Call of Duty fans slam Activision for shutting down community project that let them play older games without risk of getting hacked

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 — (Image credit: Activision)

Activision has reportedly been sending out multiple cease and desist letters to fan-made Call of Duty projects trying to help older games, and it's drawn the ire of the community.

As reported by ModernWarzone via the tweet below, the Call of Duty publisher has been handing out several notices for fan-made projects to immediately shut down over the last few weeks. The first of these came last week, as we reported at the time, which shut down SM2, known as a "dream" project for Call of Duty players that would've overhauled the original Modern Warfare 2 with updated features.

Activision is on a cease and desist RAMPAGE against community made Call of Duty projects and it's probably not over yet.Xlabs was the ONLY safe way to play older Call of Duty titles online such as MW2, Ghosts, Advanced Warfare and Black Ops 3 without putting yourself at risk. pic.twitter.com/DxwjNWzMGsMay 22, 2023

Now, though, fan developers XLabs has also been forced to stop working on its projects. The group basically put out custom clients for older Call of Duty games like Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops 2 Ghosts, and Advanced Warfare, which gave PC players a safe haven to play the older games without putting themselves at risk of any hackers taking advantage of old technology.

The video from ModernWarfare points out that despite Activision's best efforts, it's supposedly "impossible" to play these older Call of Duty games online now, as hackers could kick you from a game or reset your rank as easily as blinking. The XLabs project apparently protected against this, but now all custom clients have been removed.

Call of Duty fans obviously aren't happy with this, and it's easy to see why. Despite Activision being in its legal rights to shut down projects working on existing IP, fans still aren't pleased. "What a disgusting company," one Twitter user writes, with another chiming in with ", At this rate, Activision is gonna make their entire CoD community turn on them."

It's highly likely Activision's cease-and-desist demands won't end here either, as the company is also within its legal rights to target other fan-made projects.

Activision still insists Call of Duty 2023 will be a full premium release, after a report last year claimed the annual franchise would skip a new entry this year.

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.