There’s been a fair bit of discussion lately regarding the pros and cons of charging people to play the online content of a game. The main focus of these discussions always seems to fall on Activision, Bobby Kotick and the Call of Duty franchise – mainly due to various comments Kotick has made in the past.
Well, an interesting thread has started up over at 360 Junkies where a poster has claimed the following;
“I was trying to join a friend’s session on MW2 the other day and had this screen pop up. It clearly says at the top of this menu: “Modern Warfare 2 Membersh”, in which we can confidently assume that the last word is “Memberships”. If you’ll notice at the bottom is an option to “Add Microsoft Points”, clearly indicating that this was intended to be a menu for purchasing different levels of Membership, presumably memberships would have been offered in a variety of durations.”
By the sounds of it the guy has been met with a mixed reception so he has uploaded the following video to back up his claim;
Now I’ll be the first to admit, I’m certainly no Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 fan – but I’ve done a bit of digging to see if this ‘membership’ could just be something related to an in game item, but it doesn’t seem to be. Of course, this video could very well have been doctored so I’m wearing my big fat rumour hat until I’m told otherwise.
UPDATE: Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling has said the following via Twitter;
“Modern Warfare 2 subscription plan rumors going around. For the record, nobody has to pay to play COD or MW2 multiplayer, nor will they.”
The YouTube video is being called a glitch where the screen has gotton stuck between the Modern Warfare 2 screen and the Xbox Live renewal service.
Source: PwnShop at 360 Junkies
Severn2j
Seems pretty fake to me, but it probably is only a matter of time before someone does this, at which point Ill just stop playing online. Its not the most important factor for me anyway, (I even ditched XBL Gold because I didnt feel like I got my moneys worth from it), but I can see loads of people paying up. Just bear in mind, if nobody pays up, they’ll stop doing it. Although, we’ve all heard that before havent we..
Rocket_345
“if nobody pays up, they’ll stop doing it.”
That was said by several ps3 owners over the overpriced map packs in hope that the price would be reduced but that never happened as you said
haz360
I think it’s only a matter of time until this (or something similar) becomes a reality but this is clearly a fake.
Why would this subscription screen “pop-up” in front of a TRAILER for MW2? That’s all that’s playing in the background. A trailer. It doesn’t make sense…
ericzap
If I’m not mistaken, thats the opening titles, the thing seldom seen by the people clicking through the load screens.
haz360
Yeah exactly, why would it pop up before the game’s even started, let alone connected to the online mode? Just seems fake to me.
djhsecondnature
Whilst it ‘could’ be real, it would be very easy to fake. There’s no complex animations or overlays that need to be achieved and the text saying “There are no memberships available surely wouldn’t be stretched across the two halves of the menu like that.
gazzagb
Fairly sure this is fake, I seriously doubt that it would randomly pop up for the guy. Im not saying that we wont see a suscription based COD in the future, Im fairly sure that will happen, just not for MW2.
Foxhound_Solid
Funny how everyone says they wont pay if it happens.
Thing is, this isnt aimed at us, the hardcore industry followers, its aimed at the 12 year olds who whine at their parents for COD in every form. They are the one who WILL pay as they wont see it as a con but be advised by their children as to how good it will be and how all the other kids at school are playing it.
Trust, this will happen. The COD bubble is too big and cocky for it not to. Thanksfully Kz and R are my all time fave FPS’s with Kz sporting the FPS crown at a jounty angle for me.
WAW was good, really enjoyable, but the rest and the online is, well, RUN N GUN style gameplay which is boring to me.
If it does happen it will be interesting to see how it pans out, although im not interested, if games did start to do this I would wait to see what, why and when before I jumped ship….
xdarkmagician
First, this is completely believable. While it might seem unlikely, it’s possible, singles get mixed sometimes and just because only 1 person recorded it doesn’t mean that it has happened to other people who didn’t understand what they were looking at or didn’t care to record it.
Secondly, Does anybody else feel this could be an attempt at getting MW2 players to update to CoD BO? Think about it if activision announced a subscription for a new CoD game millions of people would buy another FPS game. So instead they announce that the new CoD has free MP but if you want to keep playing MW2 you’ll have to pay. I know alot of people who won’t pay for CoD online, but all of those people would by a new game if they had to choose between paying exta for continued online support or buying a new title that that shipped with a year of free online.