In 2009, a number of PC gamers were livid when developer Infinity Ward announced that the PC port of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 would not support dedicated servers. Instead the multiplayer support for the game was handled by Infinity Ward itself and didn"t allow for PC gamers to set up their own servers for their friends and clans. At the time Infinity Ward said that they were concerned about piracy and cheating. However, the developer, which suffered through the firing of its two co-founders and an exodus of a number of its team members in 2010, has had a change of heart for its next game, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.
The confirmation of PC dedicated services came via a chat with Noah Heller, who works for Beachhead Studios, to Eurogamer at Gamescom this week. Beachhead is working on Call of Duty Elite, the upcoming social networking service that will launch alongside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on November 8. Heller adds, " ... we"re working really hard right now on the customized version of Elite for the PC [versions of Call of Duty games], because it"s an open platform and has some challenges."
In related news, the PC version Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is now available for pre-order on Valve"s Steam PC game download service. The two previous games in the series, Modern Warfare 2 and 2010"s Call of Duty Black Ops (developed by Treyarch) have both been huge best sellers for the Steam service.