Last week, the Xitter account for H2M - a mod aiming to recreate the heyday of classic Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer inside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered - announced that they had received a cease and desist from Activision Blizzard, and would shut down the project. The 2022 version of Modern Warfare 2 lacked the original’s multiplayer, and H2M was so highly-anticipated that Steam sales of the 2016 FPS balooned in the lead-up to the mod’s planned release date. It didn't hurt that Activision had it on sale, of course, but the timing lined up so well that some fans speculated the discount was a deliberate bait-and-switch on the publisher’s part to profit from excitement over a mod they were already planning to shut down.
In all, H2M was set to include remasters of every classic Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer map, campaign levels tweaked for multiplayer, and all the maps from Call Of Duty 4 - for a total of 54 maps. Basically, it was a lot of work, took a long time, and Activision waited until the very last minute to get all litigious about it. Now, H2M project lead and ‘founder’ Watchful Wolf has taken to YouTube to speculate on the reasons surrounding Activision’s decision, as spotted by Insider Gaming.
Watchful Wolf had this to say about the publisher’s motivation for sending the cease and desist. Essentially, because of the popularity H2M was gaining and how close it is to Black Ops 6, releasing and kind of the marketing and the beta stuff like that, they did not want H2M interfering with possible sales of Black Ops 6 If you were looking forward to H2M, there is somewhat of a silver lining to the story, however. Hours after the news of the cease and desist came out, the mod had leaked online through several Discord servers, again via Insider Gaming .
“Around 800 people were playing the Mod at the time of writing, with thousands believed to have downloaded it,” they write. There’s also currently a petition, with over 8000 signatures at the time of writing, named “Let H2M-Mod Live in peace.” From the petition: H2M is a passionate project that has revived interest in a game long considered dormant, actually helping Activision earn money from a title many thought was dead.
The proof? It's been in the top 5 on the Steam charts for almost a week since it was announced and gained attention. Instead of sending a cease and desist letter, Activision should thank the creators for dedicating countless hours to developing such an impressive mod for their game. Consider the hundreds of thousands of dollars Activision has likely made thanks to this mod.
They should follow Rockstar's example with FiveM—a multiplayer mod created by players for players—and partner with H2M instead of fighting it. This is what the community wants. Best of luck with that, lads - although its hard to disagree with the sentiment.
In other COD news, Activision are aiming to cut down the obscene install size for the next entry in the series..
