some six months before likely release. It’s Modern Warfare 3 and it’s…(more…)

We're approaching the one-month anniversary of the PlayStation Network's deactivation due to that pesky security breach, and according to a report from Edge the downtime's starting to have an effect at UK games retailers. The report cites a number of anonymous game shop clerks, all of whom paint a fairly similar picture of the response to the outage: PlayStation 3 trade-ins have doubled in their respective stores in the past few weeks, with most shoppers exchanging their consoles for Xbox 360s or cash.

That may sound like a fairly inflammatory report, but the reasoning is sound: Almost all the retailers say these shoppers are hardcore FPS players, and are acquiring Xbox 360s to get back in their Call of Duty: Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 routines. Furthermore, all of the retailers report an increased trade-in rate for the PS3 version of Black Ops. Trading in your gaming console sounds like a pretty drastic way to keep playing a game you love -- then again, we're no strangers to the siren call of the Killstreak.

The latest episode in long-running series Modern War Gear Solid has just been uploaded. It's kind of hard to describe the series: it's part homage, part irreverent mish-mash of gaming's most beloved franchises. Find all five episodes past the break.

During an investors call today, Activision announced that 1.4 million copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops' "First Strike" map pack were sold "in the first 24 hours" of its February 1 debut on Xbox Live. At $15 a pop, that's $21 million in gross revenue in a single day -- on a single platform!

Notably, Activision Publishing's Eric Hirshberg pointed out that those sales were a "20 percent increase over Modern Warfare 2's 'Stimulus Package DLC.'" He added that First Strike, which was eventually released on PSN and PC in March, "continues to outsell the Stimulus Pack by more than 20 percent."

But hey, let's give our old friend the Stimulus Pack a break -- after all, the poor thing had to suffer the full rage of the internet when it became the very first Call of Duty DLC priced at $15! First Strike had it easy.

Don't look so smug, Xbox Live users. You may be able to play games online and download things, but the latest Xbox Live status serves as a reminder that no online service is totally safe from malefactors.

"Users may receive potential phishing attempts via title specific messaging while playing Modern Warfare 2," Microsoft warns. This should be more annoying than harmful, considering that every Modern Warfare 2 player has already had to learn to ignore messages from strangers out of self-preservation. Just be extra vigilant about ignoring people right now, because they might be trying to finagle your password or other personal info.

Microsoft says it's "working to resolve the issue."

#phishyphishyphish What a week! First Sony has a little trouble with its online security, and now Microsoft is issuing warnings about people running "phishing" scams over Xbox Live. More »

#news British TV star Billy Murray - who many of you will recognise as the voice of Captain Price in the Modern Warfare series - has been arrested in the UK and charged with assault after allegedly attacking both his wife and daughter. More »

The legal battle between the Infinity Ward founders and Activision continues to roll on. A new cross complaint was filed late last week by Jason West and Vince Zampella, adding new allegations against the Call of Duty publisher...

#infinityward "Don't worry about it. It's impossible for you guys to get fired," Activision boss Bobby Kotick told Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella in 2008, according to a new cross-complaint filed today in a Los Angeles court. More »