Prepare to be frozen in place once more.Screenshot: Blizzard
Overwatch 2’s various reworks and balance changes have fundamentally altered several characters from their original forms, and that shift means a lot of mechanics that were once key to the original game no longer exist in the sequel. This came as part of a larger change in the game to remove or alter crowd control abilities like Cassidy’s Flashbang and Brigitte’s Shield Bash which make the game altogether faster and more frantic.
The changes include removing Mei’s original ability to freeze her enemies in place with her primary fire (though her ultimate still has the freezing effect for those caught in it), which has been replaced by a slowdown effect. If you were feeling nostalgic for one of the most frustrating mechanics Overwatch had back in the day, Blizzard has put out a new mode for its returning Winter Wonderland holiday event that entirely centers around stopping players in their tracks. If you miss that part of her kit as a Mei main, I get it. If you miss it as someone who was once on the receiving end of her endothermic blaster, I have to ask, “who hurt you?”
Freezethaw Elimination is part of Overwatch 2’s 2022 Winter Wonderland event, which is running up until January 4. The arcade mode is what Blizzard describes as the hero shooter’s version of freeze tag, where your team’s goal is to freeze all your enemies by eliminating them, then they’re left to helplessly watch from their icy prison until thawed by a teammate. The new mode launches alongside returning Winter Wonderland modes Mei’s Snowball Offensive and Mei’s Yeti Hunt, and it really brings home that Mei and her icy disposition will, by default, always be the star of Overwatch’s annual winter event. Unless she gets removed from the game, again.
D.Va’s holiday cosmetics will be available through Twitch drops.Screenshot: Blizzard
As with all Overwatch events, the 2022 Winter Wonderland event includes themed cosmetics, such as a new Ice Queen skin for Brigitte and an Ice Angel skin for Echo alongside the smaller stuff like weapon charms and sprays. Some of these, including the Brigitte skin, are unlockable through playing Winter Wonderland modes and completing event challenges.
All of this is happening as a prelude for some holiday-themed D.Va cosmetics that will be unlockable by watching Overwatch 2 Twitch streams from December 25 to January 4. This includes a Festive victory pose, which has D.Va’s mech adorned with Christmas lights, and the Sleighing skin, which has both the hero and her mech dressed up for the holidays. Hopefully these Twitch drops don’t fall prey to the same troubles previous events have had, as some players were reporting not having unlocked promised in-game cosmetics after watching Overwatch League streams last month.
Overwatch 2 is in the midst of its second season, which added Ramattra, a new tank hero who’s the leader of Null Sector, one of the antagonistic forces in the game’s upcoming PvE mode set to launch next year. Ramattra is the second unlockable new hero in Overwatch 2 after Kiriko at launch, who was made part of the battle pass, much to the chagrin of long-time players who got heroes for free in the first game. After this pushback, Blizzard made Ramattra slightly easier to unlock on the free battle pass. Still not much happening regarding feedback on its monetization and battle pass grind, though.
Popular free-to-play mobile game Brawl Stars is doing something a bit different. In an era where it seems every game is trying to nickel and dime you with more and more stuff to buy, instead it’s removing loot boxes and all random rewards entirely from the game. It’s yet another sign that loot boxes are likely to become a relic of the past as lawmakers and players push back on the random rewards. But that doesn’t mean Brawl Stars players are universally happy about their removal.
Released in 2019 for phones and tablets, Brawl Stars mixed cute characters with MOBA-like gameplay and some battle royale elements. The end result was a fun top-down competitive action game that I played for weeks and weeks. But since I stopped playing, millions have continued to enjoy it: Brawl Stars has made over a billion dollars in profit for Supercell and still has an active player base and community. Now, Supercell has removed all loot boxes from the game, and reaction to the change is oddly mixed.
Announced in a Brawl Talk video posted last week, Supercell’s latest update to Brawl Stars has removed all random rewards from the game. These boxes were mainly used to unlock new characters in the game. Since its release three years ago, Brawl Stars has heavily featured loot boxes as part of its rewards. But with yesterday’s update, that’s no longer the case.
