In one of the most egregiously baffling and anti-gamer moves I’ve ever witnessed in my years of covering video games, Activision has pulled the rug out from under the entire PC Call Of Duty community by issuing a Cease and Desist order to the creators of the highly anticipated H2M Modern Warfare Remastered mod.
The order to shut down the mod—which required a purchase of the base game to play and was itself an entirely free passion project—came just one day before it was set to launch on Steam. In the days leading up to launch, news of the groundbreaking mod boosted Steam Modern Warfare Remastered sales through the roof, where it quickly became one of the platform’s top-selling games years after its original release.
The new mod added multiplayer content from Modern Warfare 2 to Modern Warfare Remastered’s multiplayer mode. When Activision released Modern Warfare 2 Remastered it was only the campaign, and the company has never released a multiplayer mode to go along with it, instead releasing Modern Warfare 2 maps with 2023’s Modern Warfare III (yes, it gets confusing). This mod would have brought these maps and more to the original Modern Warfare along with the older gameplay mechanics and original arsenal of weapons.
The mod would have gone far beyond what Activision itself has offered for remasters or its new releases, including:
- Over 50 maps!
- New camos
- New Killstreaks
- New attachments
- AND MORE
Now, the project is dead.
“Today, our team members received a Cease & Desist order on behalf of Activision Publishing in relation to the H2M-Mod project,” the modding group tweeted on Thursday. “We are complying with this order and shutting down all operations immediately and permanently.”
The news has been met with outrage and disbelief from the Call Of Duty community, including major organizations within the competitive scene like the FaZe Clan. “We are begging that you guys reconsider this decision @Activision,” FaZe’s Twitter account posted. “To be clear we have zero involvement in this project outside of being massive fans. We were excited to produce an ILLCAMS on the HS mod. Their team made it a requirement to purchase the original MW2 Remastered [Note: it is actually MW Remastered] published by YOU GUYS. An excellent asset to onboard users/ players to your product. This is harmless fun and community building. Something we feel Call of Duty desperately needs. Please do the right thing and let the kids play their game.”
Gamers are—shockingly—not happy about this, especially since Activision had Modern Warfare Remastered on sale in the days leading up to the mod’s release, encouraging even more sales of the game prior to suddenly shutting down the H2M mod. Reviews of the once-lauded remaster are now Overwhelmingly Negative on Steam, with many gamers requesting refunds after this news. It appears Steam is honoring refunds beyond the normal refund policy if you mention that you purchased it for the mod. This is clearly bad business for everyone involved. Steam and Activision/Microsoft will lose money, and Activision will lose all the goodwill and hype that this generated. It reminds me of Sony’s bizarre decision to remove Helldivers 2 from dozens of regions by requiring a PlayStation account to continue playing, only worse.
The mod’s volunteer developers who earned nothing from the creation of the project are also unhappy. “Over a year of work from a dedicated group of people working for FREE to relive a fan favorite Call of Duty,” one dev said. “Not a penny earned despite generating THOUSANDS OF SALES FOR ACTIVISION, all to get shut down AFTER PEOPLE SPENT THEIR MONEY. I’m sorry everyone.”
This is bad timing for Activision, with its Call Of Duty Next scheduled at the end of the month as well as a big Black Ops 6 beta. That game comes out on October 25th.
I find this whole incident incredibly frustrating as a huge Call Of Duty fan and almost daily player. I owned Modern Warfare Remastered on PlayStation, but in anticipation of this mod had purchased it on Steam as well. I’m debating requesting a refund because at this point I think Activision should lose every single one of its recent sales of the game, but I may play a couple hours of the multiplayer first. What a terribly disappointing decision on the company’s part.
I understand that copyrights need to be protected, and that some assets from other Call Of Duty games were used in this mod, but given that it required a purchase of the base game and was entirely free-to-play, the decision seems very obtuse and misguided and while I hope Activision reverses course, I don’t know that it will do much to repair the huge PR hit they’ve taken over this blunder. If nothing else, Activision and Microsoft should just hire these guys and release this as an official mod.
I’ve reached out to Activision for comment but have not heard back at this time. I will update this post if I do or if any other major developments take place. For now, I’m right there with the rest of the Call Of Duty community in condemning this horrible decision by Activision and its parent company Microsoft.
YouTuber TheXclusiveAce has a good video on this controversy that shows off some of the really cool gameplay that we will now never get to play:
Activision has taken probably the best moment in Call Of Duty’s recent history, with the most hype and positive press I’ve seen in years (almost all of which was organic rather than due to any sort of marketing) poured gasoline all over it and lit the match. What a shame.
