By now, most of if not all of you have heard of the Infinity Ward lack of dedicated servers in MW2 clusterfuck. Yes, that was a long ass sentence.

Anyway, this issue has actually got me to start writing a bit; though I'm not exactly going to win awards for "Most Free Time" nowadays. Getting a new job, (finally!) will do that to you. Anyway, IW's argument against dedicated server support is something along the lines of, and I'm paraphrasing heavily here: "Well, sever hosting is a bit too hard for some gamers...so we're going to make it easier and go for a console-style system for online play." Translation: "We can screw you out of more money by charging for content like new maps and modified gameplay that the community would make for free." That's pretty much what this boils down to when you burn the all of the corporate BS off the heap.

As a long time PC gamer, and someone who dabbles in FPSes; this is dirty, and low. The PC gaming model for multiplayer FPS has always been about user created maps and gameplay elements created by the community, seeking nothing for their work. While I wish I could explain this away, I can't. This isn't Valve-style corporate trolling, it's Activision style "let's screw the customer for everything they're worth"; a disturbing sales model called "Let's feed them bullshit and call it gourmet" Gamers live in a climate of what borders on corporate brainwashing, where we are taught that paying more for something somehow makes it of a higher quailty, that paying for downloadable content is somehow okay when mod-makers and mappers have been doing it for free ever since the first modded content.

Personally, I think onlime multiplayer has gone downhill since voice chat became standard, but maybe that's just me. But the next time I hear a 10 year old talk about how he's "fucking my mother"; I know I have someone to thank.

Thanks IW for lowing the bar just that much lower.