Supercell / Brawl Stars
“No more probabilities, no more random rewards, and no more playing the guessing game when you unlock Brawlers,” said the game’s lead designer Frank Keienburg in Supercell’s Brawl Talk video.
Yesterday, as part of this update, all unclaimed boxes were automatically opened and all the rewards were given to players accordingly. Moving forward, Keienburg and Supercell say that all rewards—including its battle passes—will be replaced with “different, deterministic rewards, some of which are new to the game.” Now, players have a new battle pass-like feature, The Starr Road, which lets them unlock all characters for free via grinding. Players can now just buy any brawler they want with gems, instead of randomly buying dozens of loot boxes to maybe get a specific hero.
“We’re making this change for a few reasons,” continued Keienburg. “Mainly, moving away from probabilities and chance, which will make things more fair and predictable for you. It also gives you clear and exciting goals every time you play the game.”
Of course, there’s also the possibility that Supercell and other devs are removing loot boxes as various governments around the world begin cracking down on them with proposed new laws and regulations.
While I think removing loot boxes is a good thing and something worth celebrating—especially as mobile games continue to be some of the worst offenders with even good games like Marvel Snap including predatory purchases of over $100 or more—the community reaction is far less positive. While some players seem happy about the removal of random reward crates, others expressed disappointment. The comments on the Brawl Talk video has players rallying against the devs and demanding boxes return to Brawl Stars.
Why? For some it seems that the excitement of a loot box outweighed the frustration that often accompanies them. Others suggested they now have little interest in playing the game since random rewards are being removed. (I think some of these people need to stop and think if they really like Brawl Stars or just like pulling a virtual lever on a slot machine…) We saw something similar to this happen with Overwatch 2’s release, where some players were angry at the removal of loot boxes and demanded they be returned to the game. And while I agree that progression in Overwatch 2 sucks at the moment, I’d rather Blizzard figure out a way to fix that doesn’t involve bringing back loot boxes, even if it did give you a lot of free ones before.
The reality is that as games continue to become more and more popular, more countries will begin investigating the industry and how it makes money. And loot boxes are likely never to return in vogue as long as so many governments are leading crusades to regulate or outlaw them.
In Halo, “the sandbox” often refers to the weapons and vehicles on a map at any given time: all the toys you have to play with. But for a whole other set of Halo fans, that sandbox is the game itself. Be it through Forge or ambitious modding projects like SPV3, playing with the very core of the game itself is part of the legacy of the franchise. Now, Microsoft has made that even easier after publishing a thorough collection of modding resources for Halo: The Master Chief Collection. And as a surprise, some of these resources contain some never-before-seen images from Halo 2’s development way back in the early 2000s.
Today, Microsoft released official documentation for Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s mod tools, specifically Halo 2 and Halo 3 (other entries in the series are expected to receive documentation at a later date). As spotted by Halo modder Kiera on Twitter, some of the documentation for Halo 2 contains material directly from Bungie circa the early 2000s. With it are a few development images that few have seen until now.
Screenshot: Microsoft / Kotaku
What’s cool about these images is that they show off the inner workings of Halo 2’s engine. One of these images illustrates the “screenshot_cubemap” command. I’m not going to entirely pretend to know what this does, but based on the documentation, it’s for use in generating reflective surfaces, like we see in the old documentation photo provided.
Image: Microsoft / Kotaku
Another neat pair of images shows off debugging information, listing data for when a model is using specific weapons or playing out various animations.
Screenshot: Microsoft / Kotaku
Screenshot: Microsoft / Kotaku
Like many behind-the-scenes shots, these are hardly glamorous. But they are cool nonetheless. The development of Halo 2 is a tale of high ambition at the cost of abusive crunch, much of which has been talked about openly. Various materials from the game’s development have been seen before, while others remain out of reach, like the legendary 2003 E3 demo (which 343 has recently pondered finally making playable). Today, a little more has seen the light of day.
One of the most contentious things about Overwatch 2 has been the beloved hero shooter’s shift from paid game to free-to-play download supported by grindy battle passes. Blizzard now says it wants to address those concerns moving forward, ironing out the game’s progression in future seasons so that players feel “more rewarded just for sitting down and playing.”
