Speaking in an online chat with the Best Buy community, Infinity Ward"s Mackey McCandlish and Ryan Lastimosa discussed the petition for dedicated servers in Modern Warfare 2 and also let slip that servers across all platforms will max out at eighteen players.
When asked if there will be dedicated servers added later, the developers had this to say:
"We feel the PC game is great in it"s current form. We put a lot of work into IWnet in an effort to make the PC experience better for our users. We believe MW2 is better than CoD4:MW. The reason iw.net exists is to improve the gameplay for our users. If there is a need for something more in the future we will address as needed. Our goal is to provide the best experience for our users, so nothing is ever "off the table". We are always evaluating our options."
On the petition for dedicated servers:
"All I can say is that we changed it to make it a better and easier experience. Also, not all of the [178,000] names on that list are legit. 402 signed it 4 times I heard."
On the PC version. Are all games hosted by players, and is there a 5 second delay when host migration is in effect?
"Yes."
"Games cap out at 9v9. The software has great latency tolerance."
On LAN parties:
"We can play at work on our lan by doing private match and there is no lag."
Neowin recently reported that that the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will not contain dedicated servers or mod tools unlike its predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.