Modern Warfare 2 subscription message dismissed as 'just a glitch'

by Griffin McElroy on Jul 20th 2010 1:00PM

The oft-surfacing rumor of Activision's intent to incorporate a pay-to-play plan for the multiplayer portions of its Call of Duty franchise sprung up once again yesterday, when a player reportedly captured video of a hidden Marketplace item titled "Modern Warfare 2 Membership." The buzz was quickly quieted by a Tweet from Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling, who stated, "nobody has to pay to play COD or MW2 multiplayer, nor will they."

A more thorough report on the subject of Modern Warfare subscriptions came from Activision's Dan Amrich, who explained, "This video shows just a glitch," further explaining, "since you can access a Live subscription renewal from within the MW2 game interface, it appears some data got jammed between two parts of Live." See, we always said some poor menu would fall into those cracks on the surface of Xbox Live Marketplace. Now we've gotta get it out. Denny! Denny, fire up the backhoe.

Source: OneofSwords

Tags: call-of-duty, call-of-duty-black-ops, infinity-ward, microsoft, Modern-Warfare-2, pc, playstation, ps3, treyarch, xbox

Reader Comments (70)

FFffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

@Ashkental will i hell be paying for this, i already pay to play games online....ITS CALLED LIVE GOLD MEMBERSHIP! and CoD is one of the games on 360 thats more expensive, and never goes down in price....

@Aizei I'm sure Activision will pretend to care once your Xbox Live payments actually contribute to their revenue stream.

@Aizei No way will i pay on top of XBOX Live. This is why MMO's won't ever truly take off on XBOX unless they are FREE!

@Raizak - An MMO includes constantly evolving content, most of it free for subscribers. I could see someone paying for that on top of Xbox Live Gold. For a COD subscription to work, it damn well better have the same type of constantly evolving multiplayer as an MMO.

I echo your sentiment though; I'm not paying for every single game I want to play online. It's not happening. I will quit online multiplayer gaming on the consoles first, especially since you'd be paying for peer-to-peer connections instead of dedicated servers (meaning Activision wouldn't have any bandwidth costs to cover)

@Ashkental

"nobody has to pay to play COD or MW2 multiplayer, nor will they."

hmmm... seems to be missing the word "ever" at the end of that sentence...

@Ashkental
TFTWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO is the answer

"Glitch" my ass. This is Activision guys.

@ThatStuffsLethal Is there a group of turtles avatars on here now!?! Time to get the old team back together!

@ThatStuffsLethal Activision did not glitch your ass. Sometimes mistakes happen, and this one was caught on tape, and then people thought it meant something that it did not. What can you do?

Uh-huh, sure, just a glitch *rolls eyes*

Doesnt xbox live only use the word "subscription". These guys think we are idiots?? So sad to see IW get so arrogant..

Complete bullshit.

They're probably testing the public reaction to a subscription based Modern Warfare.

@Johnny Locke
^This

@Johnny Locke

Activision has no need to test public reaction/opinion. Positive or negative, they still don't give a rat's ass about it.

I had already dismissed it as a fake.

Activision's statement has made the whole thing much more plausible.

Also - they said that nobody needs to "pay to play" CoD games. They haven't denied any kind of optional "Plus" subscription.

@Cube
No one needs to pay... to play single-player. This is Kotick's company. For all I care, that clown would sell his children to the devil.

Bobby Kotick Is Behind This !

thank god they didn't put a photo up of that this holding a Guitar causing more people to punch their monitors

@HardBoiled2009 i mean a photo of that " THING "

Well looks like after the next COD to come out there will probably be a subscription coming to the series.

i call bull shit on robert bowling's statement they will start charging as soon as black ops comes out (or within the first 6 weeks of its release)

They said nothing about future games.

No, Denny, do NOT fire up the backhoe, you son of a bitch. That's how precious fiber gets cut.

YEAH!!!! this means the END of COD MW2 LOLOLOLOL
im glad theyre screwing their loyal customers. honestly 15 bucks for three maps is insane.
at least when i get screw over i get Free "Maps packs" even though there on the disc.
but honestly i like the game i just think theyre fooling themselves thinking they can get away with this.

Right. And if you believe this you are stupid.

"Hey guys, we're thinking about making a Call of Duty franchise subscription-only"

"Oh, that's subscription message that popped up? Totally a bug, nothing to worry about."

Yeah, just like the 25$ sparklepony was just a glitch
or the 15$ for 3 maps, was a glitch
or kicking Schafer out was a glitch
or suing them for a glitch
or losing that case was a patch

yeah, totally a glitch

I see what you did there....

Note how Mr. Bowling said COD or MW2, meaning the existing games do not require it. He did not say anything (and therefore deny) the possibility of the new Black Ops game requiring one.