“For Season 3 and beyond, we’re looking at a mix of Battle Pass changes, more interesting Challenges to pursue, and more exciting play-focused progression systems for you all to dig into. We’ll be able to talk about some of these changes soon, but other changes may take more time to lock-in,” recently hired executive producer, Jared Neuss, wrote in a new update.
In the meantime, Season 2, which starts on December 6 and adds Ramattra, will see each new dedicated event introduce its own unique skin that can be unlocked just by playing. Twitch drops, which give players access to new cosmetics by watching their favorite Overwatch 2 streamers, will continue as well. I don’t think this will satisfy the game’s most vocal critics immediately, but it’s at least an acknowledgement that the status quo isn’t sustainable.
Read More: 7 Tips For Overwatch 2 Beginners Determined To Win
Since the game launched, players have been frustrated by new heroes being locked behind the paid battle pass, the length of time it takes to rank it up, and the high prices of all the skins. The current state of affairs has even had some players pining for the loot boxes from the first game. And all of this has only been compounded by broken characters, delayed patches, and random bugs like a recent glitch that kept some players unable to progress in ranked play.
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For now, Blizzard is working on awarding support players more XP to incentivize them to pick that role and help alleviate queue times. Overwatch 2 is also currently handing out Sojourn, Junker Queen, and Kiriko highlight intros for those who log in during certain time periods over the next week. Blizzard has even turned on crossplay aim assist for console players in all modes except competitive because the alternative was a “bad experience.”
“Players who’ve stuck with us, players who’ve returned, and players who are just now jumping in the fun—thank you for playing Overwatch 2,” Neuss wrote today. “We have an incredible community, and I hope that by opening up about what we’re thinking more, we can keep growing together.”
An urgent update for Overwatch 2 was supposed to have gone live this afternoon, but was delayed at the 11th hour when Blizzard discovered a “critical issue”.
Posting on the game’s official forums, a community rep says:
Today’s patch is delayed as we work to resolve a critical issue. We’ll provide an update here and set the patch live as soon as the problem is addressed.
This includes the upcoming balance changes, bug fixes, including those that affect Mei, and core content updates we have planned for this patch. This delay also impacts the delivery of Overwatch League Viewership Incentives & Perks from the Postseason matches during the period between Oct 30 – Nov 4, along with the rotation of cosmetics in the Overwatch League shop.
Daily and weekly challenges will reset today, as well as the standard shop refresh.
Thanks for your understanding, we’ll be working on releasing this patch as soon as possible. Follow our forums and socials at @PlayOverwatch for updates.
While the “core content updates” and Overwatch League stuff are notable, the patch delay is most pressing for Mei fans, who have been unable to play as the character (but not pay $10 for skins) after she was removed from rotation late last month, saying at the time:
We are temporarily disabling Mei to address a bug with her Ice Wall ability that allows heroes to reach unintended locations. We are working to address these issues as quickly as possible and aim to bring Mei back in our next upcoming patch which is set for November 15.
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The bad news is that this patch’s delay means she’s still MIA. The good news is that Blizzard is now “planning to release this mid-season patch on Thursday, November 17 at 11 AM PST”, and would like to say “thank you to our players for your patience as we addressed this issue.”
If you’ve an appetite for destruction, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is happy to provide a near-infinite supply of guns which you can customize to an absurdly delightful degree. Seriously, this is almost as fun as sorting my nail polish colors.
But it’s not about making all the other soldier guys, gals, and non-binary pals envious of your brutal styles; there are a ton of stats you’ll want to wrap your head around too. For every attachment you slap on a gun, there are clear pros and cons. And once you hit max level with any given firearm, you unlock weapon tuning, allowing you to tweak how guns feel and perform even further.
Read More:Fans Won’t Stop Comparing Modern Warfare II to Modern Warfare 2 (They’re Totally Different Games
Modern Warfare II gives you a lot of room for freedom, style, and min/maxing, so while time will tell what the god-tier meta ends up being, don’t be afraid to jump in and experiment with a setup that helps you climb the scoreboard while looking cool and fitting your style of play.
This guide solely focuses on firearms you point and shoot, meaning your primary and secondary weapons. Let’s dig in.
