Infinity Ward has been surprisingly quiet since the storm of brown smelly stuff that arose when their community manager announced no mod or dedicated server support in Modern Warfare 2 on the weekend. Four days and one hundred thousand signatures on a petition later, and the heads of Infinity Ward have finally spoken about their controversial decision.
According to gameinformer.com, Jason West, (COO of Infinity Ward) believes this strategy will remove "all of the cheaters, the insular communities and huge skill level disparities that the original game's community fractured into." Mr West was quoted as saying "We're just prioritizing the player experience above the modders and the tuners. We thought maybe it would be cool if the fans could play the game."

Screw MW2, Ima goin' rock climbing

Piracy was speculated to be a major reason behind the move to an Infinity Ward-controlled ecosystem, but this has since been downplayed. Studio Head Vince Zampella claimed during the interview that "Steam stuff helps with the piracy. I don't know that the matchmaking stuff does." He then goes on to blame much of the recent outburst on those who profit from the existing client/server model, "It's a little dubious. Some of the people complaining are complaining with their pocketbook."

Both IW staff reportedly reiterated to gameinformer.com that these changes will mean very little to the casual to moderate fans, and even hardcore fans will still be able host private games for training and matches. They claim the loss of modding will only be noticed by a small proportion of the Modern Warfare 2 playerbase, while the benefits will be felt by the majority.

Based on these replies, it sounds that even if they were served with a petition incorporating half of the human population, Infinity Ward is sticking to its guns and will not backtrack to release a dedicated server or mod support. It's a very interesting situation for us at games.on.net, as we run dozens of Modern Warfare servers, at no charge to the Aussie gaming public. It's also very interesting for Australian gamers and those in countries with a smaller playerbase than the US or Europe. As we've seen time and time again with Xbox Live matchmaking, this kind of matchmaking generally doesn't work, instead trying to place Aussie gamers into overseas games. The result are laggy connections akin to playing on dial-up. We'll be testing the bejeezus out the game when it lands in Australia on the 10th of November, with a full PC multiplayer review heading to games.on.net soon. Until then, let the speculation and rumour commence!

For the full interview, head over to gameinformer.com.