Yet another fan project has been shut down by a publisher after months of work, as Modern Warfare 2 remaster H2M-Mod is no more.
Video game fandom is always so incredibly passionate and creative but it really does need a better understanding of copyright and IP law. There are dozens of examples of fan creations that have had a huge amount of work put into them, only to be shut down by the company that owns the rights.
Nintendo is especially notorious for forcing fans to give up on projects but they’re not the only ones and this time it’s Activision, who have forced the fans behind the H2M mod to cancel its release… one day before it was meant to come out.
Perhaps there’s some arcane legal reason for it but that also happens a lot, and in this case the team that were trying to make Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer playable via Modern Warfare Remastered have been forced to abandon ship.
Modern Warfare Remastered was a remaster of the entirety of the classic Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from 2007. It was very popular but for some reason only the story campaign was remastered for Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 didn’t get any attention at all from Activision.
That means the multiplayer for Modern Warfare 2 is very difficult to play nowadays and that’s what the fans were trying to address via the H2M project.
It was a very substantial endeavour too, with more than 50 maps, a modernised progression system, and a range of new weapons, attachments, and camos that weren’t in the original version of the game.
Not only did the cancellation happen just a day before the intended release but it was only five hours after a release trailer of the game, although that may be what galvanised Activision’s response.
‘Today, our team members received a cease-and-desist order on behalf of Activision Publishing in relation to the H2M-Mod project. We are complying with this order and shutting down all operations immediately and permanently,’ is the only official statement from the team.
Although Activision hasn’t commented on the issue publicly the usual stance for any publisher is that they have to stop any unauthorised use of their IP, as even if it seems benign they can’t pick and choose or their ability to stop something more malicious, from a legal standpoint, is reduced.
In this case, Activision would’ve been happy that anticipation of H2M saw Modern Warfare Remastered rise to the top of the sales charts but on the other hand they wouldn’t have been happy about the idea of it taking time and attention away from their heavily monetised official games.
It’s all very unfortunate but it really does seem odd that fans keep doing this sort of thing and then act surprised when exactly the same thing always happens to spoil their fun.
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