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Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II Guns 101
As soon as you load into the game you’ll see a set of tabs at the top: Play, Weapons, Operators, Battle Pass, and Store.
Selecting Weapons will take you to where you can sort your Loadouts, Killstreaks, and Vehicle Customization. In Loadouts, you’ll notice you can have up to 10 custom configurations, so don’t worry about needing to commit to a narrow selection. A loadout is made up of six items: You’ve a choice of a Primary and Secondary weapon, as well as your Tactical and Lethal Equipment, your Perks, and a Field Upgrade.
Your loadout is laid out in a horizontal bar on the “Edit Loadouts” screen. Selecting a specific loadout will let you configure each of the six types. Some of your available weapons are dictated by what Perks you have active for that loadout. Primary weapons have the following types:
Primary Weapon Types
Assault Rifles
Battle Rifles
SMGs
Shotguns
LMGs
Marksman Rifles
Sniper Rifles
Melee
There are only three types of Secondary weapons.
Secondary Weapon Types
Weapons further break down into Platforms, which lay out much like a skill tree in an RPG, indicating attachments you can unlock for any given weapon. When looking at a weapon in either the loadout or weapon menu screen, you can view the Platform progression by pressing V on keyboard (touchpad on PlayStation, view button on Xbox).
The M4 Platform, for example, is a family of weapons that consists of the M4 assault rifle, 556 Icarus LMG, FTAC Recon battle rifle, M16 assault rifle, and the FSS Hurricane SMG.
Read More: Modern Warfare 2 Has A Great Weapon XP Farm, If You Can Pull It Off
You level up each gun by getting out there and scoring kills. Some guns from a specific Platform are locked behind a weapon level. For example, to get the Bryson 890 shotgun, you need to build your Bryson 800 to level 16. You can also level up each individual weapon for even more attachment customization.
Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Customizing weapons and attachments with the Gunsmith
When viewing a specific loadout in the menus some guns will have a “Gunsmith” option. Here you can change up how your gun is built.
In Gunsmith’s “Build Weapon” tab you can install numerous different “Modifications” to the weapon’s optics, muzzles, magazines, stocks, and ammunition types. You can select up to five modifications at any time and can also swap out the gun’s receiver—essentially its core that everything else attaches to—for others in the weapon’s Platform family. (Note that not all weapon modifications within the same platform are intercompatible.)
After making Gunsmith changes, you can jump directly into the Firing Range to test out the look and feel of the new modifications. It loads in pretty quick too, so while you can’t directly A/B compare certain mods, you can still get a nice feel for each selection without spending forever trapped behind a loading screen.
Each modification affects stats in unique ways, and there are specific pros and cons to each. The 419MM EXF Barrel, for example, will boost your Damage Range, Hip Fire Accuracy, and Bullet Velocity (Pros), but at the cost of Aim Down Sight Speed and Hip Recoil Control (Cons).
The second tab in the Gunsmith interface is “Customize.” This is where you can apply different weapon charms, skins, stickers, and more such things. Each camo skin will have different requirements, but it’s very similar to unlocking attachments: Just earn weapon XP by scoring kills and completing specific challenges noted under each camo skin. There are also Weapon Mastery challenges for you to complete once you’ve unlocked Gold, Platinum, Polyatomic, and Orion skins.
The higher you level up a specific weapon, the more attachments you’ll gain access to. Once you hit max level with a specific weapon, you can start tuning those attachments to take even greater control over its performance.
Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Weapon tuning in Modern Warfare II
Weapon tuning lets you further tweak the pros and cons of each attachment. Remember, you need to hit level 20 with a specific weapon in order to tune the modifications.
You can’t tune every attachment, but ones you can will offer two sets of sliders that let you go all in on a weapon’s strengths, or walk back the cons a bit. Keep in mind that these are all fine-tuning adjustments. If you want to max out your Aim Down Sights Speed, for example, you’re better off going with modifications that prioritize that as opposed to trying to make up for slower ADS speeds via Weapon Tuning. That said, the high TTK rate of Modern Warfare II means that even the finest adjustments can make a difference in the heat of the moment.