I paid my COD subscription fee already.

It was back in on the 10th of November, when I bought it

"things got crossed so it made a glitch"?!?! That's like saying water boils and freezes at certain degrees because of magic! Code like that doesn't "cross"

Activision would pimp their mothers for cash, billion dollar game so popular people pay $15 for maps... Twice, subscription fee is the next logical step for moneymongers

I dont believe it. Kotic loves money and like this he gets it.

Hmm.

Seems like a reasonable explanation to me.

Glad he cleared it up.

Dan Amrich....what a tool. Sort of thing he would whine about during the OXM days or he would just bludgeon us with some more crappy cover band music. LOL. As for the main problem of charging for it, OF COURSE they will! BUNGIE has a premium service for HALO 3 so Activision and Kotick will do the same. Hopefully this will happen and the backlash will be severe enough to make kotick look like the asshole he is.

My ass

I really hope Activision does this. It'll be the nail in their coffin.

Its going to end up like something EA does/wants to do. There will be an online code in the box when you buy it new but when you buy it used you'll have to pay 10 bucks errrrr 15 bucks to buy an online code. You know its coming

Looks like another day that I'm going to avoid gaming sites / message boards since this is all anyone will be complaining about.

Look at the upside, they will totally destroy their franchise before the next two iterations are out the door allowing a larger share of the market to come over to the ex-IW guys.

It all seems pretty predictable to me.

Activision puts out a new game with subscription model as a plus built into it, ex-IW guys put out a game without it. Enough people buy their game so in 2015 some time when MW 4 is coming out, no one even remembers these conversations beyond "Activision sure blew it huh"

Gotta love UK consumer law. Just return the product if Activision do this :)

I sure they'll do what EA is doing with sports games.
If you buy it new, free online play. If you buy used, pay 10 bucks.

A GLITCH?!

This is from the same company who charged $15 for 3 new maps, charged an additional $10 for the PC version of the game which had no dedicated servers, and made a glichy and broken game which they decided to release before they fixed the problems.

This is from the same company that would charge more than $60 a game if they could, milk the hell out of their best franchises, and treat their employees unfairly.

It's not a glitch, this is Activision.

Yeah, it's just a glitch people.
Like the Javelin glitch.
Like the Care Package glitch.
Like the Wall glitch.
Like the Jesus Rock glitch.

@GordoJones88 Hold up, I know the first four things you said but what is Jesus Rock?

They already basically charge a subscription. They're releasing a new COD game every year, and each subsequent release is going to see swarms of people hopping over to the new, slightly altered re-hash of the game until the old game is dead.

Why do you think the PC version of MW2 didn't have dedicated servers? If it did, people would play it forever. Counter-Strike is over a decade old and still has hundreds of thousands playing it.

Activision just wants to enjoy the same extremely short lifestyle of online console games across the board so they can dish you up another re-hash in a year's time for another $60.

@noyesa *lifecycle

So you mean to tell me they can go dig out menus from market place and their game, but they can't do any fixes?

Bullshit!

*waits for press release*
headline -
Activision changes name to Glitchovision.

A glitch? It says Modern Warfare 2 Membership right up there. I highly doubt
a "Glitch" could've created that title for the pop-up menu.

This is certainly coming at some point in the future to a Call of Duty/Modern Warfare game. I think Activision has thrown out enough hints about their desire to do so. I don't know the number today, but in December 2008, 11.5 million people were paying $14.95 a month to play World of Warcraft. There's no reason millions won't pay to play COD.

With that in mind, accept it or move on. Stop your bitching and your boycotting threats. It certainly didn't affect the map pack sales.

I love the series and as much as it would suck to pay to play, count me in. I can also assure you that a pay to play version will be an ever changing experience, like that of WoW. Don't just assume you're going to have the same ol' gameplay.

@Wickerman22 why would they change the gameplay? theres nothing wrong with that, its everything else that needs changing. you are why activision is gonna think its ok to charge for online play if they start a subscription. they know that there are a lot of people that do nothing but play this game and would do anything just to play.

@FalconLunch

I don't mean the "gameplay" as we know it, I'm referring to ever changing things like new maps, weapons, vehicles, etc. for monthly subscriptions. There's no way we'd have the game, just as we play it today, but requiring a monthly fee. There needs to be value there.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Modern Warfare 2 subscription message dismissed as 'just a glitch'

Reader Comments (70)

Posted: Jul 20th 2010 1:02PM Ashkental said

Posted: Jul 20th 2010 1:12PM Aizei said

Posted: Jul 20th 2010 1:39PM noyesa said

Posted: Jul 20th 2010 1:39PM Raizak said

Posted: Jul 20th 2010 1:53PM BananaBoat said

Posted: Jul 20th 2010 1:57PM Morisato13 said

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