As Activision suddenly kills a long-awaited Call of Duty mod, Infinity Ward veteran encourages the publisher to "build systems to help your UGC community, not strangle it"

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The H2M-Mod team had to cease all operations hours before launch

A former Call of Duty veteran has come out in defence of supporting modders, right as publisher Activision made the hugely controversial decision to shut down a major mod hours before its release. 

After years in development, the H2M-Mod project was set to bring boatloads of content from Modern Warfare 2 (2009) over to Modern Warfare Remastered (2017) today, August 16. Massive hype for the mod propelled the seven-year-old shooter back up sales charts over the last few days, but that didn't stop Activision from sending a Cease & Desist order the night before launch day. 

The modding team announced it was "complying with this order and shutting down all operations immediately and permanently" just last night.

"A lot of the original Infinity Ward team consisted of devs who used to be modders," former Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling tweets. "The original Call of Duty PC games released mod tools and server files to empower community creations to expand on the original vision," he explains, before encouraging companies to "Build systems to help your [user-generated content] community, not strangle it."

The Call of Duty player base hasn't been this unified in years, and Bowling is far from the only high-profile figure to decry the sudden shutdown. 

Alongside countless big CoD-focused content creators, FaZe Clan CEO Richard 'Banks' Bengston also joined in on the esports group's official social media account: "We are begging that you guys reconsider this decision, Activision... Their team made it a requirement to purchase the original 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."

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered is now being review bombed on Steam, with its recent rating falling to 'Overwhelmingly Negative,' as droves of players claim they only purchased the shooter to play the now-scrapped mod. 

Other Call of Duty mods release unscathed, so what exactly made H2M a target? Activision hasn't publicly made a statement about the shutdown but refreshed Modern Warfare 2 maps were used as a major selling point of last year's Modern Warfare 3, prompting speculation that the publisher was worried about increased competition for its latest money-printer.

Elsewhere, Activision is tackling out-of-control Call of Duty download sizes, but of course the path to “smaller downloads” starts with “a big one”.

Kaan Serin
Freelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.