The image on the right side uses weapon tuning to compensate for a slower aim-down-sights speed.Gif: Activision / Kotaku
Weapon tuning is really best taken advantage of once you’ve gotten a good sense of the guns and modifications you like. This stage of weapon customization is more an art than a science, so expect to take your time figuring out what works best for you.
Weapon leveling in Modern Warfare II
Maxing out your weapons is one of the game’s major goals, and you’ll make the most progress on guns you actively use. Keeping a gun holstered or slung over your shoulder won’t cut it; to level up a gun you need to be out there using it to put lead into your enemies.
With so many weapon choices, it’s not a bad idea to stick to a couple of guns, two or three at most, when starting out. Playing with the Overkill Perk equipped (available with the Assault preset package) is a good way to see how it feels to wield two primary guns at once.
Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Don’t forget to take advantage of Weapon XP boosts as well. You can select these in the multiplayer matchmaking screen. Be careful though, as your XP boosts count down in real-time outside of matches. That in mind, it’s best to save XP boosts for use in playlists which aren’t as heavy in wait times.
Quick Play and Ground War typically have quicker queues. However, keep in mind that the 32v32 modes such as Ground War might have you engaging in gunfights less frequently as you’ll often spend time moving between objectives. On the other hand, that can be a good opportunity to level up a sniper or marksman rifle as you’ll have more distance to work with. If you’re looking to level up close-range weapons like shotguns, smaller 6v6 games might be your best bet, but your mileage may vary.
One thing I like to do is set aside a loadout specifically for weapon leveling. Label it “Leveling” and just use that to swap in whatever guns you want to progress, leaving your main loadouts untouched and free to select when you wish to change up your playing style in a match.
Read More: The Easiest Way To Unlock One Of Modern Warfare 2‘sHardest Achievements
If you swap out a gun in a loadout you plan to use regularly, all modifications will reset, which isn’t ideal. A dedicated “Leveling” loadout will let you prioritize your remaining nine loadout selections with the guns, modifications, and tunings you prefer. You may also wish to prioritize certain Perks that can make leveling a bit easier. Overkill, for example, will let you have two Primary weapons on the field, so you can make progress with two at once (though again, you need to be actively using a given gun to earn Weapon XP on it.) I also like to have Fast Hands equipped for a leveling loadout, as it allows for quicker swaps between guns, helpful when you’re trying to give both a workout. Scavenger is another good Perk to have for leveling guns, since you’ll be able to source more ammo during a game.
Modern Warfare II did not disappoint when it comes to delivering a ton of fun weaponry to shoot and blow shit up. Spend a bit of time kitting out your guns, and you’ll likely play better and look cooler while out there on the field. And once you have a feel for the weapons and modifications you prefer, don’t forget to give weapon tuning a shot to further tweak how the game feels for you.
Anyone playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, which got released today,on Xbox or PC is finding themselves in the shallow video game trenches, but not the kind they had hoped for. Infinity Ward’s first-person shooter seems to have a console preference, with Xbox players unable toswitch offcrossplay, a function that allows people on different platforms to play together, through the actual game. Meanwhile, PlayStation users can toggle the function with cheerful abandon thanks to a built-in option.
Disgruntled Xbox players want to avoid PC cheaters and precise mice and keyboards, while PC users would rather avoid consoles’ smooth aim assist. PlayStation users, meanwhile, are dealing with audio dropouts and being required to delete their files if they tried stealthily starting a game in a different region for early access.
But they aren’t, at least, worried about crossplay. And Sony sweetened their deal further—shortly ahead of release, the Call of Duty website listed a few PS4 and PS5-specific benefits, including monthly double XP events, +25% weapon XP when playing with other PS users in a party, and two extra loadout slots after reaching Level 4.
Console wars are an expectation for Call of Duty games at this point. While Microsoft is slowly working on buying billion-dollar-baby Activision, on October 26, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said he was more interested in mobile and planning on “[treating] CoD like Minecraft,” The Verge editor Tom Warren reported.
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A gift for literally everybody. Gifts under $20, $10, and even $5. It’s Wish, the catch-all shop for all of the above.
