Man talk about mixed signals. Just last week, I was convinced that Activision / Infinity Ward really don’t care much for the PC community at all. And now, I end up reading this. Now, I’m no programmer, but I’m pretty sure that integrating Modern Warfare 2 with Steamworks like this would not have been a cakewalk. At the very least, it would have cost them time AND money. But they did it anyway. When you consider just how few titles (even PC exclusives) do this, it sheds some light on where IW/Activision’s going with their franchise. More importantly, it expresses how they view the platform in general. This does not seem like the action of a publisher that considers the PC a defunct platform. Suddenly, Twofourzero’s claim of MW2 being the “biggest investment Infinity Ward has ever made into the PC” does not smell of pure bullshit. Does this mean that I have completely reversed my stance on the petition? To put it simply, no. But, I am now willing to give IW a chance to substantiate it claims. At the very least, it does give me hope that the multiplayer aspect won’t suck as much everyone expects. The technical aspects of why we should have dedicated servers still stand of course but, if IW is genuinely concerned about the PC (and the Steamworks integration does point to this), then perhaps IWNET isn’t necessarily the death knell of community building. Mind you, upping the price of the game by 10 bucks still bites (I’ll probably wait for a sale on Steam) and no mods is damn near unacceptable but at the very least we aren’t being told to f@#k off.

Launch date cant come soon enough.