Activision cracks down on COD server clients; threatens classic COD games on pc and their future

XLabsProject

On May 17th, the sm2 project was sent an official Cease and Desist letter by Activision Publishing. The fan-made project worked to bring dedicated servers to play on classic COD's such as Black Ops 1, MW3, MW2, and many others on the pc. This specific client has seen it's share of popularity and support for the past two years of it's continued support and development. However, having been officially shut down, Activision has seen fit to not stop there. What has followed throughout the past few days and up until yesterday, the COD pc community has been in shambles.

On May 22nd, another prominent server client for MW2, COD Ghosts, AW, and very recently BO3, has been given yet another Cease and Desist letter by Activision. The official Twitter for X Labs has tweeted out they are complying with the demands, we have lost another heavy hitter in the COD pc community. It seems that people were really hurt with this specific takedown by Activision as there was a difference of the development of these two clients.

sm2

To my understanding, sm2 was completely free and used actual source code of the original COD tools and weapons. That means, for free, you could play MW2 on a BO1 map using MW3 guns, all for free. This is where people assumed Activision had a problem with the client. Legally, Activision is in there right to protect every aspect of their property to ensure their own financial stability. However, when it comes to the takedown of server and stability clients such as X Labs, people were outraged.

X Labs

When it comes to projects such as X Labs, the only thing it offers the player is a dedicated server. At the end of the day, you still need to purchase your own copy of whatever old COD game you wanted to play. Yes, it was encouraged within COD's own pc community to pirate copies of these old games, this was a given even if X Labs was not involved in it at all. People, to this day, will still pirate old COD games (instead of paying modern day, AAA prices for them) without these clients anyway. Those who did use the client were most likely COD veterans with their own copies of the game already. Another aspect people are unhappy with is that, X Labs wasn't free. You have to pay around $5 a month to participate in the project and get invited to the specific Discord server. Unlike sm2, X Labs project had a pay wall to even access their servers and clients.

It's also reasonable to assume that Plutonium would also be taken down in the near future. They have made a recent tweet regarding the concerns.

What does this mean?

While, this isn't apparently new for Activision, they've been engaging in scummy business practices for years. People should be more aware than ever. Activision is nothing more than a company looking to make a profit. They will do whatever it takes to make that profit. If COD never made them money, they would drive the entire series into the ground and we would never be able to play a future or past COD game again.

As FaZe Jev put it, "This is a time capsule into the past, to represent how gaming use to be and we are losing it." (It's time to say Goodbye)