Activision’s current partner Sony is, instead, treating the franchise like a precious child prodigy. And, perhaps to Xbox players dismay, even after Microsoft’s deal goes through, Sony will commandeer Call of Dutyfor “several more years” after its contract with Activision expires.
So Call of Duty’s background console wars aren’t ending soon. In the meantime, Xbox players can go into their settings and block crossplay from within the “Online safety & family” tab. From there, you select Communication & multiplayer, and then you block people from outside Xbox Live. Doing this to play Modern Warfare II, however, will probably increase your queue times, since you’ll only be able to match a more limited group of players with the same safety settings. You just can’t win.
Update 11:33 a.m:We’ve updated the headline to reflect the workaround mentioned in the article.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 drops on October 28, though if you preordered it, you’ve likely already gotten some through some of the campaign. But ahead of the game’s full release, which will give folks full access to the multiplayer component, some are decrying the game’s skill-based matchmaking (SBMM).
Modern Warfare 2 is Infinity Ward’s latest entry in the Call of Duty series. A reboot of 2009’s eponymous title and a direct sequel to 2019’s rebooted Modern Warfare, this new shooter sees you hunting down various high-profile military ops to prevent global catastrophe by…shooting them in the face. It’s a solid game with some impressive visuals that Kotaku staff writer Claire Jackson said gets sluggish after a boring start. But while there are some problematic elements in the game’s campaign, that isn’t what has the community riled up. Nah, it’s the not-even-out multiplayer component.
Read More:Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II Is A Precision-Made Boredom Machine
Popular streamer Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar is seemingly at the center of the discourse around Modern Warfare 2 and skill-based matchmaking. In an October 23 video, he said that while he’ll “be here” when the game launches in full this weekend, he’ll only stream the game for “a day.” He’ll still grind it off-stream for the camos but clarified he can’t stream Modern Warfare 2. The reason? Skill-based matchmaking apparently sucks the enjoyment outta the multiplayer experience because he’s playing against highly skilled players that body him, and he isn’t having fun with the established “meta” and the “good guns” folks regularly use. His solution? Create two separate playlists: a Quick Play one not based around SBMM and a Ranked one that is.
“If SBMM wasn’t a thing, I would stream multiplayer,” he said. “SBMM—I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, man—is, I dare say, killing video games.”
TimTheTatman
Skill-based matchmaking is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a feature usually employed in multiplayer games that pairs you with other players around your skill level. Only level 10 months after a game launched but still wanna check out the multiplayer component? No problem. SBMM should—heavy emphasis on the “should” here—match you with other folks that are also level 10. Getting better at the game and leveling up at a rapid clip? The game’s SBMM should—again, heavy emphasis the word “should”—recognize this, placing you with others that are equally improving their skills. It doesn’t always work out this way, but that’s the general idea behind the methodology.
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However, much like TimTheTatman, folks online aren’t—and haven’t been for a minute now—too happy with the feature’s implementation in competitive games. A cursory glance at Twitter pulls up multiple people decrying skill-based matchmaking. Some have brought up how competitive shooters back in the day, such as Halo 2, apparently didn’t have SBMM and were still great fun. (A former Halo designer was quick to counter that point, though.) Others have said they straight-up hate the feature. A few, like gaming collective FaZe Clan, have questioned whether skill-based matchmaking belongs in Call of Duty games at all. Most seem to agree, however, that SBMM is ruining the game for them in some capacity. But, of course, SBMM has been in games for a long while now.
Read More:Modern Warfare II Makes You Aim Your Gun At Civilians To ‘De-Escalate’
Kotaku reached out to Activision and TimTheTatman comment.
There’s some irony to the complaints here. If one player has hit prestige, frequently ending matches with some insane kill-death ratio, then they should obviously be placed with other equally dominating players. They shouldn’t be given the opportunity to jump into non skill-based lobbies to crush folks still learning the ropes. It’s like a heavyweight boxer packing a ton of muscle taking on a lightweight half their size. Like, that’s a clear unfair advantage. If you wanna be the best, you gotta beat the best, right? Like Twitter user headfallsoff aptly asked in response to the SBMM discourse: “What would Goku think”? Yeah, he’d be disappointed.
