PC Gamer’s around the world are calling for a boycott of Activision’s game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. So what’s all the fuss? Activision has removed dedicated servers for Call of Duty, which is one of the primary features that has kept the game going strong for so long. The removal of dedicated servers means no custom maps, mods, leagues, etc. It is the death of Call of Duty for the PC. In addition to the removal of dedicated servers, Activison is raising prices on their games. A petition has been posted and at the time of this writing has 198,000 signatures from PC gamers, which can be found here.

Activision has responded to the petition and angry PC gamers by claiming that PC gaming has been dead for a long time. I personally found this response to be salt in an open wound from a company that has forgotten who put food on their table all this time. While it is true that PC gaming is not what it once was, it is my opinion that it is not the fault of the PC gaming community, but rather the developers who prefer to release games on console platforms, forgetting the PC gamers.

Performing a google search regarding the boycott reveals 184,000 links to site talking about it. So what’s next? Personally, I am hoping that Activision and Infinity Ward listen to the PC gamers and at the very least provide us the option of running a dedicated server that works as it always has, but perhaps provides support for those using the new server method to play together without bounds.  This will keep everyone happy and allow the best of both worlds. And speaking from a coding point of view, it wouldn’t take that much effort to create the dedicated server software.