I’m not one to take some rumours and predictions too seriously – especially ones started by ‘expert analysts’. A certain Michael Pachter recently stated that “Activision should lead the charge in charging for online play on a game-by-game basis”. Of course, the internet didn’t worry about that comment at all and everyone went about business as usual – except it didn’t. There was the usual “over my dead body”, “they can go frack themselves” and everyone’s favourite “I won’t buy any more of their games”, etc.
Anyway, as one should have expected when the words ‘expert’ and ‘analyst’ were tossed about, Activision has poured cold water on the rumours and everything has now gone back to normal. Admittedly, Activision themselves are a little to blame for the rumour in the first place, when Bobby Kotick’s desire for a pay-to-play model was mentioned a few months back.
Activision’s Dam Amrich was the first one to sound off on the rumours, which were sparked by the emergence of this video.
“MW2 subscriptions? Nope,” he says. “There’s a video that made the rounds today of a 360 player getting a glitchy, incomplete message that uses the phrase “Modern Warfare 2″ and half of the word membership.”
“This video shows just a glitch – since you can access a Live subscription renewal from within the MW2 game interface, it appears some data got jammed between two parts of Live. It’s not a secret portal to some nefarious plot to charge people for COD multiplayer – and there are no plans to do that” explained Amrich.
Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling also said “nobody has to pay to play COD or MW2 multiplayer, nor will they” in a tweet while Treyarch’s community manager joined in with a tweet of his own, saying “No, you will not have to ‘Pay to Play’”.
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