Players who received early physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II have reported that the discs included contain only about 72MB of data, forcing players to connect to the internet and download the other 100+ GB of data to actually play the game.
Officially, Modern Warfare II isn’t out until tomorrow. But as usual, a few copies of the upcoming military first-person shooter slipped out of the warehouses a bit early and ended up in the hands of some lucky players. In theory, this disc should contain the game’s campaign, which was released early digitally, and it should also include its multiplayer, which fully launches for all tomorrow on the official release date. But as reported by Eurogamer, that’s not the case. Instead, players who got early copies of Modern Warfare II discovered that the disc was basically empty and they would have to download and install the entire game via the internet before they could play.
Kotaku has reached out to Activision about these dummy discs and if the company plans on offering actual retail copies of the game in the future.
Modern Warfare II–-after the latest patch—is reportedly over 150+ GB large when you include campaign and multiplayer. (And that doesn’t include the yet-to-be-released Warzone 2.0 that’s out in November.) While some players will be able to download the game easily and quickly, for others the large file size could take hours or days to download and it could push them over their existing internet data cap. Another problem, as pointed out by Eurogamer, is that in some parts of the world, energy costs are rising rapidly, and leaving a large, next-gen console running for hours to download a game could be a costly situation.
Read More:The Tricky, Essential Art of Preserving Canceled Games Like Starfox 2
But even if everyone in the world had great internet, low energy bills, and tons of free time to wait around for MW2 to download, it wouldn’t change how inconvenient this dummy disc situation is. It ends up making it harder to preserve console versions of the game legally, another blow to game preservation. And sure, this isn’t the first time a publisher has shipped nearly empty discs, but it still sucks that it’s happening again as it makes preserving games much, much harder for what is one of the biggest franchises in the world.
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Plus, what happens when the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 servers die one day? Well, you can probably guess. Unless Activision changes something in the future, the disc and all 72MB of its data will just become a paperweight once the servers die. At least you can play the other 46 Call of Duty games that are also called Modern Warfare instead.
It would come sooner or later. There was no escape.Image: Microsoft / Evan Amos / Kotaku
Hidden from the bustle of Jamaica Avenue, down a winding flight of stairs, the shop looked like a mausoleum, with stacks of busted PS2s, OG Xboxes, and GameCubes lining the walls. That small store in the Jamaica Colosseum Mall was the same place I’d once purchased Splinter Cell on PS2, Doom 3 for Xbox, and the Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack, among many others. But the dead consoles served as a jarring reminder that as vivid as the worlds those boxes produced could feel, sooner or later our machines of dreams would cease to function.
Back in late 2005, standing on the cusp of a new console generation, I understood intellectually that, over time, some of the new, cutting-edge Xbox 360s and not-yet-released PlayStation 3s would die someday. Maybe after another decade that shop would be filled with hourglass-shaped white monoliths and glossy black Foreman grills. But not just yet. It was the beginning of a new era, after all.
Back then, my teenage social circle was busy bickering over silly console wars, arguing in fast-food restaurants over whether or not Killzone 2’s 2005 E3 demo was real, or our PlayStationfriends’ assurances that once we saw the next-gen SOCOM, we’d leave Halo and Xboxforever. But we all agreed on one thing: We were all psyched for the wild new possibilities these new machines promised. HD graphics, better custom music playlists, a conclusion (finally!) to Halo 2, and the promise of true next-gen experiences like Gears of War. What a time to be alive.
And in an era of expensive texting plans and limited social media, the new HD consoles’ online functionality would soon mark a shift in our social lives. In fact, that was the very reason many of us sought out broadband internet. United online, our circle would surely stay as bright as the flashy rings on the Xbox 360 itself.
We all saved up enough from whatever random jobs we had at the time to buy 360s and fulfill the escapist desire that beckoned us after last period let out. Our afternoons were filled with round after round of Halo 2 (eventually Halo 3), trash talking, arguing over whether Korn was better off without Head, figuring out how to best apply Gears of War cover tactics to Halo, convincing someone to give Lost Planet a try, ordering Chinese takeout (leaving one friend in particular stuck with the bill. We’re good now, right?), trading burned Incubus and HIM discographies to rip to our 360 hard drives, blasting Lamb of God’s Sacrament, and saying things like, “oh my god, have you seen this Mass Effect game coming out?” “Oblivion looks nuts!” and “Would you kindly die so I can take your sniper rifle?” Single-player or multi, gaming never felt more exciting or promising.
Who knew that E-day would be the least of our fears?Image: The Coalition
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But in between the hollering over killing sprees and chainsawing aliens, talk occasionally turned to the rumors surfacing on forums about Xbox 360s suddenly failing. It always went the same way: a black screen, a bunch of red lights around the power button, and silence. Soon this failure had a name: The Red Ring of Death, or RRoD for short. I started out a skeptic and soon became a denier. “It can’t happen to us,” I thought. We were all relying on the 360 to stay in touch and game together as we drifted toward adulthood. It couldn’t happen to us.
The apparent cause always varied: different people playing different games for different periods of time. Eventually it seemed like the only thing these stories had in common was that three-quarters of the power button lit up red like a stoplight. Surely, I thought, folks just needed to take better care of their machines. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t the 360’s time to start dying. We all thought it was still in its best day. In our best days even.
We thought wrong.
The first among us who fell victim had it the worst. Over the course of a few years, one friend in particular would go through four Xbox 360s. By then, our social circle was in panic mode. We tried to become experts on which models shipped when, trying to glue together the internet anecdotes with what we were hearing from victims we personally knew. Which 360s were most susceptible? Were launch models okay? The Halo 3 edition? The Elite? Does horizontal or vertical orientation matter? The panic of losing our machines made it hard to be sure. But it wasn’t just about missing out on Halo nights. The 360 had become central to how we socialized.
We all started to physically drift apart after high school. Sure, MySpace was a thing, but it was Xbox Live that really kept our social circle intact. That’s where we not only gamed, but also talked about music, movies, life. All of it. Live became somewhat of a digital safe space as we faced the challenges of becoming adults.
But the red rings followed us online. When one of us fell to them, a portion of that social circle, much like the error sign on the machine itself, went dark. Microsoft’s repair program was generous, but we also couldn’t shake the fear of needing to spend another three or four hundred dollars. We worried over how much time we should spend on the machine. How much time we should spend with each other.
We all feared that we were gaming on borrowed time. A game of Capture the Flag could be redly interrupted. Some, like myself, tried to dig into the denial. How could the problem possibly be so widespread? But when someone with a Halo 3 edition finally got the error, the inevitability of death was too naked to deny. Eventually someone even RRoDed on an Elite, which we’d been sure was bulletproof. I remember a brief text exchange. “I did everything to keep it safe! I had three feet of space around it and an intercooler! How does this keep happening?”
Repair turnaround took weeks. And in the hectic buzz of moving from high school to college and getting full-time jobs, those weeks made it hard to keep up with each other and stay in touch. A 360 dying meant you wouldn’t speak to someone for weeks. Forget about rounds of Halo. We weren’t just deprived of our favorite game, the red rings actively pulled us apart from each other.
Grenades were exchanged for tumbleweeds as my friends fell to the rings.Screenshot: 343 Industries / Kotaku
The red rings of death became a fog that swallowed each of us, one by one. Somehow my launch console remained exempt, but the fear of it hitting me became too much. Toward the end of the decade I started exploring the PlayStation 3’s library, and tried to convince friends to do the same. But the damage was done. Time continued to pass and the Xbox 360, once central to my social circle, didn’t just fail us. It killed us, one by one.
In the blur of years during which everyone else I knew suffered red rings, things started to calm down. Newer Xbox models appeared to address the underlying overheating issue, but our online social circle was smaller by then.
Even so, the 360 generation was far from over. We’d been through the worst of it, and still had amazing games to look forward to. One evening, I, the sole survivor, sat down to start up a new Mass Effect playthrough to get ready for the sequel.
But it was not to be. A dreadfully familiar series of lights appeared on the face of my Xbox, denying me entrance to the sci-fi RPG futureworld. After tearing through all of my friends, the Red Ring of Death had finally come for me.